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Topic: Sick and tired of tagging Classical FLAC music (Read 5885 times) previous topic - next topic
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Sick and tired of tagging Classical FLAC music

Is it just me, or is properly tagging classical music a major pain in the ass?

Even though there's some Codecs/Containers which offer the benefit of near infinite tags and tag formats. And I've found some fantastic examples of Tag formats to use with Classical music. But none of the current CDDB databases are anywhere near sufficient enough to be able to use them. They're designed for simple Album/Artist type albums (granted that covers the masses) but that doesn't satisfy classical music fans in any way.

I have hundreds of classical albums on my hdd that I just haven't had the time to go through and tag properly. Hell I'm procrastinating more and more and may never get around to it.

I think what would be a fantastic idea would be for a far more complete CDDB database specifically geared toward Classical music. Anyone know if one already exists or if one's in the works? If not, anyone would be up to the challenge of building one? With this sort of database, at least our efforts toward properly tagging and identifying our Classical music would help others, in time, this would be a fanstatic resource for Classical music fans and their tagging woes.

Anyone, please post your opinions on this!

Sick and tired of tagging Classical FLAC music

Reply #1 –
That would be nice.

I have a few albums sitting on my hard drive as well.. just waiting for me to go through the unbelievably painful tagging process..

composer, conductor, performers, ensemble, label

All these things are important.  And I'm only considering one example.  And that's not even touching how the individual tracks can be broken down.  Aaarrgh.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty swamped right now.  Otherwise I would love to take up a project like this.  Maybe some time in the future.

Sick and tired of tagging Classical FLAC music

Reply #2 –
It is indeed a major pain. The info in FreeDB is often worthless/incorrect  - lots of typos, missing accents/special characters, English title casing used on German/Italian titles, etc.

I saved a little time initially by doing batches:

1. Rip all CDs
2. Get what you can from FreeDB. You need to identify your CD from ALBUM/ARTIST.
3. Set up foobar2000 to show your desired fields in columns and maximize window. I use TRACK, COMPOSER, CONDUCTOR, ALBUM, LABEL, PART, TITLE and DATE.
4. Also tell foobar2000 to write 'missing' in red if the field is missing.
5. Add all files to foobar2000 playlist.
6. Group your CDs by composer. Multi-select matching files in foobar2000 and set the COMPOSER field (Properties + Add New require fewer clicks than Masstagger).
7. Group by CONDUCTOR and repeat.
8. Group by LABEL and repeat.
...

If you have some programming skills you can grab correct titles from the labels' web sites.

Sick and tired of tagging Classical FLAC music

Reply #3 –
Quote
It is indeed a major pain. The info in FreeDB is often worthless/incorrect  - lots of typos, missing accents/special characters, English title casing used on German/Italian titles, etc.

I saved a little time initially by doing batches:

1. Rip all CDs
2. Get what you can from FreeDB. You need to identify your CD from ALBUM/ARTIST.
3. Set up foobar2000 to show your desired fields in columns and maximize window. I use TRACK, COMPOSER, CONDUCTOR, ALBUM, LABEL, PART, TITLE and DATE.
4. Also tell foobar2000 to write 'missing' in red if the field is missing.
5. Add all files to foobar2000 playlist.
6. Group your CDs by composer. Multi-select matching files in foobar2000 and set the COMPOSER field (Properties + Add New require fewer clicks than Masstagger).
7. Group by CONDUCTOR and repeat.
8. Group by LABEL and repeat.
...

If you have some programming skills you can grab correct titles from the labels' web sites.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=246224"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I've been using Tag&Rename but it looks like I've got to starte exploring foobar's own tagging.  (if only to get a PART field).  Is there a field for 'original release date'?

Sick and tired of tagging Classical FLAC music

Reply #4 –
It really is a pain. I usually end up manually tagging classical music. One of the main problems is that there's no standard on which bits to put in which tag. I took a stab at this myself and came up with this list. It's based on an unofficial vorbis tag standard that I found on the vorbis mailing list. It's enough for what I use but finding software that utilizes the extra tags is another matter.

Code: [Select]
Purpose                 id3v2.4                 vorbis/ape      example
-------
Lead Artist             TPE1                    COMPOSER        Bach, J.S.
Album                   TALB                    ALBUM           Complete Brandenburg Concertos
Title                   TIT1                    TITLE           Brandenburg Concerto (no 1???)
Comments                COMM                    COMMENT
Subgenre                ?                       TYPE            Baroque
Year of recording       TYER                    DATE            1960
Track Number            TRCK                    TRACKNUMBER     1
Opus or other Number    TIT3                    OPUS            16, BWV 1000, K. 400
Composer                TCOM                    COMPOSER        Bach, J.S.
Arranger                ?                       ARRANGER        Ravel
Producer                ?                       PRODUCER
Lyricist                TEXT                    LYRICIST        Puccini
Conductor               TPE3                    CONDUCTOR       Karajan
Performer               TMCL                    PERFORMER       Perahia / Piano
Orchestra / Choir       TPE2                    ENSEMBLE        LSO / John Alldrich Choir
Record Label            ?                       LABEL           Chandos
ISBN/catalog no         ?                       ISBN            ...
Part of a set           TIT2                    PART            Allegro
Genre                   TCON                    GENRE           Classical
Recording Location      ?                       LOCATION        St. Paul's Cathedral
Source Media            TMED                    SOURCEMEDIA     CD/DD (from id3v2 spec)

Sick and tired of tagging Classical FLAC music

Reply #5 –
Quote
Is there a field for 'original release date'?


The tagging standard I use (ReactorCore something) use DATE multiple times:

DATE=1873 (written)
DATE=1966 (recorded)
DATE=1967 (released)
DATE=1993 (remastered)

Sick and tired of tagging Classical FLAC music

Reply #6 –
And also check out the Matroska tags if you're in need of tag field names. That should take care of those date tags for instance (and then some).

Quote
Is there a field for 'original release date'?[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=246342"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I just add an 'ORIGINAL_' to the front of the tag field to denote said property due to its convenience and because there's currently no easy way to masstag nested fields (that I know of), i.e. ORIGINAL_DATE_RELEASED. Works great in foobar.
f to c to f to c

Sick and tired of tagging Classical FLAC music

Reply #7 –
Well first we would need to come in agreement on some kind of standard that we could all agree on. Not just the tag name, but how the text is formatted in the fields. Such as do we put J. S. Back, or Jean-Sebastien Bach, or Bach, J. S., etc...

Once that's done, all we need is for someone to put up a simple website with a database that can hold a way to identify the CD/Album along with all the the tags for it.

Finally, a plugin would need to be written for say Foobar that would automatically fetch the information from this database and update it with new albums.

I wish I were programmer as I would love to work on the implementation...
Although it's easy to say from a non-programmer's perspective, it seems like the implementation/database and the plugin to not be too involved. The hardest part would be for all the users to keep adding to it's database...