Metadata Export

[SpadesFlush]

Hi, all.

I am new to Audacity but I find it a wonderful app in general. I have been coming up the learning curve rapidly whilst I "rip" my vinyl collection to the harddisk. One thing has me stumped, however. That is getting the proper metadata into the approriate fields for Windows Explorer and Windows Media Player to read.

I am using Audacity 1.3.13 (Beta) in a Win 7 Ultimate environment on a 64-bit machine with Windows Media Player 12.0 to convert the audio files to WMA files. I find that only the Track Title of the metadata survives the Export (or Export Multiple) process. It does not seem to matter whether I use the metadata editor separately or as part of the Export chain. I note that the metadata fields in Win Explorer are slightly different than those in the Aud metadata box. I tried to add fields to the Aud metadata box that exactly matched the Win Explorer field titles but that produced no result. Specifically, "Album artist", "Album", and "Genre". These three things, along with "#" (track number), do not get picked up in the export and have to be manually added. Win Media Player seems to be able to see only those metadata fields that Win Explorer will recognize.

Am I doing something wrong or does anyone have any thoughts that might help?

[Gale Andrews]

It's a limitation in the FFmpeg library Audacity uses for WMA export.

See:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/FFmpe ... ctionality

(the "ASF" long name at the top).

If you export as MP3 you will get better support for Audacity's seven built-in tags (only the Comments will be missing in Windows Media Player).

I think everyone who helps on the Forum on Windows gave up using Windows Media Player as a serious media manager years ago. You should be able to see all the MP3 tags including custom ones in Foobar, iTunes and so on.



Gale

[SpadesFlush]

Thanks, Gale.

Yeah, I don't like WiMP, either. What is the best alternative?

[steve]

To some extent that's a matter of personal taste.

My personal preference is for foobar2000. It supports just about every audio format and can also convert many audio file types to other file types and is considerably smaller (and faster) than most other alternatives.

Other people prefer iTunes, though to me it seems to be a bloated monstrosity that is almost as bad as WiMP (I've been told that it's better on Macs).

I have one friend that prefers WiMP

[SpadesFlush]

Thanks, Steve, I will look into that. I have iTunes and was trying to avoid that...

Gale, I looked at the list of functionalities for the various file types and I guess I would disagree with footnote #2 to the extent that I do not find that the the metadata fields actually gets exported for 4 out of the 5 fields.

[SpadesFlush]

Steve, I have downloaded Foobar2000 and it is much more "my cup of tea" than WiMP from my initial fiddling; thank you very much for pointing me in that direction!

I guess I am going to have to go back over the files I have done so far and export their content as MP3 files which is not really so horrible to do given the effectiveness of Audacity 1.3.13...

[Gale Andrews]

Gale, I looked at the list of functionalities for the various file types and I guess I would disagree with footnote #2 to the extent that I do not find that the the metadata fields actually gets exported for 4 out of the 5 fields.

It means that FFmpeg only supports writing "Artist", "Track Title" and "Comment" WMA tags out of the tags that Audacity supports. FFmpeg supports "Copyright" as an explicit WMA tag, but Audacity does not support that. I tested it before I wrote and did find that those three tags were visible in WMP 12 on Windows 7 x64.

If you also use video files, VLC is worth considering for the large number of formats it supports out of the box. However it only displays file metadata while the file is playing, presumably because it is targeted towards streaming. I think it's a very serious reservation.


Gale

[steve]

Drifting a bit off-topic here, but a couple of media players that I like that include video support are VLC (as suggested by Gale) and Media Player Classic. Between the three programs (including Foobar2000) virtually every media format is covered (Media Player Classic supports "Real Alternative" for a no-nagware alternative to Real Player, and "Quicktime Alternative" as a lightweight, no-nag alternative to Quicktime).

[SpadesFlush]

Thanks, both.

Steve, I am only concerned with a few formats for now and not video. My audio library will keep me busy for a long while. So, I think I will stick with Foobar2000 for the present. I like its ability to set up tabbed playlists, for instance. Also, editing the metadata is reasonable.

Stepping back from the details, I am very pleased to be able to convert my vinyl library to digital as facilitated by Audacity. It means that about two hundred pounds of data storage media can be reduced to a couple of ounces of flash drive. Now, that's what I call progress.

[steve]

Don't forget to keep a backup, just in case the dog eats your flash drive (or some other unforeseen catastrophe).