Year field in metadata not saved with mp3 by export multiple

[foxylady]

Thanks, Gale.

I've checked the Year tag on an exported file with Windows Explorer (right-click on file name, choose "Properties", select "Summary" tab), and it's blank.

I've checked the same file with Winamp - the year tag is blank.

However, when I check it with iTunes, the correct year tag is there.

I'm not sure how to interpret this discrepancy. It's possible to use Windows Explorer to edit the year tag associated with an mp3 file (or indeed, a whole folder of them at the same time), and in this case the year tag is readable by iTunes and Winamp, as well as in the normal Windows Explorer display.


In investigating this, I came across another problem - I had been labelling the files on a two-LP copy of the Brandenburg Concertos (which I'd recorded as one continuous project) like this:

"The Stuttgart Soloists - The Six Brandenburg Concertos - 07 Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F: (3) Polacca"

and all I got after over an hour of processing was 22 files of zero length, and without a filename extension, in the form

"The Stuttgart Soloists - The Six Brandenburg Concertos - 07 Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F"

I realise now that this was caused by the inclusion of a colon in the label, but it would have been helpful if Audacity had told me that there was an illegal character in the name from the start, and even more helpful if the option of replacing any illegal characters with (e.g.) an underscore had been offered.

Please don't think I'm moaning - I think this is an extraordinarily useful program - but unlike many GNU offerings, it is being supplied with a piece of consumer equipment, not just to geeks (in whose number I probably have to rank myself...), and some additional user-friendliness is necessary.

foxylady

[foxylady]

I have been investigating my problem further, with the aid of Google and hex dumps of the beginnings of several mp3s.

Windows Explorer (and Winamp) appear to expect a frame called "TYER" to indicate the year of the recording.

Under ID3v2.3.0, the use of "TYER" is deprecated, and "TDRC" is preferred; this allows for a full timestamp to be used.

Although Audacity version 1.3.4 offers to save a tag which it calls "Year", it passes this in the ID3v2 header as TDRC, and isn't picked up by Windows Explorer or Winamp.

It would have been clearer if "Recording Timestamp" (or similar) had been used in place of "Year" in the Audacity "Edit the metadata tags" dialogue.

I haven't investigated what happens if I invent an entirely new Tag Name in this dialogue...

foxylady

[Gale Andrews]

Thanks for your further messages.

Re the illegal characters in the labels (I presume you are naming the files there), this is documented on this Wiki page dealing with splitting recordings into separate tracks:
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... ate_tracks

That article itself is mentioned in one of our Frequently Asked Questions on the main website. As the article states, Audacity should halt the export with an error when it encounters an illegal character in the label, but is exporting an invalid file on the computer I am working on now (which I have only recently acquired). It gave the error on another computer I used before, so it seems that this is actually system dependent in some way and we will have to look into it. Had you used the normal File > Export, entry of a colon in the filename would have thrown an error.

QUOTE: > "Windows Explorer (and Winamp) appear to expect a frame called "TYER" to indicate the year of the recording. Under ID3v2.3.0, the use of "TYER" is deprecated, and "TDRC" is preferred; this allows for a full timestamp to be used. Although Audacity version 1.3.4 offers to save a tag which it calls "Year", it passes this in the ID3v2 header as TDRC, and isn't picked up by Windows Explorer or Winamp."

Well this again suggests it to be the fault of those two players that they are expecting a deprecated frame.

QUOTE: > "It would have been clearer if "Recording Timestamp" (or similar) had been used in place of "Year" in the Audacity "Edit the
metadata tags" dialogue."

Any players that don't read custom tags would ignore that.

I have not looked at hex dumps but I have found out that you can export the Year tag using Audacity 1.3.4 if you choose "external program" instead of "MP3 files" when exporting, and download and place LAME.exe in the Audacity installation folder. Also if you use
the "--id3v2-only" switch, ID3v2.3 will be used and WMP and Winamp will read the Year tag (for what reason exactly I don't know at the moment but it may be the one you suggest). As you know if you export MP3 normally we use a compiled binary of LAME called lame_enc.dll.


Thanks

Gale

[foxylady]

I've been told off by "Koz" in another thread:- "I think we're all happy if the programmers can keep up with basic audio handling in the face of major Operating System changes and upgrades."

It's clear that I'm being regarded as an ungrateful wretch, but I think it's important for software to be friendly towards users who use it for one restricted purpose only - at least to start with. Fortunately, I was able to work my way around the obstacles that tripped me up when I first started using the software, and I now know that I can't simply transcribe verbatim what's on the LP's track list into Audacity's label track if I'm going to "export multiple", and that the software I use (Windows XP and WinAmp) don't recognise the TDRC tag in ID3v2 metadata.

I had said: QUOTE: > "It would have been clearer if "Recording Timestamp" (or similar) had been used in place of "Year" in the Audacity "Edit the
metadata tags" dialogue."

