Older flash-based MP3 players and OS X metadata

Jun 23, '05 09:42:00AM

Contributed by: ropers

Several "primitive but common" flash-based non-Apple USB MP3 players (e.g. AIPTEK MP-1003, SEG MP53-256) will horribly keel over if used in connection with Tiger and/or 10.3.9. They may display two songs for one, or even crash outright when skipping forward or moving on to a second song.

The reason lies in Apple's recently introduced new metadata. On data volumes not supporting metadata, this "data about data" will be stored in the form of separate files with a fileanme syntax of ._xyz.abc -- so for a file named mysong.mp3, there would be a metadata file called ._mysong.mp3.

This actually is the case with 10.3.9 already (not just with Tiger), so it seems Apple has introduced the metadata capabilities via a recent update. Since the old FAT partition format which these flash-based players use cannot cater for metadata, these dot-underscore files get created -- pretty much for every file you're dragging onto the USB volume. Most cheap MP3 players, however, have very primitive firmware (embedded stripped-down DOS, probably), and they will get horribly confused over the notion of these extra metadata files (which have extensions of .mp3, but are not MP3 files).

The solution? Delete the hidden dot-underscore files (eg. from Terminal), and do not browse to the USB volume before unmounting it (or the metadata files will be back). I'm sure people can come up with scripts and all sorts of solutions to conveniently get rid of all the dot- and dot-underscore files on these volumes...

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