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Topic: Some of my FLAC files do not show tags in Windows Explorer (Read 12977 times) previous topic - next topic
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Some of my FLAC files do not show tags in Windows Explorer

Hi

After ripping my CDs library, I have  few Flac encoded songs which seems to have a tags issue.

In these songs Windows explorer can not display their ID3 tags. this also happen in my android phone, which prevent these songs from being played on the phone.
For some of the songs where I have managed to add the tags by using Mp3tag, and I now can play on the phone - but for some reason it didn't work for the rest.

To be clear - Mp3Tag displays the tags but Windows and the Android app Apollo seems to fail recognizing them.

All songs are being played perfectly in Windows.

Please advise

tx



Some of my FLAC files do not show tags in Windows Explorer

Reply #1
Are these actually ID3 tags? I mean rather than using ID3 as a generic term to refer to any type of tag. If they are ID3, they should not be. From the official FAQ:
Quote
What kinds of tags does FLAC support?

FLAC has it's [sic] own native tagging system which is identical to that of Vorbis. They are called alternately "FLAC tags" and "Vorbis comments". It is the only tagging system required and guaranteed to be supported by FLAC implementations.

Out of convenience, the reference decoder knows how to skip ID3 tags so that they don't interfere with decoding. But you should not expect any tags beside FLAC tags to be supported in applications; some implementations may not even be able to decode a FLAC file with ID3 tags.

As you mentioned having used MP3tag, you might have considered telling us what type of tags it reports in your files.

Anyway, Windows Explorer does not natively support Vorbis comments. To display those, you would need to install a third-party extension. Perhaps the tracks whose tags you can see in Explorer have ID3 tags and the rest do not. Ideally, none of them should have ID3 tags.

Another piece of important information that might help describe the phenomenon and is missing:
Quote
After ripping my CDs library
With which program? Which settings?

Some of my FLAC files do not show tags in Windows Explorer

Reply #2
Are these actually ID3 tags? I mean rather than using ID3 as a generic term to refer to any type of tag. If they are ID3, they should not be. From the official FAQ:
Quote
http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html[/url] ]What kinds of tags does FLAC support?

FLAC has it's [sic] own native tagging system which is identical to that of Vorbis. They are called alternately "FLAC tags" and "Vorbis comments". It is the only tagging system required and guaranteed to be supported by FLAC implementations.

Out of convenience, the reference decoder knows how to skip ID3 tags so that they don't interfere with decoding. But you should not expect any tags beside FLAC tags to be supported in applications; some implementations may not even be able to decode a FLAC file with ID3 tags.

As you mentioned having used MP3tag, you might have considered telling us what type of tags it reports in your files.

Anyway, Windows Explorer does not natively support Vorbis comments. To display those, you would need to install a third-party extension. Perhaps the tracks whose tags you can see in Explorer have ID3 tags and the rest do not. Ideally, none of them should have ID3 tags.

Another piece of important information that might help describe the phenomenon and is missing:
Quote
After ripping my CDs library
With which program? Which settings?


Sorry for the late response - I was not aware there is an answer - didnt get any mail

Problem solved - after reading the answer, I checked with Mp3Tag and the tags of the problematic songs where ID3V2 and not Flac tags i.e. Vorbis comment
I converted them to Flac, and now all good

tx



Some of my FLAC files do not show tags in Windows Explorer

Reply #3
The other thing is that some versions of WMP do not support ID3V2.4 tags so if your files have those and not ID3V2.3 then they may not be recognized.

I've had problems with other devices as well - my phone will read ID3V2.4 but my car will not.

In any case if you are using FLAC files, the "by the book" way is to not use ID3 tags at all but use FLAC/Vorbis tags - reserve the ID3 tags for e.g. MP3 where they are the appropriate format.

I'm assuming based on your message above that you have installed the plug in so that WMP can read FLAC/Vorbis tags.

Whenever I have a problem with files that I didn't generate myself, I usually just fire up MP3Tag and let it autocorrect the tags (make sure that for MP3s it is set for ID3V2.3) and that resolves a lot of problems without much hassle.

Some of my FLAC files do not show tags in Windows Explorer

Reply #4
The other thing is that some versions of WMP do not support ID3V2.4 tags so if your files have those and not ID3V2.3 then they may not be recognized.
Some? AFAIK, no version of WMP or Windows itself supports ID3v2.4.

Recommending ID3v2.3 instead is not really a good idea when, as I have said, FLAC officially discourages ID3 of any flavour. Programs that allow ID3 in FLAC, however popular they might be, are taking liberties and risking incompatibility with other programs that do not.

Some of my FLAC files do not show tags in Windows Explorer

Reply #5
The other thing is that some versions of WMP do not support ID3V2.4 tags so if your files have those and not ID3V2.3 then they may not be recognized.
Some? AFAIK, no version of WMP or Windows itself supports ID3v2.4.

Recommending ID3v2.3 instead is not really a good idea when, as I have said, FLAC officially discourages ID3 of any flavour. Programs that allow ID3 in FLAC, however popular they might be, are taking liberties and risking incompatibility with other programs that do not.


Well, I'm a little behind the curve and am hesitant to make sweeping statements when I'm not certain I'm right.

I also agree that I would discourage the use of any ID3 tags on FLAC or Ogg Vorbis files, as that is not a standard implementation and is likely to cause problems with programs that strictly adhere to the pertinent standards.  My comment was a little off topic but I was thinking more of MP3 files which do by standard use ID3 tags.  For FLAC I definitely would convert any ID3 tags to FLAC/Vorbis and make sure the ID3 tags were deleted.