Audacity Forum

This has been discussed previously on the forum and has come up again, partly in relation to iPod Classic compatibility with metadata. The difference this time is that someone on the -devel mailing list is offering to implement it.

Personally I'd be in favour of an option to disable metadata in all exported files and think that it could be as simple as:
This has the advantage that for users that sometimes want metadata and sometimes not, they will have immediate access to the option on export (assuming that they have the default "show metadata editor on export", which is very likely if they use metadata), while for users such as myself that don't use and don't want metadata, the option can be set, the metadata pop-up disabled in preferences, and the user no longer gets bugged by metadata problems,

In the above mock-up the metadata options are greyed out while "Disable Metadata" is selected. I don't think that is essential, but I think that it makes it more obvious to the user that it is disabled and forces them to enable metadata when they want to use it.

There may be issues for people that use Export Multiple, which I rarely use, so I'll leave it to others to discuss potential issues there, but in the proposed scheme above, disabling metadata would disable all metadata until such time as the users re-enables it.

+1 to provide a way to not export metadata. It has 10 votes on FR's so if Ed, I, Steve and Peter vote for it here that would make 14 votes.

-1 on deciding on this until we sort out Bug 551 ( http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=551 ) i.e. deciding what relationship we want between killing metadata export, hiding Metadata Editor and passing common metadata through to each export multiple. Fixing bug 551 has 44 votes plus 3 pendings not yet added.

"No metadata" is not the most effective fix for the iPod Classic problem IMO.


Gale

steve wrote:partly in relation to iPod Classic compatibility with metadata

That's just background information and not really relevant to this.
Joel has posted some patches for testing against that issue: http://audacity.238276.n2.nabble.com/Me ... 58877.html

Gale Andrews wrote:"No metadata" is not the most effective fix for the iPod Classic problem IMO.

Agreed (as above).

Gale Andrews wrote:-1 on deciding on this until we sort out Bug 551 ( http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=551 ) i.e. deciding what relationship we want between killing metadata export, hiding Metadata Editor and passing common metadata through to each export multiple. Fixing bug 551 has 44 votes plus 3 pendings not yet added.

That's obvious isn't it? We want bug 551 fixed and we want a way to disable metadata in exported files. Why are we counting votes for fixing a bug?

+1 from me for the ability to export without metadata (and I'm a frequent Export Multiple user)

Peter

steve wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:-1 on deciding on this until we sort out Bug 551 ( http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=551 ) i.e. deciding what relationship we want between killing metadata export, hiding Metadata Editor and passing common metadata through to each export multiple. Fixing bug 551 has 44 votes plus 3 pendings not yet added.

That's obvious isn't it? We want bug 551 fixed and we want a way to disable metadata in exported files. Why are we counting votes for fixing a bug?

+1 to that too - and I note that Joel is also offering to look at 551

Peter.

steve wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:-1 on deciding on this until we sort out Bug 551 ( http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=551 ) i.e. deciding what relationship we want between killing metadata export, hiding Metadata Editor and passing common metadata through to each export multiple. Fixing bug 551 has 44 votes plus 3 pendings not yet added.

That's obvious isn't it? We want bug 551 fixed and we want a way to disable metadata in exported files. Why are we counting votes for fixing a bug?

We're counting because "no metadata" is not so important as fixing bug 551 (which is an ehancement, "design decision" bug as I'm sure you're aware).

I would like to get Joel interested in fixing bug 551 (and giving us a "no metadata export" feature). He's probably our best hope of getting those fixes.

I'm glad he's now offered to take a look.



Gale

I hope you don't mind me quoting from the mailing list Gale:

Steve, the point I am making and obviously failing to get across is that
the best way to provide "no metadata" export is IMO inherently
interlinked with bug 551.

So I've read through the steps to reproduce and the suggested workaround to hopefully understand the issue.

From http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=551

Steps to reproduce wrote: 1 Generate 30s of audio.
2 Analyze > Regular Interval Labels, label interval 3 seconds to create 10 labels.
3 Export Multiple.
4 In Metadata Editor, populate the five common empty values, OK.
5 Window for second export appears but the common values are empty.

Step 4 has to be repeated in full, and again for all the succeeding windows.

Workaround: Export by unchecking "Show Metadata Editor before export step" in Import / Export Preferences, then enter any tags common to all tracks at File > Open Metadata Editor... before exporting. Audacity will then silently add the common and automatically generated Track Title and Track Number tags for each exported file.

I don't understand why it is necessary to uncheck "Show Metadata Editor before export step".
All that appears to be necessary as a workaround is to enter the metadata before "File > Export Multiple".

steve wrote:I hope you don't mind me quoting from the mailing list Gale:

Steve, the point I am making and obviously failing to get across is that
the best way to provide "no metadata" export is IMO inherently
interlinked with bug 551.

I don't mind - it's a public list

steve wrote: So I've read through the steps to reproduce and the suggested workaround to hopefully understand the issue.

From http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=551

Steps to reproduce wrote: 1 Generate 30s of audio.
2 Analyze > Regular Interval Labels, label interval 3 seconds to create 10 labels.
3 Export Multiple.
4 In Metadata Editor, populate the five common empty values, OK.
5 Window for second export appears but the common values are empty.

Step 4 has to be repeated in full, and again for all the succeeding windows.

Workaround: Export by unchecking "Show Metadata Editor before export step" in Import / Export Preferences, then enter any tags common to all tracks at File > Open Metadata Editor... before exporting. Audacity will then silently add the common and automatically generated Track Title and Track Number tags for each exported file.

I don't understand why it is necessary to uncheck "Show Metadata Editor before export step".
All that appears to be necessary as a workaround is to enter the metadata before "File > Export Multiple".

If you enter the common metadata before Export Multiple, then you save having to enter it 10 times, but you still have to press OK 10 times (one "OK" for each window). Imagine what this is like in a screen reader. See "silently" in the workaround.

Now imagine a "new user" of Audacity 1.2.6 and a new user of 2.0.3. Factory Preferences in each case. Record from an album and export multiple. Which experience is better, 1.2.6 or 2.0.3?


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:If you enter the common metadata before Export Multiple, then you save having to enter it 10 times, but you still have to press OK 10 times (one "OK" for each window)

but does that have anything to do with the "bug" or is that just streamlining the work-flow?

Gale Andrews wrote: Now imagine a "new user" of Audacity 1.2.6 and a new user of 2.0.3. Factory Preferences in each case. Record from an album and export multiple. Which experience is better, 1.2.6 or 2.0.3?

Sorry Gale, I've not used Audacity 1.x for years, you'll have to remind me. (and I rarely use Export Multiple or metadata so I'm not really up to speed on this stuff).