"Encoded with" value of FLAC files

[MusicMee]

I wrote some scripts to tag some of my flac files and noticed the "encoded with" value of these files shows up as "Mutagen 1.45.1" in MusicBee.
For context Mutagen is a python library that I used to edit the tags, it's not an encoder. I can't imagine a tagger would alter the encoder value for any reason (or at least I hope not). That said, I noticed MusicBee seems to leave the "encoded with" value empty for some files I have yet to tag. Wondering if this might be a MusicBee bug? Could it be pulling the "encoded with" value for flac from the wrong place?

[hiccup]

I wrote some scripts to tag some of my flac files and noticed the "encoded with" value of these files shows up as "Mutagen 1.45.1" in MusicBee.
For context Mutagen is a python library that I used to edit the tags, it's not an encoder. I can't imagine a tagger would alter the encoder value for any reason (or at least I hope not).

What software did you use to write these tags?
It must have used Mutagen, and Mutagen is used for the text encoding of the metadata.
So technically it is not wrong that MusicBee displays that Mutagen 1.45.1 was used as an encoder.

(posting this in 'Bug Reports' seems a bit premature to me)

[MusicMee]

I wrote some scripts to tag some of my flac files and noticed the "encoded with" value of these files shows up as "Mutagen 1.45.1" in MusicBee.
For context Mutagen is a python library that I used to edit the tags, it's not an encoder. I can't imagine a tagger would alter the encoder value for any reason (or at least I hope not).

What software did you use to write these tags?
It must have used Mutagen, and Mutagen is used for the text encoding of the metadata.
So technically it is not wrong that MusicBee displays that Mutagen 1.45.1 was used as an encoder

(posting this in 'Bug Reports' seems a bit premature to me)

Hi Hiccup,

I wrote the software myself. And, as I mentioned in my post, I did use the Mutagen library to write the tags. That said, Mutagen is a tagging library, not an encoder. I don't see anything in the documentation that would allow me to set or edit the file's encoder data.

I reported it as a bug for a few reasons:
- The issue could be a me issue, it could be a mutagen issue or it could be a MusicBee issue. If it is a me issue, I have run out of ideas (tagging a file is pretty straightforward so there is not much to debug.) Between Mutagen and MusicBee - the next couple of bullets cover why I chose to start with MusicBee
- I am fairly certain MusicBee was working as expected in the past (ie it reported the encoder properly)
- MusicBee is pulling nothing as the encoder in many of my other flac files. I could have sworn that similar files were not only pulling the right encoder info in the past but they were also writing it to tags on updates. Because of this I assume something may have changed in MusicBee (or it's supporting libraries) specific to reading/displaying/writing the encoder data at some point

That said, I am open to further troubleshooting on my end but without knowing where to look for the encoder data in the file or knowing how musicbee is reading the data I am not sure how to proceed. If I was an issue at my workplace this is typically the stage of troubleshooting that I would involve one of my developers and ask them to work with the tester, to help isolate the issue, so I took the same approach here.

[hiccup]

That said, Mutagen is a tagging library, not an encoder.

I am pretty sure that what Mutagen is doing (making possible) is called 'character encoding'.
So while I fully understand and sympathise with the notion that 'encoding' must be about audio data, I think 'encoding' in fact can refer to both audio and metadata. (text, characters)

But, I'll admit that this is above my experience, pay-grade and full comprehension.
So I'll respectfully withdraw and leave it at this ;-)

[Bee-liever]

I wrote some scripts to tag some of my flac files and noticed the "encoded with" value of these files shows up as "Mutagen 1.45.1" in MusicBee.
For context Mutagen is a python library that I used to edit the tags, it's not an encoder. I can't imagine a tagger would alter the encoder value for any reason (or at least I hope not). That said, I noticed MusicBee seems to leave the "encoded with" value empty for some files I have yet to tag. Wondering if this might be a MusicBee bug? Could it be pulling the "encoded with" value for flac from the wrong place?

MB reads the info in the file header to obtain the "encoded with" metadata. It is not a true "tag" only a reference.
If the file does not have this info, MB leaves the field empty.
It would appear that Mutagen adds a reference that it was used to edit the tags into the file header.

[MusicMee]

Thanks for the info Bee-liver. I'm not crazy about the thought of a tagger library playing around with a file's header data. I'll have to look into that a bit more and see if there is a way I can turn it off.

No worries hiccup. I am clearly in over my head as well. I appreciate you taking the time to better understand my issue and doing what you can to help.