[luc-mobile]

I am having a strange problem with MP3 tags I just can't summarize easily, so I guess I will have to go with a lengthy description. I hope nobody falls asleep reading my post...

I have a few MP3 folder/files on my computer. Some of them are CDs I purchased and ripped, and some of them are random downloads or purchased downloads. Most of them are definitely CDs I purchased and ripped. Every time I rip a CD, on Linux, I use a program called Kid3. It's a tag manager. It lets me edit the MP3 tags of all files in a folder quite easily. Please pay attention to every step of my routine:

1) Rip the CD;

2) Type in the name of each track as the file name, e.g. make a folder called "Beach Boys", then a folder called "Pet Sounds" then first track will be called "01 - Wouldn't It Be Nice.mp3". I always write the track number at the beginning of the file name, so the tracks will be listed in the correct order.

3) Open the folder with Kid3 and edit all the tags, including the "Track number" tag, so the media player will play all the tracks in the same order as they come in the album. All of these operations can be executed in batches, i.e. the entire folder, including guessing the song title and track number from the file names, will be applied in one fell swoop. It always works very well.

4) Search the Web for the album cover, download the image, place it inside the corresponding folder and rename the file to "folder.jpg", so the BlackBerry Media Player will display the cover when any song of that album is playing.

5) Important detail: note that if I launch the BlackBerry Media Player, select Artists, browse to Beach Boys then choose "Pet Sounds", I get a list of all the songs and the album cover is displayed very small above the song list. When I play a song, the album cover is displayed in large size. This detail may be important.

Very well.

This weekend, I decided to rip music off a Web site that serves streaming. The entire sound framework is godawful in Linux, I can't make any program accomplish that task, so I bite the dust and use Windows. I use a freeware program called Freecorder. It works very, very well. Excellent method and results. I saved three folders worth of music, about a dozen songs each, plus another three folders for three CDs I purchased recently and ripped on this same weekend. Then I moved all the songs to my Linux notebook and edited them all with Kid3 like I always do. Everything seems fine. Then I copied them to my SD card so I can play those songs on my BlackBerry. Now, here come the problems:

- The CD-ripped albums have no problem whatsoever. Everything works as expected, including the album covers.

- The streaming-ripped files/folders do not work as expected.

First, they are not displayed in the correct order. They are displayed in alphabetical order. In the hypothetical Beach Boys example, track number 13 "Caroline No" would be displayed at the top, followed by track number 4 "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)", and track number 2 would be the last one, because it is the last one in alphabetical order, "You Still Believe in Me". In other words, although all the file names begin with their corresponding order number, corresponding to their original order in the album, they are all listed as if there were no number before the song title in each file name. I have double and triple-checked the Track Number tags in all the files, they all seem ok to me. Kid3 lets me edit both Tag 1 - ID3v1.1 and Tag 2 - ID3v2.4.0. ALL the tags have been checked, they are correct. But the BlackBerry completely ignores the numbering order, both in the file name and the Track Number tags.

The second problem, which doesn't really bother me but might be a clue: please read item 5) above again. This group of file/folders behave differently: if I launch the BlackBerry Media Player, select Artists, browse to Beach Boys then choose "Pet Sounds", I get a list of all the songs and the album cover is **NOT** displayed very small above the song list. But when I play a song, the album cover is displayed in large size correctly. I don't know if this is relevant, but I thought I would mention it.

I just have no idea what could be causing it. I even thought that maybe there could be some kind of permission problem, but the SD card is formatted FAT32, formatted by the BlackBerry, there are no permission attributes in them.

So I searched the entire SD card and deleted ALL the BBThumbs.dat files. All of them. When I put the card back into the BlackBerry, the device scanned the whole card again and recreated the BBThumbs.dat files. The problem persists.

I've run out of ideas. Does anyone here have any?

TIA