Messages

1

Bug Reports / Re: Tag Editor writes unwanted tags and wrecks multi-value tags

« on: November 04, 2021, 07:27:03 PM »

I understood it already, but nevertheless thanks for efforts. You gave a good link to Mp3tag's forum thread very good and useful indeed, because it shows that if a user wants a null separator, they enters a null separator (\\). Wants semicolon - enters semicolon. But you didn't explain why Mp3tag do saves saves tags as they were typed by the user while MB replaces actual character with null without a permission.

Here's a Mp3tag's window with just tagged file. Note "Country; Rockabilly" in GENRE tag. This is exactly what I typed on keyboard. All values saved s a simple string and a semicolon is just a semicolon.


Here I open it in MusicBee, make sure the tags are exactly the same, and just save it without any edit



Let's see what happened


Lame 3.97
Well, that's not the point, but nevertheless, it is annoying.
There is a more disturbing thing. Where is my semicolon? Maybe it will return in Mp3tag?

No, it didn't. \\ null placeholder instead


What about media info? And maybe tags in another player?



Maybe it could be fixed?
Yes it could. Just manually replace \\ null placeholder by beloved semicolon and voila it is a simple string again that could be processed by ANY media software, not just MusicBee, Foobar2000 and some.



The only problem is you can't do that using MusicBee tag editor, it would replace any semicolon that it would be able to find in tags by null, and there is no option to turn it off. I don't know a tag editing software with such behavior. TagScanner, Mp3Tag, Tag&Rename, foobar2000, dBpoweramp, AIMP, MusicBee  - none of these never unexpectedly modify tags in my files by replacing any characters. Only MB does.

In other hand, when adding new files to library MB correctly recognizes every semicolon in tags and treats it as a separator without modifying tag. It would be great if all the nulls remained virtual and stored just in MB database, not affecting real files on saving.

Also I should say that I don't have anything against null separator. I don't argue the fact that MB handles it in ultimate undisputed way. "a controversial or even disputed" is that fact that MB changes tags without permission.
Please let the tags stay as they were populated by user until the user willingly allow MB to modify them. It may be a checkbox "Replace separators by null" for example, or whatever, I don't know.

I hope I finally put it straight what I'm really talking about. thank you

2

Bug Reports / Re: Tag Editor writes unwanted tags and wrecks multi-value tags

« on: November 04, 2021, 10:01:03 AM »

So if there is no defined standard for separator in 2.3 then I guess there should be an option for a user to decide which one to use and it should not be replaced with null by default, but only by user's permission when they are confident of what they are doing. As far as I can see after a year of active use of MB, it perfectly handles multiple values written as a simple string with a popular ";" without replacing it with null

3

Bug Reports / Re: Tag Editor writes unwanted tags and wrecks multi-value tags

« on: November 02, 2021, 10:26:48 PM »

The multi value issue sounds like the difference between treating the tag as a single string vs actual multiple values separated by a null character. MusicBee displays the semicolon but once it has processed a multi value tag, the semicolon doesn't exist in the tag anymore, it's just a human-readable stand-in for display purposes. Not all software correctly reads multi value tags and will just stop at the first null separator.

Thank you for that explanation, I supposed that, but why MB doesn't leave multi valued tags as they are, I mean as a simple string where semicolon is semicolon and not just a viewable stand-in for something that just MB can understand. When I was just starting to use MB I just imported all my library, where all tags were populated in various tag editors. All semicolon-separated tags were imported unchanged and handled correctly, and I could still operate with them in other software.
By the way, I noticed that PUBLISHER tag with multiple values still stored as a simple string after saving it by MB

4

Bug Reports / Re: Tag Editor writes unwanted tags and wrecks multi-value tags

« on: November 01, 2021, 11:46:52 PM »

