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Topic: Problem with forward slash artist name (Read 3435 times) previous topic - next topic
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Problem with forward slash artist name

Hello:
Thanks in advance for helping :) (i already searched in this forum and followed guides and nothing...)
As subject says, artist like "K/DA", shows all of the sudden as "K;DA". Downloaded mp3tag and foobar, did the whole chaning the tag to 2.4 and changing it, but still shows up like this.
Can someone do a step by step on how to change this?
Thanks again :)

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #1
You are on track of it.
"/" is separator in ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 - obviously written by someone who never got as far as to AC/DC in the musical Who Made Is Who.
When it shows up as "K;DA" it is because it has already taken the "/" to be a separator so it is K separator DA and changing to 2.4 will write the 2.4 tag as K separator DA still.

In foobar2000, you can
* select the files in question. (There are ways for fb2k to find files with more than one artist.)
* populate the artist field with $meta_sep(artist,/)

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #2
Hey thanks for repliying so soon :)
But, can you walk me through it? I have never used this program and have no idea how it works.
I try putting what you told me (which would be, $meta_sep(artist,K/DA), right?). This goes in the properties and artist name part, no?
But in my pc files shows up as $meta_sep(artist,K;DA)
Please heeeeelp T_T and thanks in advance.

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #3
Right click in the file. Tagging->MP3 tag types.
Then select ID3v2, override ID3v2 version and select v2.4.
Now you can edit the artist name to "KD/A" without being splitted.

If you have more files in this situation, after changing the ID3v2 type to v2.4 you can
Select the files->Properties, select the artist field, right click, format from others fields and put in there
Code: [Select]
$meta_sep(artist,/)
to do the change to all the files in one operation

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #4
The same thing works in Mp3tag.
* Select the files
* Drop down the "Convert" menu and select Tag - Tag (keyboard shortcut: Alt+5)
* Select ARTIST to populate, and $meta_sep(artist,/) as format string.

If you use the Windows operating system and want to manipulate audio file tags, Mp3tag is a piece of software you are going to need.
(If you have a habit of editing ID3 tags directly in Windows Explorer, you are asking for trouble. I sometimes do it, but ... yeah, that's a risk.)

foobar2000? It is a quite advanced freeware player which can do a lot of file and tag management. The "official foobar2000 forum" is hosted by HA, so naturally it is popular around here - indeed, some of us might on auto-pilot write a reply presuming that if you ask here, this is for you. I just made that mistake. foobar2000 is not for everyone, its basic user interface looks too basic to some, and customizing it takes time (if you want something flashy, google for fb2k themes and download someone else's).

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #5
Yes :/ I have been doing the v2.4 thing and in my pc still shows ups as "K;DA".
For the code, i would have to write in the field thing you say "$meta_sep(artist,K/DA)", no?
(already tried that in the "format from others fields " option and nope, that won't work either).
T_T why does this keep happening. And its only recently, before i could see perfectly the K/DA.

I also tried the method that Porcus mentioned, still shows up as K;DA

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #6
Porcus, its supossed to end up like that, no?

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #7
Looks right. Save it and look at it afterwards.

I don't remember what tag type Mp3tag saves to by default. Go to Tools -> Options -> Tags -> Mpeg to set what kind it shall write.
You can still use v2.3 even if you have / in there! Unfortunately, 2.4 is not so well supported (and the much better APE tag type even less), so I'd use 2.3 if I can. I use ID3v2.3 and ID3v1 (the latter for to make sure my in-car unit can read).

If you want to avoid any issues with the "/", use the fullwidth instead. This character:/. Beware it will look a bit strange. But it works in filenames!

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #8
Beware of using ID3v1 tags. I found at least one player that would look for both v1 and v2, and if both were present, it would display the v1 tag information. This would sometimes lead to truncated track titles, because they were too long to fit in a v1 tag. The only way to make that player prefer v2 tags was to not use v1 at all, so I've been using v2.3 by itself ever since.

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #9
"/" is separator in ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 - obviously written by someone who never got as far as to AC/DC in the musical Who Made Is Who.
Well, I don't get it because I have AC/DC MP3 files tagged with ID3v2.3, with AC/DC as the artist name, and they are correctly displayed with the / in AIMP, foobar2000 and VLC on both Windows and Android.



What am I missing ? 🤔

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #10
You're lucky that you've chosen apps that support the hacked delimiter that your tagging program uses...probably.
Assuming you're using foobar to tag your files, it uses ' / ' as a delimiter (space, slash, space), which isn't as per the specification, and if you opened one of your files in mp3tag (which uses the ID3v2.4 delimiter!) you'll see those additional spaces.

The easiest way to see what's going on is to view the file in hex. To do that, pick an mp3 with multiple artists and from the command line issue:
Code: [Select]
certutil -encodehex input_filename.mp3 input_filename.txt

Open the text file and search for the string 'TPE1' (the artist tag) and you should see the delimiter is ' / '.

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #11
I don't remember which tool has been used for tagging these files, maybe through EAC at the time ? They are quite 'old' files encoded with LAME 3.92.
But I've just noticed that according to MP3Tag the tags are ISO 8859-1 encoded and not UTF-16. That might be the reason why it works ?



I've found no other tags elsewhere in the file.

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #12
I don't remember which tool has been used for tagging these files, maybe through EAC at the time ? They are quite 'old' files encoded with LAME 3.92.
But I've just noticed that according to MP3Tag the tags are ISO 8859-1 encoded and not UTF-16. That might be the reason why it works ?
It works because very few applications are working to the specification. The only application I know that would "correctly" treat this tag as 'AC' and 'DC' is MinimServer.
If you look at a track with multiple artists you'll see how foobar uses ' / ' to separate values and mp3tag uses NUL (hex 00) - assuming you used that application to write the file in the first place of course.

