When I edit the "Publisher" information from within the app, it seems to end up in the "Producers" section of the file's metadata. Am I doing something wrong here?
Welcome to the forum pik.
(are you Dutch by any chance?)
'Publisher' would normally be an organisation, not a person.
Depending on software or tagging protocols it could also show as something like 'organisation' or 'label'.
I myself would assume 'Producer' to be a person. So I am guessing VLC is doing some tag mapping that I would not agree with.