Syncing APE tags to ID3v2 tags in MP3s

2004-10-15 07:33:56

Is there in fact no easy quick method of copying ID3v2 tags with long character strings directly to APE tags?  I  am aware of distain for ID3v2 tags, and have explained why I'd like to support them here. (3rd post down)

I touched on this question in that thread.... but didn't get any feedback on it.

From what I've read up to this point, there doesn't seem to be any software, or FB2K component that will write APE tags based on what has been written to the very basic ID3v2 tags: %artist% %album% %tracknumber% %title% %date% %comment% %genre

Is that in fact right?  I've seen mentions of The Godfather and Tag&Rename both supporting ID3v1, ID3v2 and APE tags...  but after testing them, they seem only to be capable of syncing ID3v1 and  ID3v2 tags, not ID3v2 and APE tags from what I can see.

I have been able to get all the ID3v2 tags written to APE tags, but it's a multi-step process. I first run RG on files in FB2K which writes Ape tags based on the ID3v1 tags I've synced with the files' ID3v2 tags.  But that leaves a lot of long character strings truncated in the resulting APE tags.  Running this masstagger script at that point will then write the full %artist%, %album%, and %title% APE tags based on how I've configured my filenames:

--------------------------------------------------------------
‘Guess at values from file name’

%artist% - %album% - %tracknumber% - %title%
--------------------------------------------------------------

But as I wrote in that other thread, I ran into problems with running that script resulting in the loss of my customized, shorter ID3v1 tags.  That because how FB2K is set up to deal with tags.

So has anyone found any quicker, one-step method of writing ID3v2 tags to APE tags?  And maybe doing that without touching the existing ID3v1 tags?

Thx

Syncing APE tags to ID3v2 tags in MP3s

Reply #1 – 2004-10-15 07:45:58

Foobar only writes whats in its database to tags.  You can't have different tags with different data.  It'll standardize on whichever dataset is in its database, and then remove everything else.

Syncing APE tags to ID3v2 tags in MP3s

Reply #2 – 2004-10-15 21:01:43

In fact I've worked around that behaviour by merely re-editing the ID3v1 tags with another tag editor after running RG and that masstagger script on my files.  FB2K seems to be happy with what it wrote to its database before re-editing the ID3 tags externally.  That gets the long character strings written to the APE tags to be displayed in FB2K's playlists, and allows a different string of characters in the ID3v1 tags to be displayed in my portable MP3 player that only recognizes ID3v1 tags.

And too, if after re-editing ID3v1 tags I then remove those files from FB2K's playlists, nuke the database, close and restart FB2K, and add the files back to playlists, FB2K will then display the data in the APE tags as it did before, and still leave the modified ID3v1 tags alone.

I know that's probably going against the philosophy FB2K is based on, but it seems to work without causing any major problems for the equipment I'm using.  Or am I not seeing some potential for problems there?

So I'm guessing the the likelihood that there's some other software existing at this point capable of syncing APE tags from data in ID3v2 tags is pretty slim, right Mike?

Anyone else?

Thx

Syncing APE tags to ID3v2 tags in MP3s

Reply #3 – 2004-10-16 00:39:38

Yes foobar doesn't care if it reads different data in tags, it'll just ignore everything thats not in the APEv2 tag (then the ID3v2 and finally V1).  However if you write so much as a single field to any file, it will mess up your tags again.

You might want to check the "block tag update operations" box in options to be safe.

Syncing APE tags to ID3v2 tags in MP3s

Reply #4 – 2004-10-20 09:30:44

Until I can figure out a better way to copy data from the basic 6-7 ID3v2 tags to Ape tags, I'm just not enabling ID3v2 support in FB2K.  I'll edit APE2 and ID3v1 tags in FB2K, and ID3v2 tags in my favorite tagging app, Gearvolt.

BTW, after having used many tagging applications, I've really found Gearvolt to be the quickest and easiest way to tag ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags.  Funny not many people have seemed to pick up on it.  I should write out a little comparison of features to other popular tagging apps and post it.  Robert Wahler, the author doesn't seem to have tried promoting it very much.