Help for Audacity on Windows.
Forum rules
This forum is for Audacity on Windows.
Please state which version of Windows you are using,
and the exact three-section version number of Audacity from "Help menu > About Audacity".
Audacity 1.2.x and 1.3.x are obsolete and no longer supported. If you still have those versions, please upgrade at
https://www.audacityteam.org/download/.
The old forums for those versions are now closed, but you can still read the archives of the
1.2.x and
1.3.x forums.
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troshalom
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2018 1:12 am
- Operating System: Windows 10
Post
by troshalom » Tue Jul 31, 2018 1:56 am
Hi All,
I am converting my Cassette collection and noticed that the Artist Name field is not populating the Album artist nor the Contributing artist field when I save the file as an AAC file (.m4a).
- AudacityMetadata.png (19.14 KiB) Viewed 503 times
When I open the file in Groove, Sony Music Center or HP Connected Music the Artist field is not populated.
Why is that happening and how can I get it to work?
I did export the same file as MP3 and noticed the artist name there. However, I read that AAC is supposed to be better than MP3.
- AACvsMP3_Audacity.png (32.09 KiB) Viewed 503 times
Is there a fix for the AAC issue?
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steve
- Site Admin
- Posts: 81651
- Joined: Sat Dec 01, 2007 11:43 am
- Operating System: Linux *buntu
Post
by steve » Tue Jul 31, 2018 10:08 am
Unfortunately there are few real standards for metadata.
There are well defined standards for metadata in OGG and Flac files, but for other formats there are many variations and non-standardised implementations. The only way to guarantee that tags will show up correctly in specific software, is to use that software for the tagging.
Audacity supports the most common tags for many audio formats - but that does not guarantee full compatibility between Audacity's tags and your player's tags.
There are some specialist tagging apps (such as MP3Tag and EasyTag) that support many standard and non-standard tags, and can add / modify / fix tags in batch mode. Once you've worked out which tags are supported by your software, these specialist tools can be useful for editing the tags of your music collection to work with your media player(s).
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jphilo
- Posts: 4
- Joined: Fri Dec 07, 2018 10:29 pm
- Operating System: Windows 10
Post
by jphilo » Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:03 pm
I have observed the same problem, i.e. the AAC (.M4A) files created by Audacity do not have the Album Artist or Album Year fields set even though they were entered into Audacity (version 2.2.3, under Windows 10). Not having the Artist information is a significant headache for importing to iTunes. I also note that it is not just iTunes, Groove, Sony Music Center or HP Connected Music that don't recognize the metadata---Windows itself says these fields are empty (can see, or alter, them by right-clicking on the file name, asking to see the file Properties, and selecting the Details tab).
So with all due respect to Steve, I don't think this is really a problem with lack of standardization of the metadata, it seems to me this is truly a bug, and a bug that was not corrected in the recent 2.2.3 update). It seems to me the bug may be in the FFMpeg add-on rather than Audacity itself.
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steve
- Site Admin
- Posts: 81651
- Joined: Sat Dec 01, 2007 11:43 am
- Operating System: Linux *buntu
Post
by steve » Sat Dec 08, 2018 12:13 pm
jphilo wrote: ↑Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:03 pm
version 2.2.3,
There is no such version of Audacity. The version number can be found in "Help menu > About Audacity".
jphilo wrote: ↑Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:03 pm
the AAC (.M4A) files created by Audacity do not have the Album Artist or Album Year fields set even though they were entered into Audacity
AAC (.M4A) encoding is done by FFmpeg rather than by Audacity. This seems to be a problem / limitation with FFmpeg exports and is logged on the Audacity bug tracker.
Interestingly, when I open the .M4A file (exported from Audacity) in
VLC, it shows the Artist name.