And you responded: QUOTE> "Any players that don't read custom tags would ignore that. "

When a year is entered in the "Year" box in Audacity's "Edit the metadata tags", and this information is subsequently saved using "Export Multiple", the year information ends up associated with the TDRC tag - this is not a custom tag, but the approved way of indicating the date and time a recording was made. I had expected information entered in the "Year" box to be visible in Windows Explorer's "year" column, and in WinAmp's "year" field. If the metadata item had been labelled "Recording Timestamp", I'd have realised that I was no longer dealing with ID3v1's year tag.

I think it's probably time for me to shut up and let the developers get on with the real stuff...

foxylady

[Gale Andrews]

As I said your comments are welcome, and I have commented further in the post you mention that Koz replied to. Generally I agree about being "user friendly" to "single use purpose novices" but some power users and other developers don't agree at all, and really don't want the program littered with expository error messages aimed at such users. I can see both sides of it and think that context specific help is the answer in the longer term so you click "?" on an error to get more help.

QUOTE "When a year is entered in the "Year" box in Audacity's "Edit the metadata tags", and this information is subsequently saved using "Export Multiple", the year information ends up associated with the TDRC tag - this is not a custom tag, but the approved way of indicating the date and time a recording was made. I had expected information entered in the "Year" box to be visible in Windows Explorer's "year" column, and in WinAmp's "year" field. If the metadata item had been labelled "Recording Timestamp", I'd have realised that I was no longer dealing with ID3v1's year tag."

The problem as you state may well be that those two players don't understand the new TDRC frame but want the deprecated frame. It is the players that are out of line there. We can't call "Year" "Recording Timestamp" as that means something else altogether, newbies would not understand it at all, and if it gets passed as TDRC (if that's the problem) then WMP/Winamp still won't see it. If you want to use 1.3.4 then please use command line export as indicated for now, then WMP will see your year tag, or add the year tag in the player. We'll see if we can work round this problem for the next Beta release, but we can't promise.


Gale

[alatham]

foxylady,

I appreciate your postings even if I've never encountered most of the problems you have. Certainly the bugs/quirks you're finding aren't often make-or-break types, but the fact that you provide detailed information about them is commendable.

I think your ability to find the source of a problem and describe it is an excellent boon and I would never encourage you to stop.

As for the things I'd like to see implemented, I'm with Koz. I can deal with minor issues as long as the major features all work. And like Koz, I wonder if it's even possible to make software that is both user-friendly, intuitive, and powerful. However, irritating things like MP3 tags and sample rate conversions and the like really should be fixed.

On the other hand, it seems to me that it's important to have a larger base of "lay" users. Those are precisely the kinds of people who will stop using a piece of software once they realize that the mp3 tags aren't 100% right.

I think it's past time I start wading though the source code myself. I know very little about working on a large software project, but maybe I can fix things like this.

Of course I should really be working on the 1.4.0 manual...

[CambridgeChris]

Gale Andrews wrote
ID3 v1 is obsolete and inflexible (limited tags and tag length, limited genres including no custom genres), and most people would want ID3v2 which is why we removed the choice. No current player should have a problem with ID3 v2

I distribute MP3 versions of sermons to many people in our Church - and some of them complain they cannot play the ID3 v2 files, if I accidentally forget to select the option for ID3 v1 (more compatible).

So players restricted to ID3 v1 may be "obsolete" - but they are still very much in use. Sometimes you need to consider the minority, not just "most people"!

This means, unless you reinstate the option, I'll just have to stick with Audacity 1.2. Will this continue to be available?

[Gale Andrews]

ID3 v1 was superseded 10 years ago. Do these players refuse to play the files, or just refuse to read the tags?

We aren't planning at present to reintroduce a choice in Metadata Editor to export as ID3v1. The decision was made not to support it in the redesigned Metadata Editor because it would basically have required a completely separate "limited-functionality" tab for it, which would have confused the majority of users who want ID3v2.

If you want to force ID3v1 in Audacity Beta you can do so by using the command line exporter in Audacity and add the

--id3v1-only

option to the command string.

Full LAME usage commands can be found here.

Or of course, turn Metadata Editor off at Edit > Preferences: Import / Export tab ("Show Metadata Editor prior to export step), and use a specialised MP3 tagger that still supports ID3v1 like JJ Renamer.


Gale

[CambridgeChris]

Thanks for the very rapid reply!

As far as I understand it from my friends, their player just refuses to play the MP3 file (created using Audacity 1.2.6), if I select the ID3 v2 option (the default). If I re-run the "Export as MP3" using ID3 v1, their player works fine.

Thanks for your helpful suggestions - but I'll probably carry on using Audacity 1.2.6, which does all that I need it to do.

That's the easiest way round for a non-software developer!