I've found no other tags elsewhere in the file.
In mp3 you only have one field for artist with values separated by a delimiter, unlike formats such as Vorbis where you'll have one field per artist e.g.

Code: [Select]
artist=Miley Cyr
us....artist=WAT
T....artist=Elto
n John....artist
=Yo...Yo Ma....a
rtist=Robert Tru
jillo....artist=
Chad Smith

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #13
...all programs hard code certain artists such as AC/DC

everything else for v2.3 / is a multi artist seperator.

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #14
...all programs hard code certain artists such as AC/DC

everything else for v2.3 / is a multi artist seperator.

Can you expand on "all programs" please because I've just created an album using '/' as a delimter in the Artist field (value being 'Artist1/Artist2/Artist3/AC/DC/Artist4/Artist5') and foobar, mp3tag and vlc don't split Artist out at all, and MinimServer and AssetUPnP do split it out into individual artists but don't have any special coding in place to understand AC/DC so it is also split out (MinimServer shows '... , Artist3, AC, DC, Artist4, ...' and AssetUPnP shows '... ; Artist3; AC; DC; Artist4; ...') using BubbleUPnP control point both times. I've checked with MinimServer (don't know how to check with AssetUPnP) and BubbleUPnP is simply displaying the string that's being passed to it, so '... ; Artist3; AC; DC; Artist4; ...' must be being passed directly from AssetUPnP I assume.

The mp3 file looks like:
Code: [Select]
...01/01.TPE1...
_.....A.r.t.i.s.
t.1./.A.r.t.i.s.
t.2./.A.r.t.i.s.
t.3./.A.C./.D.C.
/.A.r.t.i.s.t.4.
/.A.r.t.i.s.t.5.

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #15
...all programs hard code certain artists such as AC/DC
I didn't know that!

Workaround: as suggested by Porcus we can use the fullwidth slash character for both filenames and tags: /
And for AC/DC we can use the ⚡ character: AC⚡DC ;)

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #16
...all programs hard code certain artists such as AC/DC
I didn't know that!
How would you know that, because as far as I can tell it isn't true :-)

Just tested AIMP and it seems it only understands the mp3tag NUL delimiter, so it will ALWAYS show 'AC/DC' correctly as will foobar and mp3tag (because they dont use '/' as the delimiter), unless of course you have other artists and then it'll just be one long string of text.

You can test this yourself. In foobar, make sure it's writing to v2.3 and then just type in stuff seperated by a '/' (including AC/DC if you want) and it'll get "correctly" written to the mp3 file according to the spec (because foobar uses ';' to signify that you want a separate field in the GUI), then open that file up in other apps and check the results. If foobar understood them to be different fields then it'll separate them with a ';', for mp3tag it would be '\\' e.t.c.

It looks like if you have to use ID3v2.3 then the mp3tag "version" seems more supported.

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #17
And for AC/DC we can use the ⚡ character: AC⚡DC ;)
You can, but there is a downside to it, if you search your library for AC/DC. Using foobar2000 it will also return AC/DC with full-width solidus. And as far as I understand, that is Windows' built-in collation that identifies the two.

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #18
Oh damm, sorry. I lost track of this thread :( Just coming back to it. Anyway... Ive tried more times than i can count with both foobar and mp3tag and nothing... Maybe im doing something wrong?

Can someone explain step by step like you would do a small child what exactly do i have to do T_T? Really want to tag properly this artist...

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #19
If you try to go back to what you did in your reply #6, except with fullwidth solidus.  That is, you can copy this line into what you did there:
$meta_sep(artist,/)
What happens?

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #20
Hey porcus sorry for not replying on a normal basis even though im asking for help XD...
But yeah even doing that with the other sign still stay the same.
But i want it with the "/" not the other sign :(

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #21
If you open one of the files in Mp3tag do you see 'K\\DA' in the artist field on the left hand pane?

If you do then try Porcus instructions as they worked for me:

1) Select the file
2) Select the 'Convert' menu and then choose 'Tag - Tag'
3) Select 'ARTIST' in the input box labelled 'Field:' and then type '$meta_sep(artist,/)' in the 'Format string:' input box
4) At this point, below the 'Format string:' input field you should see the preview 'K/DA'
5) Click 'OK' to apply changes.

If this doesn't work for you, could you take a screenshot (including the whole Mp3Tag window) just before step 5 and attach it here?

By the way, $meta_sep(artist,/) returns all values of artist, and where there are multple entries (values separated by \\ in Mp3tag) joins them together with /

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #22
Yep :/ they still show up like that and this is the screenshot beofre the step you were telling me (i even tried with the APE tag too this steps, no results tho)

Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #23
In your screenshot of Mp3tag the artist is showing as K/DA, which is correct isn't it?

Are you failing to tell us that what we've suggested isn't working for a particular application you're using? If so, what application is it?

If the file '01 THE BADDEST.mp3' isn't displaying correctly then it's probably the application you're using as that particular file only has ID3v2.4 and it's correctly displayed in Mp3tag as 'K/DA'. Make sure you're checking the artist tag and not the album artist tag as it's missing in this file.

If this file IS displaying correctly then you need to make sure you're only storing ID3v2.4 in the files not ID3v1 (or APE) as that could be what's causing the problem.


Re: Problem with forward slash artist name

Reply #24
Yes! in the app it shows correctly, but when I am trying to see it in the Windows app, it still shows as K;DA, no matter what i do :( I tried the other one with the BADDEST (APE) to see if it worked out, but no -.-. in Windows folder shows as noting.

Ugggh, is it just impossible?