Author Topic: Pseudo-tags (modify tags without changing file)  (Read 6009 times)

Andrewski

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I have a lot of music as torrents and such, and I want to be able to modify the tags without changing the CRC checksum of the file. If there was some tag database, or way of storing tags externally that would be great. There is a specification called m-TAGS at http://www.m-tags.org/, which currently only offers a plugin for foobar2000. Perhaps this could be implemented as a MusicBee plugin?

theta_wave

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After playing around with foobar2000 a bit lately, I came across m-tags.  It is interesting to say the least and for my purposes I find it useful for file formats that do not have native tagging support (90's tracker modules, game sound files, etc).  Foobar2000 doesn't allow one to manually enter in tag data for such files unlike Musicbee.  But I digress.

For what you (and others) are seeking in Musicbee, it is probably best to use custom tags (Preferences > Tags (1) ) and arrange those as your main display tags.  Of course, doing so may compromise last.fm scrobbling, last.fm loved tracks, etc because those features will most likely make use of the native tag fields <artist>, <album>, etc (correct me if I'm wrong anyone) and ratings will write popularmeter data to your tags.

P.S. I wrote this because this thread was the first hit on the google query: 'Musicbee "m-tags"'
Last Edit: September 08, 2017, 05:27:44 PM by theta_wave

imminiman

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+1
A plugin like that would really be useful for healthy torrenting.
Either that or let us have more custom tags. I myself would need something around double the amount of custom tags we have today, so it's not feasible for me right now at all with MusicBee.
I really don't want to use foobar2000 instead of the awesome MusicBee just because of this.  :(

phred

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I'm not necessarily endorsing this, but it would -probably- be easier to implement more custom tab slots, than to implement m-tags.
Personally I don't need either. I'm just pointing out what my instinct is telling me. I'm not a developer and wouldn't dare to say what is easy and what isn't.
Download the latest MusicBee v3.5 or 3.6 patch from here.
Unzip into your MusicBee directory and overwrite existing files.

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Posting screenshots is here
Searching the forum with Google is  here

hiccup

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A plugin like that would really be useful for healthy torrenting.
To each his own, but I personally find it very strange when I see that somebody is using his download folder for keeping his library files.

I could list many reasons for that, but one that pertains to this topic: these files usually will already contain metadata, and a lot will not match with what you would like or expect.
So in my opinion it would be asking for problems and conflicts to actively use these files in your MusicBee library, no matter what.

B.t.w. http://www.m-tags.org/ seems dead.

imminiman

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Outside of torrenting, you're right, it makes zero sense to do that. But if you download a torrent and intend on seeding it back so it doesn't die, especially if you're in a private tracker and you have to keep seeding those torrents so you won't lose your leeching privileges, changing the metadata in the file itself will prevent you from doing so.

About the conflicts and problems - if you're consistent there shouldn't be any.
For example if you decide you'll only use this new <mArtist> tag to define your artist, you won't ever need to look at the <Artist> tag again, no matter what's in it.
And of course you can then define a new virtual tag that if <mArtist> isn't null then show it, if not, show <Artist>.
Well... Again, I don't see a lot of room for problems if you're consistent.

hiccup

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Thanks for explaining, I now better understand what you are doing, and why you are supporting the request.
But considering this is a wishlist request that may affect development resources and other users, my estimation would be that most users that use torrents either remove them after finishing them, or keep them in the download folder for the reasons you mentioned, but copy them to a location where they then 'clean and dress' them for their own purposes.

So I personally could understand if this wish doesn't get enough support or isn't a feature that benefits enough users to get implemented.

imminiman

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keep them in the download folder for the reasons you mentioned, but copy them to a location where they then 'clean and dress' them for their own purposes.

Of course I knew that was an option, but I thought it's redundant to do so, especially with big files, or simply a lot of them.

But now that you've mentioned that, I recalled there's an .asx duplicate feature that could be used as a workaround. Of course tagging those .asx files wouldn't matter to the torrents. I bet this is gonna be fiddly, but that's a lot better than nothing.