How to identify corrupt MP3 files out of thousands?

June 4, 2007 6:17 PM

How to identify corrupted MP3 files? I have thousands to go through, but only some are bad. (OSX)

I have 14,000 songs, and some are corrupted. I've narrowed it down to artists starting with P, S & T. When I try to import a corrupted MP3 file into itunes, the computer freezes up and I have to reboot. How can I locate the corrupt files without having to test each one and crash the computer time after time?

Running OSX Tiger on a Macbook.

posted by rglass to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Have you tried running musicbrainz over your collection? It's a tagging engine really, but it also detects corrupt mp3s.
posted by rjt at 6:24 PM on June 4, 2007

Will musicbrainz change how I have my songs tagged? I've spent a lot of time in itunes setting up genres, groupings, artists, albums, years, etc...
posted by rglass at 6:27 PM on June 4, 2007

Just tried a mac version of musicbrainz. Looks like the songs have to be in itunes before you can scan them with the software. I can't get the songs into itunes now - when I try to import them the computer freezes up.

Any other suggestions?
posted by rglass at 6:50 PM on June 4, 2007

mp3val

Looks like there's a GUI, to save you from some shell coding.
posted by kcm at 7:04 PM on June 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

kcm... I think that's over my head. I don't know what shell coding or GUI is, and the software seems to be for windows only.

Any other suggestions?
posted by rglass at 7:11 PM on June 4, 2007

Unless you already know how the mp3s got corrupted, you may want to check your file system integrity.

As for mp3val, it is compilable on Mac OS X, as it is FreeBSD compatible. However, I'm guessing that that is a little more effort than you want to get into. If you have a techie friend who has the same version (and processor architecture Intel vs. PowerPC) of OSX as you they can compile the program for you and send you the binaries.

You could try MP3 tester, I'm not sure if it validates mp3s or not, but at least it is pre-compiled for OS X.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:02 PM on June 4, 2007

That seems like an awful large bunch of songs to have suddenly become corrupted. And iTunes, generally, would just pop-up an error and refuse to import a corrupted file...not freeze the whole system.

I'm thinking there's something more at work here.

Where, exactly, are these suspect songs you are trying to import, located? Are they currently located on your local drive? Or are they on a different drive?
posted by Thorzdad at 5:04 AM on June 5, 2007

Wow. mp3val is my new favouritest piece of software in the whole wide world. Thanks.
posted by davehat at 3:29 AM on July 4, 2007