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Hosted Forums => foobar2000 => General - (fb2k) => Topic started by: Nessa on 2006-06-27 05:21:51

Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: Nessa on 2006-06-27 05:21:51
Not sure if I'm using the correct term here, so bear with me.

When you load an archive and attempt to change the ID3 tags of the tracks within the archive, foobar v.9 gives you an error and doesn't change the tag. In v.8, it used to give an error (and not always), but then would change the tag anyways (at least from what you could see in foobar's window)... Is it possible to get that back?

I have a lot of albums contained in archives and a lot of them have messed up tags. It would be nice to just modify those tags in foobar, instead of having to unzip every archive, fix the tags, and then (maybe not even bother to) zip it back up again...

This would be helpful as right now a lot of those tracks submit really messed up info to last.fm (the Audioscrobbler plugin), especially visible with the foreign language albums.

-N.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: RogerG on 2006-06-27 19:31:32
just out of curiousity: why do you zip albums before backing up?
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: Nessa on 2006-06-27 19:35:45
I don't?

I meant that if I wanted to fix those tags, I'd have to unzip the file, fix the tags, and then zip it again (though most likely wouldn't bother to)...

-N.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: lordgibbness on 2006-06-27 21:09:22
I don't?

I meant that if I wanted to fix those tags, I'd have to unzip the file, fix the tags, and then zip it again (though most likely wouldn't bother to)...

-N.

You're unlikely to save much space by zipping up a compressed music file (the same applies to pictures and videos too).
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: tool++ on 2006-06-29 07:47:54
Why have you zipped it?
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: Nessa on 2006-06-29 19:11:58
It came zipped and I found it easier to leave them as such as you're only dealing with one file and don't have to fear things like accidental deletion.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: pstrg on 2006-06-30 19:49:15
It came zipped and I found it easier to leave them as such as you're only dealing with one file and don't have to fear things like accidental deletion.

Archiving (zip, rar, 7z) is good for classical music: a single piece of classical music quite often consists of a certain number of parts (or "movements").
Instead of a collection of loose files (one for each movement), archiving unifies the piece into a single file.
For sharing, the same: instead of downloading part by part, the whole piece of music comes together.
The possibility of tagging inside an archive would be great.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: foosion on 2006-06-30 23:18:07
Updating files inside an archive can be very time consuming, because not only have the files to decompressed, but at least the updated files have to be recompressed. There is also the problem of proprietary archive formats without (free) compression libraries. In short, the programming effort and runtime cost is so large that you will likely never see this in foobar2000.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: pstrg on 2006-07-01 18:45:36
Updating files inside an archive can be very time consuming, because not only have the files to decompressed, but at least the updated files have to be recompressed. There is also the problem of proprietary archive formats without (free) compression libraries. In short, the programming effort and runtime cost is so large that you will likely never see this in foobar2000.

A clearly stated reply; nevertheless, let me argue:
1) If the archive is intended not to compress, but just to store together a group of related files (e.g. all movements of a single piece of classical music), the runtime becomes very small.
A table at http://www.anobyte.com/anobyte/reviews/winrar_review.html (http://www.anobyte.com/anobyte/reviews/winrar_review.html) shows that 1.2GB worth of audio files are stored (not compressed) in just 50 seconds with either ZIP or RAR.
2) At least ZIP and 7z libraries are free.

Given the relevance (imho) of such a feature, perhaps it should be considered for the future.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: foosion on 2006-07-01 18:59:15
Fifty seconds to update tags on a single file is not fast, considering a normal tag update with padded tags or tags at the end of the file takes only a split second. Peter's comment was "huge waste of dev time".
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: pstrg on 2006-07-01 19:04:44
Fifty seconds to update tags on a single file is not fast, considering a normal tag update with padded tags or tags at the end of the file takes only a split second. Peter's comment was "huge waste of dev time".

Fifty seconds for 1.2GB, that is, two fully filled CDs!
Anyway, got the message; thanks for the fast reply.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: tool++ on 2006-07-01 20:12:38

It came zipped and I found it easier to leave them as such as you're only dealing with one file and don't have to fear things like accidental deletion.