I see I am not the first one that observed this separator issue with your files

It is not an issue. The case that you mentioned was actually a bug and was fixed in the then next update. I never had any problems with tags separated with ";" only and they were handled correctly. Separator is ";" and using it with or without space is just a personal preference and it won't affect anything.
As for how I populate my tags, I think it doesn't matter as I use standard tag fields for all values, including genre(s). In the last couple of years I do it mostly with TagScanner, before my main tagging tool was Tag&Rename, and the most part of my library is tagged with it mostly manually, some part using Discogs and then fixed manually to meet my tagging preferences. That example file above also was tagged manually in TagScanner, then I just found and fixed a typo in MB and mentioned strange intervention into tags that I didn't edit.
Honestly I don't think that it matters how I populate my tags, I just don't want my tagger to add or remove particular tags without my permission. Neither I want my tagger to change some tags in the way that may seem useful for somebody.

For many users (such as me) it is convenient that MusicBee distills this info from files and makes it available as a tag field.

I don't have anything against making it available, I'm against making it obligatory.

5

Bug Reports / Re: Tag Editor writes unwanted tags and wrecks multi-value tags

« on: November 01, 2021, 08:57:37 PM »

The encoder tag is written by the encoder.

The LAME tag has nothing with metadata, it is just a technical info and shouldn't be treated as a tag. At least until a user intentionally saves it as a ENCODER to metadata. Here it is written by MB tag editor, I'm 100% sure about it, because it wasn't there before I saved tags.

The multi value tags are actually multiple tags (multiple genre tags in your example) within the file, and are being displayed correctly here.

I believe it is only true to MB, because they don't display correctly in other players after the file have been edited by MB.

If I am not mistaken, most mp3 encoders will write the encoder info in the header of the file itself.

Yes, you're right, it is written in header and it is not editable and it should not be editable, since it is technical data. It should not be treated as an editable tag by tag editor unless user willingly fills ENCODER tag according to the data taken from header. I consider it useless, so I don't use ENCODER tag in my files.

If I understand you correctly, you believe it should say 3.100 instead of 3.10 ?
If that's the case, you could post a wish for MB not to truncate such values to two digits behind the comma.

In fact I don't want to see it at all among the tags in my files, but since it is displayed as a tag, well, let it be displayed correctly))

About the genre tag:
How were these genres added to these files in the first place?
It seems like it could be a matter of the separator being a semicolon only, while they should be a semicolon+space.
(  '; ' instead of ';'  )

It doesn't matter, semicolon only, or semicolon+space - the result is the same, only the first value appears in mentioned external apps. I just checked

6

Bug Reports / Tag Editor writes unwanted tags and wrecks multi-value tags

« on: November 01, 2021, 06:49:57 PM »

Hi!

While editing tags I noticed a very strange behavior. When I save edited tags, it also writes an unwanted tag ENCODER (TSSE). See screenshots. Maybe it's not a problem but as for me it is absolutely unnecessary and I spent a lot of time to clean my library from all garbage tags. Maybe it can be turned off somewhere, but I can't find where and how. And by the way, the encoder is wrong, actually it is LAME 3.100

And the second. When the tags are saved, by some reason multi-value fields are split in the way as you can see on screenshots. Again, for MB it is not a problem ad it still handles them correctly, but other software (MediaInfo, AIMP) only recognizes the first value (Rockabilly). TagScanner still recognizes both values and resaving tags with it can fix it and all values reappear in other software.

I don't use MB tag editor often, but from time to time I do, and now I don't have an idea how many files are affected and how to locate and fix them

7

Questions / Re: Virtual tag to split <album duration> into hours, minutes, seconds

« on: October 15, 2021, 11:00:15 AM »

I tried that way also and it didn't work for me. I'm pretty sure that I do something wrong. Maybe somebody who did it successfully could post a step by step guide for idiots, please)

Update:

redwing's code finally worked! Thanks

8

Questions / Re: Virtual tag to split <album duration> into hours, minutes, seconds

« on: October 14, 2021, 07:45:54 PM »

No such tag in menu, and afaik <Album Duration> isn't tag, it is an MB embedded function

I tried your suggestion: SYNTAX ERROR.

