AAC files crashing clip zip - one fix

[luisdent]

Just thought I'd put this out there, because I haven't seen this anywhere else.  I've had a few random AAC files crashing and rebooting my clip zip.  I couldn't figure out why and talked to sandisk support a few times.  This happened with both sansa and rockbox firmware/software.  They had me format the device, retransfer the files, copy them directly from the folders instead of dragging from itunes, etc. etc.

No luck.  So I continued troubleshooting on my own by removing all the tag information that used special characters to see if one caused an issue... nope.  Converted to different bitrates and constant vs. variable settings... nope.  Converted to mp3 and the file played.  My initial assumption was that "some aac files just don't work", which seems to be all around the web (and might still be true).  However, one last test fixed the problem for me.  I removed the album art.  The file then played with no problems in both sansa and rockbox software.

It turns out that the file type of the image that was in the file was a .png image file.  This does not work.  I embedded a new .jpg image instead and removed the .png file and it plays perfectly.

I don't know how itunes handles album art when you "automatically retrieve" it from itunes, but apparently you need to make sure your album art is in a supported image format.  Not sure if this is already known, but it was driving me crazy.  I was about to return the device if so many "random" aac files wouldn't work.  Luckily, since I've known this, I haven't had a single problem playing any files of any type.

Hope that helps someone else out there.