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Topic: I have lost 6months of tagging! (Read 8680 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #25 –
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Also i cannot see any support for AIFF in the explanation you posted above, so does that mean no matter what i do, i will never be able to have ratings (in a rating tag, popularometer tag or otherwise) in my AIFF's?

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #26 –
Quote from: F0B!C on
i can't seem to work out why my custom Rating tag with value 3 is recorded as 128 in the popularimeter? (view screenshots) Surely it should just be the same value of 3, no?
Default values for POPM on ID3s -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3#ID3v2_star_rating_tag_issue
This has been set in stone, and is interpreted as such by most media players.
If you use literal values ov 0-5 in POPM, hardly any media player will be able to display tthis, as all has been developed to interprete the default rating scale.

Quote from: F0B!C on
Also is there a way to display the Popularimeter field in Foobar as i would need to sort all the tagging thus far and then bulk select/ apply the Popularimeter rating to all in one go, though i can't figure out how to do this please?
There's multiple ways... I would recommend to do this automated (but you need some basic understanding of the technical details of metadata, as well as script writing...). The most straight forward would be this:
https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_masstag
Although, not sure how well it can handle multiple target format / rating ranges.

As much as I like & use Foobar, I am also a big fan of Musicbee (especially for Playlist management, and some batch/bulk edits).

c.

ps.
Quote from: F0B!C on
no matter what i do, i will never be able to have ratings (in a rating tag, popularometer tag or otherwise) in my AIFF's?
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Interchange_File_Format#Metadata
so looks like AIFF does not have a rating concept at all, but for that would need to use "An ID3v2 tag chunk can also be embedded in AIFF files".

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #27 –
So what do you use to deal with all this? I mean i buy most of my music in lossless format (Wav or AIFF) there has to be an easy way to get all these tunes tagged, no?
I am no dev and anything that requires scripting is a big no, no. I will try MusicBee and report back. Thanks for the tips

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #28 –
Quote from: F0B!C on
So what do you use to deal with all this?
Most people use FLAC or the like, I'd imagine. Not sure what need to keep uncompressed PCM around. (I'm not familiar with AIFF but according to that wiki link that is what it contains, right?)

Quote from: F0B!C on
Quote
ps. same for foobar sits here: https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Tag_Mapping
THAT is a super helpful explanation. Thank you very much! I will change all my rating tags to popularometer then ...

No, RATING is the correct field name to use! "POPM" or "Popularimeter" is like the internal name / description. See this specific ID3 Tag Mapping doc that states at the top -

Quote
The 'Field Name' column indicates the name to be used in the foobar2000 'Properties' or 'Masstagger' window.

The fact the internals of the file (in your screenshot) call it "Popularimeter" with a value 128 (3 stars) means the file was tagged correctly, using RATING.

"Tag Mapping" means foobar has mapped the friendly field name of RATING (that you see in Properties window) to the internal frame POPM, which should be recognized correctly by most players as the rating.

If you made a custom field name called POPULARIMETER my guess is it would probably be written as a custom TXXX frame and not be recognized. (Although I'm not testing that...)

The same applies to other tag formats - you only need to use RATING and foobar should map / write the correct internal tag for that tag/file-type.

However, please check in Preferences > Components to see if you have Playback Statistics installed. (This was mentioned but never addressed)

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #29 –
Uncompressed PCM would be found in AIFF and WAVE files yes. For someone who is in it playing music (as opposed to creating music and mixing it on audio workstations), AIFF and WAVE are hardly the best formats.

@F0B!C : I know you said no-no to scripting, but some simple command-line thing could be helpful. It will not overwrite any AIFF.

* Hold down the Windows key and hit R, then in the little window, type "cmd" (without quotation marks) and hit Enter. You should now get a command-line window open, likely in C:\users\YOURWINDOWSUSERNAME
* Type flac and Enter. Does it give out a lot of help about FLAC, ending with something about how to test with flac -t?
* Are you able to navigate with "cd"? If not: If you go to a folder that has AIFF files. Hold down Shift, and right-click in an empty space (not on a file), does any of the menu items read "Open command window here" or "Open PowerShell window here"?

Does any of this work for you? And, can you give the path of an album folder (that has AIFF files)?

I'll take it from there when I know more about your computer's whereabouts :-)

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #30 –
Quote from: F0B!C on
So what do you use to deal with all this? I mean i buy most of my music in lossless format (Wav or AIFF) there has to be an easy way to get all these tunes tagged, no?
Aye... I picked .flac a while ago as my preferred format (for my ecosystem & players), which uses the vorbis comment metadata header/frame.  [if you were exclusively on Mac/Apple, alac would probably be a more suitable choice... although, apple has ended their decade long attempt to drown flac... and added flac as a Apple Music compatible format in 2021 as well...]

Might be good to spend a few evenings trying out various file formats & metadata container options, to figure out what works best for you! As next you have a ton of work ahead of you - conversion as well as metadata tagging wise...

c.

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #31 –
Right Gents (still PC in 2022?) thanks for all the info. It's A LOT for me to get my head round but i will in time. Few things i want to clarify. When playing on 10K+ systems like at festivals, i need lossy music. It does make a difference in my opinion. I know we can debate this forever but when using cross overs and bins capable of churning out low freqs, mp3 just doesn't cut it. I've tested this!