9

Questions / Re: Virtual tag to split <album duration> into hours, minutes, seconds

« on: October 14, 2021, 06:30:24 PM »

its "Convert 'mmm:ss' or 'mmm.ss' in '<Tag 1>' to 'hh:mm:ss' in '<Tag 2>'" preset. to make it to work as virtual tag function select it, then enter some word in "assign virtual tag function id" field, click 'save all' button and restart mb.

use function $ASR(<URL>,your_id) in virtual tag.

Hi!
I have spent entire evening yesterday but didn't succeed to make it work. What do I do wrong? I need help.
This is what I made. First I installed ATT and unsuccesfully tried to find a 'musicbee\plugins\asr presets' folder, because I had MS Store version installed, so I deleted it and installed a version from site. Then I checked and found that folder, installed ATT and imported ASR scripts. This is what I made next:



Not sure if I dealed right with <Tag 2> Maybe I should have input something there?
Then I defined a virtual tag <Duration> with formula you posted above:



Then customized panel this way using virtual tag <Duration>:



The result is:



Instead of album duration it shows just duration of first track.
I'm sure I did something wrong, please help to find error

10

Questions / Re: "Ignore words" strange behavior

« on: October 06, 2021, 05:51:02 PM »

I would rather keep this value in file tags because of many reasons. You're right, ORIGINALARTIST seems like the most suitable tag for this purpose, and it is available in MB by default. Anyway, a custom tag for original album artist is still required. ARTISTSORT and ALBUMARTISTSORT should be used for what they intended, and this job is to be done using values stored in "original artist" tag.

11

Questions / Re: What external applications are available for MusicBee?

« on: October 06, 2021, 04:11:40 PM »

Thanks for your answers.
Unfortunately hiccup's suggestion is not what I need. The Incredible Boom Boom's workaround seems to be exactly what I need, but rather complicated for my skills)

12

Questions / Re: What external applications are available for MusicBee?

« on: October 05, 2021, 11:39:25 PM »

I selected several random tracks and tried to send them to TS. Only first from selection was sent.

13

Questions / Re: What external applications are available for MusicBee?

« on: October 05, 2021, 09:06:48 PM »

Now it sends only first file

14

Questions / Re: "Ignore words" strange behavior

« on: October 05, 2021, 07:33:36 PM »

The files tagged with all these typos, misspellings, aliases etc. intentionally - as they were put on the original releases of a certain song. I do it from the very beginning. This is important for research purposes. But for cataloguing this is a mess - I simply just cant count how many artists I have in library, that's why I decided to implement a new tag for my files in which should be stored most common name for an artist.
For example there was a prominent rock & roll / rockabilly / blues known professionally as Billy Lee Riley During his over 50 years career he recorded under countless names and aliases:

Solo:
Bill Riley
Billy Riley
Billy Lee Riley
Darron Lee
Daaron Lee
Lightnin' Leon
Good Jelly Bess
Skip Wiley

In groups:
Billy Lee Riley & The Spooks(*)
Billy (Lee*) Riley & The (His*) Little Green Men
The Megatons
The Rockin' Stockin(*)
The Spitfires
*name variations exist

With guest musicians:
Billy Lee Riley With The Bellhops

List is not intended to be complete

I can't just name all that stuff Billy Lee Riley, because for me every typo matters.

And this is just one example.

Custom tag is what I'm going to use for what you call "uniform" name for quick search. Option to completely ignore mentioned words and symbols just makes it easier to locate all the name variations in Artists list and makes my job a little easier

15

Questions / Re: What external applications are available for MusicBee?

« on: October 05, 2021, 06:47:23 PM »

Hi!
How to make TagScanner to open selected files in same window?
Now I have parameters this way:

And each file is opened in new window. If "<URL>" is deleted, for each file sent to TS also new window opened and in each window appear all the files located in the same folder with the file that was sent
What parameter should I input instead of "<URL>" to make it work like if I just drag-and-drop selected tracks from MB to TS?