WAV Metadata not changeable (Track Number)

[crysman]

Hello,

while saving (exporting) WAV, "Track Number" field in metadata is always saved as "03" regardless of what I have actually written there.

Also, if I add any new row, it is not saved neither. I would like to add "ISRC" field for purposes of burning an audio CD with correct CDTEXT...

Thanks
crysman

[steve]

Which Linux distribution are you using?
How did you install Audacity 1.2? (I'm not aware of any Linux distro shipping Audacity 1.2 )

Because Audacity is not a dedicated tagging program and supports so many different file types, it only has basic tagging functionality. Trying to fully support every variant of metadata for every supported file type would be far too complicated (I don't know of any program that fully supports everything).

Metadata in Audacity is "per project", not "per file". The metadata will be empty when you start a new Project. If you just delete the audio tracks, the Project metadata will remain. To start a new Project, either do so from the File menu, or shut down Audacity and restart.

The Project metadata can be accessed at any time through the Metadata Editor (File menu).

If you're using Audacity 1.3.x, see here for more information: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Metadata_Editor

[crysman]

Which Linux distribution are you using?
How did you install Audacity 1.2? (I'm not aware of any Linux distro shipping Audacity 1.2 )

Because Audacity is not a dedicated tagging program and supports so many different file types, it only has basic tagging functionality. Trying to fully support every variant of metadata for every supported file type would be far too complicated (I don't know of any program that fully supports everything).

Metadata in Audacity is "per project", not "per file". The metadata will be empty when you start a new Project. If you just delete the audio tracks, the Project metadata will remain. To start a new Project, either do so from the File menu, or shut down Audacity and restart.

The Project metadata can be accessed at any time through the Metadata Editor (File menu).

If you're using Audacity 1.3.x, see here for more information: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Metadata_Editor

I am running Xubuntu 11.10 and Audacity 1.3.13-beta (Unicode), which is installed through software center.

I consider WAV as nothing unusual to justify saving metadata incorrectly. But maybe I am wrong.

I can try make projects, but it would be much better if Audacity supported export with (chageable) metadata just for 1 file opened, rather than creating projects for every file But OK, I can try projects.

Thanks
#cry

[steve]

I am running Xubuntu 11.10 and Audacity 1.3.13-beta (Unicode),

I've moved this topic to the Audacity 1.3.x part of the forum.

I consider WAV as nothing unusual to justify saving metadata incorrectly. But maybe I am wrong.

Yes you're wrong
There is nothing "incorrect" about how Audacity saves metadata in WAV files, other than perhaps it should not save metadata in WAV files at all.
The WAV file specification does not mention metadata, so metadata is not strictly part of the WAV format. Very few programs other than Audacity support metadata in WAV files. However, the WAV format is a subset of the PCM RIFF format, which does allow some metadata in the "INFO List Chunk". Audacity uses this broader interpretation of the format and writes (a limited amount of) metadata into the INFO List Chunk. Only pure ASCII characters should be used in metadata in WAV files (normal alpha-numeric characters).

it would be much better if Audacity supported export with (chageable) metadata just for 1 file opened,

By default the Metadata editor pops open each time you export a file, thus providing the opportunity to change the metadata for that specific file.
A common way of working is to open up the Metadata editor from the File menu and enter the data that will be common to all files that you will be working on (for example, the "Artist Name" field may be the same for each file. When exporting, the additional information for that particular track (for example the track number) can be added.

For greater control of metadata you may be better to use a specialist tagging program, though if you find a bulk tagging application for Linux that supports WAV file, please post details (I don't know of any that do).

[bgravato]

Like Steve said, Metadata support in WAV files is very limited. WAV files are not supposed to have metadata. It's not part of the WAV standard.
There has been some requests for Audacity to be able to write cue files.
IIRC Steve was working on a nyquist plugin to do that. What's the current status of that?
If the goal is to write CDTEXT in an audio CD I would probably use that instead.

If you use a cd burner that supports burning from other formats such as FLAC, maybe you can export as FLAC, since its metadata support is probably much better than in WAVs.

[steve]

IIRC Steve was working on a nyquist plugin to do that. What's the current status of that?

Low priority at the moment.
There are some limitations to what Nyquist plug-ins can do - in particular the GUI options are quite limited, so Nyquist is far from ideal for writing cue files. I may pick this up again when I've completed work on the "file write" function.

If you use a cd burner that supports burning from other formats such as FLAC, maybe you can export as FLAC, since its metadata support is probably much better than in WAVs.

The FLAC format has good support for metadata, though Audacity only supports a small subset of this. There are however third party applications that provide comprehensive support for metadata in FLAC files (for example "EasyTag").