I upgraded BIAS Peak to version 5.2.1 today prior to doing a bunch of AIFF-to-MP3 conversions — and kept getting this wacky warning:
Apparently not all MP3s are equal.
Peak’s Save dialog has a checkbox called Auto File Type Extensions, which seems to be what’s causing the problem, but shouldn’t the program be smart enough to figure out that x = x?
It seems like your BIAS program tried to rename files from "music.mp3" to "music.mp3.mp3".
@Adriaan: Exactly. Which made me wonder why it isn’t smarter.
I suspect that you had the Hide Extension button checked and tried to add the .mp3 extension to a file that already had the .mp3 extension added. If you try adding .rtf to name of a .rtf file in TextEdit when the Hide Extension button is checked, TextEdit is smart enough to uncheck that button. It might be that the save dialogue of the application you were using is not smart enough to do this, but if this is the case then what you were actually trying to do was not x=x, but xx=x.
I cannot reproduce it from finder. Mac OS X uses the last part of the filename separated by dot as an extension, nothing else matters, as I know. If you set the filename to music.mp3.mp3 then finder will show you music.mp3 or music.mp3.mp3 but the file will be an mp3 file.
Maybe BIAS does something nasty with the filename/extensions.
Curious. That actually looks like it might be an obscure bug in Cocoa/File Services. I wonder if it's trying to compare "mp3" with ".mp3" and is being smart to build the ".mp3.mp3" but not being smart with the comparison.
Actually, I don't doubt that not all MP3s are equal - my daughter has an mp3 player, but not all mp3 files will play. Ones exported from iTunes won't play. MP3s downloaded plays fine. I haven't been able to find where the differences are.
Different character sets maybe? UTF-8 vs...ASCII? Dunno. the the 'm' or the 'p' or not identical character codes, so the comparison returns false.
"shouldn't the program be smart enough to figure out that x = x?"
y?
(Sorry--couldn't resist.)
Ian: UTF-8 is a strict superset of ASCII. That is, for any valid ASCII code, the UTF-8 code is the same.
This may be a stupid question, but did you install lamelib? The BIAS website states that it needs to be added using Apple's Info (Get Info) box in order to save mp3 files from Peak.
did you install lamelib?
Yep — which reminds me of another Peak annoyance: When I enter too many characters in the ID3 tag window (it’s about 30), the fields get all jumbled in the resulting MP3.