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Export multiple, load metadata from XML

Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 6:18 am
by somenick
Hi,
I record a track continuously, then I use Sound finder to tag multiple sections. Now I'm ready export. By default, export multiple prompts me to enter labels per track, or I could load an xml file with the data. How does that work ? I tried editing one track and saving the xml. Looks like this::

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<tags>
	<tag name="id3v2" value="1"/>
	<tag name="ALBUM" value="Basic"/>
	<tag name="TITLE" value="Track1"/>
	<tag name="TRACKNUMBER" value="1"/>
	<tag name="ARTIST" value="Bullshit artist"/>
	<tag name="YEAR" value="2011"/>
	<tag name="GENRE" value="Speech"/>
</tags>
For one label, the above makes sense. But I don't understand where the relation between label and tag values comes in. I guess this means metadata has to be the same if I load an xml file? This doesn't make sense. I have a csv file with the following header (fileName is same as label from Audacity)::

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fileName,trackNumber,title,album,artist
If the Audacity project has 500 labels, my CSV has 500 lines each with a corresponding fileName field. How can I generate an xml file for Audacity?

Any help appreciated,
Thanks.

Re: Export multiple, load metadata from XML

Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 6:32 am
by somenick
I read the related section on the manual, http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... ata_Editor and steve's post from last year http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 147#p67995 but I'm still not sure if I'm doing something wrong or something's missing from Audacity.

Re: Export multiple, load metadata from XML

Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2011 6:03 pm
by steve
Metadata support is fairly basic in Audacity and because of the broad range an divergence of different "standards" it's a difficult area to develop without becoming very complex. I suspect this is why advanced "tagging" management has been left to specialized tools such as EasyTag, MP3 Tag Tools and similar.

If you only use one media player/music library (for example iTunes or Windows Media Player) then it's probably easiest to just use the tagging tools provided with that software.

In answer to your question - the Metadata (XML) Template import supports only one set of data. This means that if all the tracks are from one album, then you can enter data that is common to all tracks (such as "Album Title", and perhaps "Artist"), but data that is different for each track (such as "Track Title") needs to be entered manually.

Re: Export multiple, load metadata from XML

Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 2:16 am
by somenick
Thanks for the prompt reply.

I understand the difficulties with properly supporting metadata, but I found offering xml input here a bit misleading. Makes more sense to enter values for first export and have another button that says "same for the rest" ... I just don't expect to be prompted to make an xml file if I want the same settings for all files!

I use http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html,freeware, and works get my job done.