Also, apologies for the length of time it takes me to respond sometimes, just so busy. I am (now) doing all the sound design in my upcoming video-game Eonwar (shameless plug oops) and its all mainly techno, psy, D&B and minimal genres. So not just DJing but creating re-edits as well as production in Ableton with Massive/ Serum. Yes lossy is an annoying format to keep tagged but it is essential for my line of work.

I like the idea of FLAC, its got many benefits but also requires some time to decompress each file at runtime (correct me if i'm wrong) which is not great for DJ's and not fully supported by Pioneer, which my DJing gear is... cue your insults- its fine, i'm out of love with Pioneer now anyway.

@anamorphic Cool i will leave the tag Rating, thank *** i read your message! i was about to mass change them all!

@Porcus I'm familiar with command line in windows. It's not that i cannot do scripting but i often find if i say i can, coders get excited and start going off on one and i don't really understand what the script is doing so its hard to keep track and customise its function. I did type flac at the cmd prompt and it says: "flac is not recognised as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file." So i guess my WIn10 doesn't have the encoder installed right?

I can use CD to create directories and move around the system. What did you have in mind?
My entire professional library can be found at: C:\Users\MK\Music\PURCHASED

Finally to add to @alec.tron's comment, i was an OSX guy and used to use iTunes for my organisation. But its just so expensive so i've had to resort to Windows. Yes it hurts, but its what i can afford atm.

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #32 –
OK, you don't have FLAC installed. I actually don't remember exactly what I was thinking of. But anyway:
* You can use foobar2000 to convert AIFF, and transfer tags.
* Probably best is to duplicate the folder structure. Like, e.g., D:\FLAC\%path%, and then you will get D:\FLAC\C-\Users\MK\Music\PURCHASED\...

Now if you aren't completely sure about tags: Mp3tag can display tags as well. Also for AIFF.

Quote from: F0B!C on
I like the idea of FLAC, its got many benefits but also requires some time to decompress each file at runtime (correct me if i'm wrong)
Yes! FLAC decodes faster than MP3. On Rockbox, they measured FLAC to decode four times as fast: 
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=82125.msg713417#msg713417

CPU downclocking to 7 MHz because it doesn't need more. That is like only 160 times the sampling frequency. It could decode the left and right sample in only 160 CPU cycles.

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #33 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Yes! FLAC decodes faster than MP3. On Rockbox, they measured FLAC to decode four times as fast: 
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=82125.msg713417#msg713417

I am literally lost for words. There goes all my preconceptions of FLAC!
OK i'm sold on FLAC now. I'll be converting the whole library then i guess and problem solved.

One thing i wanted to add regarding the title of this thread. Today i brought over all my music collection (stored on external USB 3.0 WD MyBook, usually connected to my desktop PC) and dumped all the tunes into Foobar on my laptop. I have a directory for new tunes that need tagging and i made a point of tagging all of these recently on my desktop.

Of course now i view them on my laptop and not one track carried over any of the tagging. So to reiterate, the thread title is accurate and i did lose 6months of tagging, i wasn't sure, but i am now.

Moving to FLAC is going to play hell with all the tagging already done in Pioneer's Rekordbox  :'(  to be honest, but i don't care anymore. Tagging in a 3rd party database no matter the provider is generally a bad idea IMO. Much better to tag the files direct if possible. This is the 3rd and last time i will ever do this (please God please).

Thanks for all the help!

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #34 –
If anyone understands how to change the filepath for tracks in Rekordbox to instead read as .flac from .aiff or is willing to create a custom script, i would be willing to pay for something like that considering the time it would save me. Please DM me!

Rekordbox uses XML but its not as straightforward as you might think, i messed with the library once in the past and destroyed everything (i had a backup thankfully).

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #35 –
I don't know the Rekordbox, but a quick googling indicates that five years ago they started supporting FLAC.
Does it have a custom database or anything? If you point at your new directory, would it see that you moved your AIFFs? Does it have a "save playlist" or anything?


* If foobar2000 can read the tags, it can transfer the tags upon conversion, but you have to select it! In the Converter setup, under "Other",
* Mp3Tag can copy tags, but you need to line up the files in exact same order. It can sort by path etc., but then you need to have AIFF files number 1 to (say!) 143, Ctrl-c tags to clip board, then get FLAC files number 1 to 143 in exactly the corresponding order and paste with Ctrl-v.

If you open your AIFFs in fb2k and in Mp3tag, do the tags look the same?

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #36 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Does it have a custom database or anything? If you point at your new directory, would it see that you moved your AIFFs? Does it have a "save playlist" or anything?

Yes it does ill post a snippet of an exported collection.xml using the export tool in RekordBox.
I have a tonne of custom tags in the RB's XML, not sure if it also stores hot cues? I don't care for beat-grid data.
But all the custom MyTags are in that exported xml. So I'll do the conversion to FLAC, then Find All ",aiff" REPLACE>".flac"

The tagging i entered into foobar is unfortunately gone. But much of that data exists in RB, hence my proposal.
BTW iTunes has no problem saving playlists straight out of RB when exporting using its export tool. So glad backing them up was quick!

https://imgur.com/a/rPHHnvn

Re: I have lost 6months of tagging!

Reply #37 –
Quote from: F0B!C on
The tagging i entered into foobar is unfortunately gone.
Completely sure? I see some indications that various things might have happened.

Dump one into MP3tag (I don't use AIFF, but I generated one and copied tags from a file). If you click the "Extended tags" where I put the red uparrow, what do you see?



Is there any number in there that could have matched your "Rating"? Or anything else that you might have lost?

If you dump a whole lot in there and look at the "Tag" column: are some empty and some not?