iTunes "Add Artwork" Glitch Corrupting MP3 Files?

I own a MacBook Pro, running the Mohave OS, and therefore use iTunes to manage my music library. It's just easier that way. That is, it's been easier until recently.

Lately, I've noticed that more than a few albums' worth of MP3s have the final 15-30 seconds of the song looped and tacked onto the end of the file, thus making the MP3s slightly longer than they should be. I've Googled this issue and determined that the problem lies in the "Add Artwork" function in iTunes.

A few details I've noticed regarding this issue:

• If I keep the album art that automatically downloads when the CD finishes importing as MP3s, my files are fine.
• If I add custom scanned album art to the MP3s in iTunes (because iTunes couldn't find a match or I want to create my own art for a particular album) things are still fine.
• However, if I chose to update or replace that manually added, custom album art, my files get corrupted with a repeat of the last 15-30 seconds of the song tacked onto the end of the MP3 file.

The only solution I've found is to trash the whole album in iTunes and re-import the CDs one by one. Needless to say, this glitch is pretty darn annoying, especially for multi-disc box sets.

I still only have one shot to manually add album art, but if I'm careful with my design and meticulous in my choices, I theoretically shouldn't have to do it more than once. Still, sometimes I want to touch up and refine the artwork.

Has anyone else encountered this problem? Have you found a solution? I'm really getting tired of this iTunes glitch.

 

You're not the only one to run into this problem:

Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes Applying Artwork in iTunes Corrupts Some MP3 Files » Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes

If you're using Windows, you can try running MP3 Diags on the corrupted MP3 files, and if it can fix the problem, then re-importing the corrected MP3 files back into iTunes.

MP3 Diags

 

I know.

As I said before, I'm using a Mac. What's more frustrating is that no one (Apple) seems to have figured out a sure fire solution. There are workarounds, but this is a flaw in their software. Have I mentioned it's also a big pain in the butt?

 

Does this only apply to MP3s?

 

Seems to be that way. I don't use any other encoding option when importing CDs to iTunes, save for the occasional WAV import - but that format doesn't support album art anyway.

My choice for MP3 was a tradeoff I made long ago between hard drive space and audio quality. It was also a decision dictated by the countless data mix CDs I burned for my car's CD player way back in the day. I didn't have a way to play my iPod through my car stereo, and CD-Rs can only hold so much data. Plus, it couldn't decode Apple's proprietary file audio file format, anyway. MP3 was the most versatile format for my needs.

Ugh. I'm not about to re-import hundreds of CDs because of one bug in Apple's software.

 

Most newer car stereos can play AAC (M4A) files, which are higher-quality than MP3. (Especially compared to iTunes' implementation of MP3, which uses the Fraunhofer codec, which is not as good as LAME.)

But there are tools available that can losslessly trim MP3 files -- I believe even Apple's own QuickTime player can do it. So you may be able to trim off the glitch at the end of each file.

 

The only problem with that is QuickTime doesn't see the glitch. MediaInfo doesn't even see it. But iTunes, Audacity, VLC and my car will.