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Topic: Problem preserving ID3v2 tags (Read 2704 times) previous topic - next topic
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Problem preserving ID3v2 tags

I've been half the day trying to find out why ID3v2 tags are being lost when transcoding MP3s to a lower bitrate.  The ID3v1 tags are copied to the transcoded files.

Here's what I'm doing:

* Loading a group of ~192kbps MP3s into a virgin copy of FB2K 0.9.6.1
* Right clicking on the selected group and selecting Convert > ...
* Selecting an output format for LAME of ~130kbps (*), V5
* Clicking OK and clicking YES to the quality degradation warning.

Does FB2K not deal with copying ID3v2 tags like this, or am I missing something?

Thx
TS
Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man

Problem preserving ID3v2 tags

Reply #1 –
Compatibility Mode only writes a minimum, select few fields for the sake of maximum compatibility.

Perhaps this is what you are experiencing?
elevatorladylevitateme

Problem preserving ID3v2 tags

Reply #2 –
Quote from: shakey_snake on
Compatibility Mode only writes a minimum, select few fields for the sake of maximum compatibility.

Perhaps this is what you are experiencing?

I see FB2K defaults out of the box to not having "Compatibility Mode" enabled.  I enabled it and it did try copying the tags.  But the resulting tags ended up filled with garbage characters.  Guess FB2K's "Compatibility Mode" isn't dealing with my existing ID3v3.3 tags very well.

I did get BonkEnc do do a pretty good job of copying the tags over.  But it choked on a huge job I gave it, and Windows closed the app.

I also read where dbpoweramp was supposed to transcode while preserving tags.  But after a while struggling to figure out how to get it to do it, I gave up.

I'd prefer using FB2K, but that's not looking probable at this point

Thx
TS
Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man

Problem preserving ID3v2 tags

Reply #3 –
Which program did you originally use to tag your source files?
Does the "Properties" dialog in foobar2000 display all their tags?
Which tag types are displayed in the "Properties" tab?

After conversion, how do you attempt to verify that the resulting files have ID3v2 tags?
What does "Properties" display for the created files?

Possible explanations:

If foobar2000 does not even display the source tags, your files may contain Lyrics3 tags instead of ID3v2, which are not supported.
foobar2000 converts existing ID3v2.3 tags to ID3v2.4, which might not be supported by whatever program you use to check your files.

Problem preserving ID3v2 tags

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Frank Bicking on
Which program did you originally use to tag your source files?

Does the "Properties" dialog in foobar2000 display all their tags?

foobar2000 converts existing ID3v2.3 tags to ID3v2.4, which might not be supported by whatever program you use to check your files.

For the most part I use EAC when ripping CDs, but for custom tagging I use a tag program I helped beta test years back called Gearvolt.

Checking the tags in >FB2K< on files after transcoding, I see now that tags made by both EAC and Gearvolt copy across correctly.  Gearvolt shows garbage in the transcoded files, probably because it may not be recognizing the ID3v2.4 tags FB2K writes.

However the original APE tags with RG values, and the ID3v2 album tag are lost in transcoding.  Any possibilty I can get FB2K to copy those over too?

Quote
Which tag types are displayed in the "Properties" tab?

Only ID3v1 and ID3v2 are present in the transcoded files.  FB2K shows ID3v1, ID3v2 and APE present in the original files. 

Is there any way for FB2K to report album art in the file's properties?

Gearvolt has been extremely accurate and handy as all heck mass-tagging multiple albums in its spreadsheet format.  I can fill an entire column with data in a single cell with an single mouse click.  I'd really like to have the option of going back and re-editing FB2K's transcoded tags with Gearvolt.  Is it possible to have FB2K write tags in ID3v2.3 format when transcoding?

Thx
TS
Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man

Problem preserving ID3v2 tags

Reply #5 –
Quote from: TakuSkan on
However the original APE tags with RG values, and the ID3v2 album tag are lost in transcoding.  Any possibilty I can get FB2K to copy those over too?

ReplayGain values differ after conversion and would need to be recalculated in order to be valid. Where do those APEv2 tags originate from? There should not be a reason not to store them in the ID3v2 tag, which is what foobar2000's ReplayGain scanner does. Just activate the option to scan output files in the "Other" tab of the converter setup.

Tagging album art or displaying it in the properties dialog is not possible yet.

Quote
Is it possible to have FB2K write tags in ID3v2.3 format when transcoding?

Sort of, by enabling the compatibility mode that was mentioned earlier:

Quote
MP3 tags (ID3v2) added or modified by foobar2000 are not read or are read improperly in application X or portable player Y. What can I do?

foobar2000 writes ID3v2.4 tags encoded as UTF-8 by default. To deal with broken software/hardware with partial support of the ID3v2 standard, an “ID3v2 writer compatibility mode” has been added ('Preferences ? Advanced ? Tagging ? MP3 ? ID3v2 writer compatibility mode'); it results in non-standard-compliant tags being written (ID3v2.3 instead of ID3v2.4, UTF-16, no unsynchronization, no padding), but attempts to dodge known bugs in other ID3v2 implementations.

Writing standard-compliant ID3v2.3 tags is not supported.
It has been tried once, but many popular applications would not read them at all.

Problem preserving ID3v2 tags

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Frank Bicking on
ReplayGain values differ after conversion and would need to be recalculated in order to be valid.

Okay...

Quote
Where do those APEv2 tags originate from?

From the old copy of v0.8.3 FB2K back when writing anything to ID2v2 tags was verbotten.

Quote
There should not be a reason not to store them in the ID3v2 tag, which is what foobar2000's ReplayGain scanner does. Just activate the option to scan output files in the "Other" tab of the converter setup.

Okay... that sounds good.

Quote
Tagging album art or displaying it in the properties dialog is not possible yet.

Hmmm... That's a big one.  I'd really like to avoid the hassle of reloading album art into multiple MP3s from large groups of albums when transcoding.  For the moment I guess  bonkenc is doing the complete job pretty well.

Quote
Quote
Is it possible to have FB2K write tags in ID3v2.3 format when transcoding?

Sort of, by enabling the compatibility mode that was mentioned earlier:

I did try that... it resulted in the garbage characters in Gearvolt

Quote
Writing standard-compliant ID3v2.3 tags is not supported.
It has been tried once, but many popular applications would not read them at all.

Okay

Thx
TS
Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man