Archiving (zip, rar, 7z) is good for classical music: a single piece of classical music quite often consists of a certain number of parts (or "movements").
Instead of a collection of loose files (one for each movement), archiving unifies the piece into a single file.
For sharing, the same: instead of downloading part by part, the whole piece of music comes together.
The possibility of tagging inside an archive would be great.


Directories?!
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: pstrg on 2006-07-01 21:33:07


It came zipped and I found it easier to leave them as such as you're only dealing with one file and don't have to fear things like accidental deletion.

Archiving (zip, rar, 7z) is good for classical music: a single piece of classical music quite often consists of a certain number of parts (or "movements").
Instead of a collection of loose files (one for each movement), archiving unifies the piece into a single file.
For sharing, the same: instead of downloading part by part, the whole piece of music comes together.
The possibility of tagging inside an archive would be great.

Directories?!

I do use a directory for each piece to hold its movements ... but would prefer to have them packed as an archive file.
Using directories imply in a directory for the album and within it a directory for each piece; for coherency, single-movement pieces should have their directories too...
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: roentgen on 2006-07-01 22:01:34
I do use a directory for each piece to hold its movements ... but would prefer to have them packed as an archive file.

wouldn't matroska container fit your needs?
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: pstrg on 2006-07-01 22:15:27
I do use a directory for each piece to hold its movements ... but would prefer to have them packed as an archive file.

wouldn't matroska container fit your needs?

Thought it was a video thing (oops!).
Now reading about it - thanks for the clue.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: pstrg on 2006-07-02 00:06:44
wouldn't matroska container fit your needs?

Added the required foo_input_matroska.dll to components.
Tried packing MP3 files using mkvmerge but got problems:
- all tags have been wiped
- tried to add manually a tag named COMPOSER but it was in fact not added although fb2k Properties dialog said operation was OK.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: roentgen on 2006-07-02 00:12:15
- all tags have been wiped
- tried to add manually a tag named COMPOSER but it was in fact not added although fb2k Properties dialog

something went wrong
My tags were kept and adding COMPOSER just for testing works

PS: I used mmg.exe which is kind of a frontend for mkvmerge
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: pstrg on 2006-07-02 01:58:06
- all tags have been wiped
- tried to add manually a tag named COMPOSER but it was in fact not added although fb2k Properties dialog

something went wrong
My tags were kept and adding COMPOSER just for testing works
PS: I used mmg.exe which is kind of a frontend for mkvmerge

The same; tried a number of times but mmg always complains that it must skip a number of bytes at the beginning of each file because "no valid MP3 header found".
All those files have been tagged with fb2k (ID3v2 + ID3v1) which, if I'm not wrong, puts tags on the beginning of the file; could that be confounding mmg?
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: roentgen on 2006-07-02 07:58:53
Yes I think you are right. In my case I used a cuesheet and everything went smoothly. I just packed an album without a cuesheet just for testing and tags have been wiped out.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: pstrg on 2006-07-02 14:24:41
Yes I think you are right. In my case I used a cuesheet and everything went smoothly. I just packed an album without a cuesheet just for testing and tags have been wiped out.

Incidentally, to solve the problem I have considered concatenating all files (movements) of a given music and adding a cuesheet.
However, cuesheets only allow for a general TITLE and PERFORMER plus a per-track additional TITLE and PERFORMER - too little information for classical cataloguing.
Of course it would be possible to codify information on those two fields and use functions to extract and display them, but that would be too laborious and result in a non-standard solution.
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: Hakubo on 2006-07-02 14:29:49
The same; tried a number of times but mmg always complains that it must skip a number of bytes at the beginning of each file because "no valid MP3 header found".
Have you tried foobar's "Fix MP3 header..." feature?
Title: ID3 Tags & foobar v.0.9
Post by: roentgen on 2006-07-02 14:41:27
The same; tried a number of times but mmg always complains that it must skip a number of bytes at the beginning of each file because "no valid MP3 header found".
Have you tried foobar's "Fix MP3 header..." feature?

No. I think it's about matroska tools not understanding ID3 Tags v2.4 that foobar writes and I don't have time to test it with some other tag types