ID3 Location

[fat baldwin]

Alright, I'm new at this "working with mp3's" thang, so I have a quick question. As I understand it, the locaiton of the ID3 tag is different in ID3v2 then ID3v1, or at least it can be. in ID3v1 the tag is always at the start of the file (ie. location 0), but in ID3v2 it can be anywhere. If that's the case, how can I determine what the location of the ID3 tag is in ID3v2? Anyhelp would be appreciated.

[s1138]

i think the ID3v2 is at the end of the file. not sure though

[fat baldwin]

Well I'll give it a whirl and let you know. =)

[FloppyMaster]

Actually, no, you've got the location of the ID3v1 tag wrong. It is always at the end of the file. This makes it incovenient for streaming, as it is the last thing downloaded. ID3v2 solves this by putting the tag at the start of the file.

To quote id3.org (http://www.id3.org)
What is ID3 (v1)?
The audio format MPEG layer I, layer II and layer III (MP3) has no native way of saving information about the contents, except for some simple yes/no parameters like "private", "copyrighted" and "original home" (meaning this is the original file and not a copy).
A solution to this problem was introduced with the program "Studio3" by Eric Kemp alias NamkraD in 1996. By adding a small chunk of extra data in the end of the file one could get the MP3 file to carry information about the audio and not just the audio itself.

What is ID3v2?
ID3v2 is a new tagging system that lets you put enriching and relevant information about your audio files within them. In more down to earth terms, ID3v2 is a chunk of data prepended to the binary audio data. Each ID3v2 tag holds one or more smaller chunks of information, called frames. These frames can contain any kind of information and data you could think of such as title, album, performer, website, lyrics, equalizer presets, pictures etc. The block scheme to the right is an example of how the layout of a typical ID3v2 tagged audio file may look like.

[s1138]

as i said im not sure.....