Metadata Editor

[philsmith]

Hi Folks,

I'm new here, so hello and I hope I'm in the right area.

After last year's Road Rally, where there was so much talk about metadata, I got curious and started looking into it. Turns out there's a tag you can prepend to an mp3 file which contains information about the song (but you knew that already). The format of the tag is documented at httpd://www.id3.org.

What I found was that there's a lot more possibilities than I found in my ID3 editors, mainly iTunes and kID3. For example, you can have multiple comments, as long as they have descriptions. iTunes uses a blank description, thereby limiting you to one. Same with pictures and lyrics.

So I built my own, following the specs much closer than iTunes. It's pretty near completion, but I need some people to volunteer to test it. It's in beta, to use developer lingo. It's at http://id3editor.philsmith.com and if you do decide to try it, please send me feedback at me@philsmith.com?subject=id3editor. This editor - did I mention it's free? - is better than anything I can find out there, in my humble opinion.

For one thing, if you've got lots and lots of metadata and a new sound file, you don't have to re-enter all the metadata. You can simply replace the sound portion. Much easier.

Thanks!
-Phil

[LoCaRi987]

Hi Phil,

I just used your ID3 Tag editor and really love it! Very simple, clear, and easy to use.

FEEDBACK BELOW: Just my 2 cents, take it with a very large grain of salt!

- I didn't see any area for genres. I used one of the areas and put the genre in (can't remember, the screen closed). I would say there is a need for possibly multiple genres, since many songs fit a few categories/sub-categories. I guess you could just list them, but not sure what the reviewers are looking for.

For example:
GENRE 1: Adult Alternative
GENRE 2: Urban
GENRE 3: Singer Songwriter

- Also, I think keywords are real important, if I'm not mistaken? So maybe adding an area for keywords would be good.

[philsmith]

Hi Lori,

Thanks for the feedback! There is an area for genres, but it's called "content type." I called it that because that's what ID3.org calls it. But nobody knows what "content type" means! I'm going to rename it "genre."

Also, how to handle it is confusing. With ID3v1, the genre was a number. With v2, it became a text field. This is what they have to say:

The 'Content type', which previously was stored as a one byte numeric value only, is now a numeric string. You may use one or several of the types as ID3v1.1 did or, since the category list would be impossible to maintain with accurate and up to date categories, define your own.

References to the ID3v1 genres can be made by, as first byte, enter "(" followed by a number from the genres list (appendix A.) and ended with a ")" character. This is optionally followed by a refinement, e.g. "(21)" or "(4)Eurodisco". Several references can be made in the same frame, e.g. "(51)(39)". If the refinement should begin with a "(" character it should be replaced with "((", e.g. "((I can figure out any genre)" or "(55)((I think...)".

In the above explanation (4) by itself is defined as "Disco." But in their scheme you could have (4)Rock (which is number 17). So they've left an incredible amount of room for confusion.

So thank you, Lori, you really helped me out. I knew this was an area which needed addressing; but there are several other areas which need addressing too, and I had no idea where to start. Clearly, handling the genres is the place to start, since you pointed it out! Thanks again!