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Topic: Tagging waves in foobar? (Read 4582 times) previous topic - next topic
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Tagging waves in foobar?

Hello all,

I am a studio engineer with a rather large sample set of sound effect files that I want to organize in a better way. I posted a thread here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=65549 where I was directed to foobar 2k for this task.

I've been a longtime foobar user but have never used it for anything more than just playing the odd audio file here and there. Had never even set up a library with it.

Rather than repeating myself I'll just quote my initial post here. Here is my initial post explaining what I would like to do:

Quote
...
Longtime browser, first time poster. Not new to audio or compression codecs but not up on the latest either.

Here's the situation. I run a small recording studio and recently accepted a contract to do foley and post production for a short animation series. I have done this work in the past but usually on a much smaller scale. This series will have over 90 episodes and will be in production for over a year. I have amassed a small library of effect sounds in .wav format which I have recorded myself. For the scope of this project thought I will need to amass a much larger library of sounds.

So... What I would like to do is to be able to tag my sound effects library with metadata and be able to search it, audition files, and drag them into my sequencer (my sequencer supports dragging and dropping).

iTunes is able to do all of this but it is a huge resource hog. I have it installed on my web pc since I have an ipod and can confirm that it can tag .wav files just fine. I would rather not install this on my DAW machine thought as it has been optimized for recording. iTunes is known for messing up windows based DAWs and I have experienced this in the past myself. I love the way that the search feature works in iTunes though.

So a breakdown of features I am looking for are:

*Extremely light and stable program with no extra junk (no need to brows the web, run loads of processes in the background, etc...)
*playback and tag .wav files
*Dynamic search features (like iTunes)
*Drag and drop support (to and from media player)

I already have foobar 2000 installed on my recording machine but was unable to get it to tag my wave files, and to my knowledge it has no search feature that I am aware of.

I'd appreciate any guidance or advice.
...



I believe that foobar might be able to do this. I am figuring out how to enable and use the search feature to some extent. Still haven't fully mastered it yet though. What I have been unsuccessful at doing is to tag wave files in the proper way. A poster in that thread mentioned using an external database?

Using the wave format for my sample library is the only option as that is what all of my digital audio workstation software uses.

Tagging waves in foobar?

Reply #1 –
Although nearly all of your criteria would fit foobar perfectly, it seem that it do not have what might be the most important for you.

Quote
tag .wav files


Not possible with current version of foobar. (0.9)

However, in 0.8 you can "tag" them in foobar database, but I'm not sure that is it better to use outdated/not support version instead of looking elsewhere, if you want to give it a try, google for "foobar 0.8.3"

Tagging waves in foobar?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: buktore on
Although nearly all of your criteria would fit foobar perfectly, it seem that it do not have what might be the most important for you.

Quote
tag .wav files


Not possible with current version of foobar. (0.9)

However, in 0.8 you can "tag" them in foobar database, but I'm not sure that is it better to use outdated/not support version instead of looking elsewhere, if you want to give it a try, google for "foobar 0.8.3"



Bummer.

Looks like I may have to install iTunes, as much as I hate to do so. MediaMonkey is just plain ugly to me.

One thing that may work is to find an explorer alternative that allows tagging files using some kind of database, and having it use foobar as the default media player. That just might work.

Tagging waves in foobar?

Reply #3 –
Does your sequencer support decoding on the fly.
e.g. I can drag and drop direct from MP3 to Cool Edit from fb2k and direct from WavPack or FLAC to Reaper from fb2k, and both packages decode to wav on the fly.

If your software can do this then I'd recommend encoding the WAV sample library to WavPack (which handles 32bit floats) and tag them with foobar - then drag and drop when necessary.

What sequencer / editing software do you use?

C.

[EDIT1 - typo]

[EDIT2 --
Failing my first suggestion, MusikCube will do what you want.
It uses an SQL backend database and thus allows for "pseudo tags" i.e. the tags are written to the database only, yet with files that have tagging support (APE or ID3) MC gives the option to write to the file also.
Plus IIRC it supports dragging and dropping.
PC = TAK + LossyWAV  ::  Portable = Opus (130)

Tagging waves in foobar?

Reply #4 –
Thanks Carpman

I am using the following programs:

Sonar 7
Reaper
Sound Forge 8
FLstudio 8
Tracktion 3

I'll see if they all support wavepack.

I am also checking out musikCube.

Thanks,
Doug

Tagging waves in foobar?

Reply #5 –
Yeah, you can certainly drag and drop from MC (i.e. it has explorer integration):

MC is probably the best way to go - before I got my head round fb2k's database functionality I was using MC, as a music database, in conjuntion with fb2k (partly due to MC's SQL query based dynamic playlists).

If you do go with MC a minor note of caution relating to its playlists:

I remember when I first started using it (many years ago) I kept losing "playlists", this is due to how it deals with "Now Playing". It's easy to forget where you are in MC (due to its flat structure) - you'll see what I mean.

The Now Playing area looks like everywhere else, so you can think you're ordering a playlist and you're actually ordering the Now Playing list - then you search or go to the library and "audition" a track and of course that's replaced everything in the Now Playing section (i.e. all your selections have disappeared).

The reason I mention this is that it's really easy to do - and very annoying when done.

The other thing you'd likely need is its playlist plugin.

Cheers,

C.

[EDIT: more typos]
PC = TAK + LossyWAV  ::  Portable = Opus (130)

Tagging waves in foobar?

Reply #6 –
Hi,

Just a little note that may already be clear to you, but it wasn't made explicit anywhere in the thread: wave files don't support tagging. At least tagging in the sense of mp3 files etc, where there's a standardised place and syntax for tags. This means that any solution you adopt to "tag" the files will need to be using an external database, and that these are not automatically transferable to another software.

And regarding converting to another format, consider FLAC. To my memory Reaper and Sonar at least would support it. FLAC does seem more common regarding gaining support these days than WavPack.

IMHO and to the best of my knowledge .

Rgds,

.brum