Metadata Edtor

[cnsarge]

iMac 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac OS 10.6.8 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM Audacity ® 1.3.7 (Unicode)

I noticed that when using special characters in the Metadata Editor (i.e., Ö, •, …, “, ‘, ”, ’, etc.) you don't get the information about the song when you preview it (pressing the space bar when the file is selected).

Can you please allow for all special characters in the Metadata Editor.

I also tried the newest version, but it keeps crashing.

Thanks,
cnsarge

[Gale Andrews]

iMac 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac OS 10.6.8 4GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM Audacity ® 1.3.7 (Unicode)

I noticed that when using special characters in the Metadata Editor (i.e., Ö, •, …, “, ‘, ”, ’, etc.) you don't get the information about the song when you preview it (pressing the space bar when the file is selected).

Sorry, I don't understand - preview it where ?

I also tried the newest version, but it keeps crashing.

The newest version is 1.3.14. Please try that because 1.3.7 has lots of bugs.

If 1.3.14 keeps crashing please tell us how to reproduce it so we can fix it. Please also attach a crash report using these instructions . To attach it, use "Upload attachment" underneath where you post.


Thanks,


Gale

[cnsarge]

On the Mac platform you can press the space bar while a file is selected and it will play it in a preview window. In this window it shows the song name, name of the album, name of the artist and the time. I've been copying data to past it in the window rather than typing it for the umteenth-thousandth time. For example, I copy text out of QuarkXPress which has smart quotes and the metadata editor doesn't know what to do with these characters, thus not showing any information about the file when you preview it using the space bar.

As for the newer version, I was copying and pasting songs into a file and after about 10 songs it crashed.

[Gale Andrews]

On the Mac platform you can press the space bar while a file is selected and it will play it in a preview window. In this window it shows the song name, name of the album, name of the artist and the time.

Thanks for your reply, though I would still like to be clearer if we are to look into it.

By "Smart Quotes" do you mean “ and ” (curved quotes)? You are saying that paste for these characters does not work in Metadata Editor, but other pastes work? Does paste of these characters into an Audacity label work (command - b)?

Where is the file selected - in Finder? And are you talking about these characters being lost after exporting the file from Audacity? Or lost if you save a project and reopen it?

What happens if you use the keyboard to enter non-ASCII characters into Metadata Editor instead of paste - any different?

As for the newer version, I was copying and pasting songs into a file and after about 10 songs it crashed.

Please explain more. The last thing we want is people hanging on to 1.3.7. For example, did you have more than one project window open, and were you copying and pasting between those windows? Can you find the Mac crash report and attach it, possibly? If it was a saved Audacity project, can you attach the.aup file?

Crashes in particular projects (saved as .aup or not) are usually fixable by exporting the tracks as WAV or AIFF, restarting Audacity, importing the WAV/AIFF files and saving as a new project name.

Occasionally if you import a WAV or AIFF, Audacity on Mac becomes generally unstable after that - it will crash whether you copy, paste, run an effect or whatever. You may have encountered that. We don't know exactly why it happens but rebooting usually fixes it - can you try reboot?

If you get crashes when recording or playing back, exiting Audacity and deleting ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/audacity.cfg so as to reset settings may help. If you ever had Audacity 1.2 on the machine, then edit down .cfg to only the line

Code: Select all

NewPrefsInitialized=1  

instead of deleting the file.



Gale

[billw58]

I tried a quick test with Audacity 1.3.14 Dec 8 on an iMac running 10.7.2. I imported a file, typed in some metadata (I don't have Quark so can't test copy/paste from that application) and used "smart quotes" in the album title (option-[ and shift-option-[). I then exported as an MP3. Selecting the file in the Finder and pressing space caused the file to play in the preview window. The metadata song name, artist, album title and genre showed properly, including the smart quotes. I got the same result when doing a copy/paste from a word processor that supports smart quotes.

I did notice a small bug in the metatdata editor window: if the first character is a curly-quote it does not show when the field is not selected for editing, but does show when the field is selected for editing. "Plain" quotes do not have this problem, and an opening smart quote in the middle of the field's text does show properly.

Smart quote does not show at beginning of field

Screen Shot 2011-12-29 at 2.36.06 PM.png (45.49 KiB) Viewed 2146 times

Smart quotes shows when field is opened for editing

Screen Shot 2011-12-29 at 2.36.24 PM.png (46.37 KiB) Viewed 2146 times

Plain quotes show properly when field is not opened for editing

Screen Shot 2011-12-29 at 2.36.47 PM.png (45.63 KiB) Viewed 2146 times

-- Bill

[Edgar]

Seems fine on Win7:

smartQuote.png (12.95 KiB) Viewed 2144 times

pasted from MS Word. Don't recall how to do direct keyboard entry...

[Gale Andrews]

Thanks, Bill. Typing curly quotes on Windows needs ALT+0147 and ALT+0148:
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/finetypo ... quotes.htm

Those typed quotes seems to be preserved OK in projects and exports on Windows 7.

How about Bill if you go to the above link and select/copy a curly quote on the page - does it paste into Metadata Editor OK (and show if the field is selected)?

Is there anything like Windows Character Map on Mac where you can copy any supported character in any supported font? Pasting from there into Metadata Editor is fine too.



Gale

[billw58]

Thanks, Bill. Typing curly quotes on Windows needs ALT+0147 and ALT+0148:
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/finetypo ... quotes.htm
How about Bill if you go to the above link and select/copy a curly quote on the page - does it paste into Metadata Editor OK (and show if the field is selected)?

That works the same as copy/paste from a word processor.

Is there anything like Windows Character Map on Mac where you can copy any supported character in any supported font? Pasting from there into Metadata Editor is fine too.

Yes. It's called the Character Viewer, and can be enabled in System Preferences, Keyboard, by checking "Show Keyboard and Character Viewers in menu bar".

It looks like this:

Mac Character Viewer

Screen Shot 2011-12-30 at 1.04.15 AM.png (55.27 KiB) Viewed 2134 times

You don't copy/paste from the character viewer. It's a floating window. You put your cursor where you want it in your document then double-click the character you want in the viewer - it's as if you typed the character, so it works the same as typing the character into the Metadata Editor.

-- Bill

[cnsarge]

Audacity 1.3.7.1, iMac 2GHz, OS 10.6.8.
When I use a smart quote or accented characters anywhere in the Metadata Editor it won't display any information except the time in the preview window.

Let me tell you what I'm doing. Generally when I'm working with music no other applications are running except Audacity, Quark and iCal. I have 4 gigs of VRAM, 1 TB hard drive (277Gb available).

I have 320 90-minute cassettes that I started recording in the '80s. Last year I bought a Sony digital recorder to digitize my collection. I have made 100s of Metadata templates so I can make this job easier.

I open the music file (AIFF), edit and balance it, get the information about the album (which I have in a Quark document) and paste it into the Metadata editor before I export it as AIFF.

Idea! Maybe I can export the text from the Quark and use that instead.

[billw58]

When you copy and paste from Quark, are you doing it a line at a time? Does the Metatdata Editor look like my screen shots?

I have had no problems with 1.3.14 on a 2.8 GHz iMac running 10.7.2, so it would be good to know exactly what you are doing when Audacity crashes.

-- Bill