Gripe: mp3 Tagging

[robinbloke]

After examination of players and ID tags my grand tagging plan seems to have hit a stumbling block; ID tags for MP3 files are wildly randomly implemented on different players, it seems, of the three I've tried so far (Winamp, Media Jukebox and Windows Media Player) actually use their own internal database system to implement the ratings system (all of them) use their own numbering system for music type (all of them) and I can't be sure that any of them are actually modifying the tag data in the file at all rather than just storing it for themselves.

BAH!

Anyone know a (Win based) player or program that can manage (and preferably play) music and will modify ID tags in the mp3 files and not just use their own database instead; the ability to add a rating system (maybe in a custom field) would be helpful but I suspect at this rate I'll end up writing my own damn player.

Bah.

Comments

[kizzie.livejournal.com]

Musicmatch?
I have no idea if it does what you want, but I know I use it...

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Musicmatch Jukebox you mean?

[kizzie.livejournal.com]

thats the one

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Not entirely sure if it does exactly what you want, but Foobar2000 is pretty decent and plays well with ID3v1, ID3v2 and APEv2 tags out of the box... It's also pretty extensible and written with coders pissing about with it in mind.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Can be found here:
http://www.foobar2000.org/ (http://www.foobar2000.org/)

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Excellent, I shall take a look; cheers!

[briggsy.livejournal.com]

Seconded, I used Foobar2000 and it is an excellent music player once you've configured it.

[gerald_duck]

Welcome to my world. Well, our world, actually; I've not been damn fool enough to get involved in the import logic. :-p

By "music type" do you mean "genre"? If so, then in ID3v1 this was a low integer index into a fixed table of genres that was standardised, but which Winamp then incompatibly extended (but the list of Winamp non-standard numbers is widely available so others can implement them if they see fit). ID3v2 uses a string field for genre, with the convention that if the tag is recognised as an ID3v1 one it will be represented as "123" or "123: thingy foo wibble splat" or "123:thingy foo wibble splat". If one's very careful and has a large test corpus of MP3s from different versions of different pieces of software one can get it right.

Ratings are personal and therefore generally not considered suitable for inclusion in file metadata. If you download a track from a band's website, for example, you're not interested in whether or not they rate it five-stars. (-8 In that case the solution is to grok your player software's database format and pull ratings from there into whatever other database you want.

Whatever player you use is almost certain to create a database; you don't want to go fumbling for ID3 tags in every file on the filesystem every time people ask for songs by Gelliant Gutfright. There is no standard format for such databases. Alas.

You could try ewx's DisOrder. If it doesn't do what you want, at least it's open source so you can fix it.

Or wait until we're done making pretty rack-mount boxes over here on Newmarket Road. (-8

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, by "music type" I do indeed mean genre.

I don't mind a database system, as you say this is pretty darn sensible once you use any decent size of music database. What I don't want the player to do though is modify it's database rather than the ID tag, thereby losing all the information I've carefully fixed/tidied/deleted/debased when I've been working through them.

Ratings I can understand, but it is irksome when I want to rate my own music for myself. I suspect I may try and use one of the custom fields to set rating in instead.

Got any info online about those pretty rack-mount boxes? ;)

[mansunite.livejournal.com]

Filled up the hard-drive yet?

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Not quite; 100 meg done so far :)

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

iTunes is *so* bloaty however; it irks me :/