MP3 thumbnails in metadata

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Casey H
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Re: MP3 thumbnails in metadata

Post by Casey H » Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:45 am

Wavs do not reliably support metadata. Do not ever assume than anyone receiving your wav file has any metadata you may have put in with any software. Period. Remember, what matters is whether other systems (other than what you used on your computer) can see the metadata. With mp3, it will work reliably.

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Re: MP3 thumbnails in metadata

Post by cosmicdolphin » Fri Aug 06, 2021 1:59 am

AlanHall wrote:
Thu Aug 05, 2021 7:26 am
cosmicdolphin wrote:
Thu Aug 05, 2021 1:09 am
It's funny but you often tell what the music is gonna sound like based on the profile pic. :shock:
I thought that was called 'marketing strategy' :lol:
No I meant in a negative way...i.e if the listing is Fresh Upbeat Pop and the profile pic looks like someone's Dad from a 20yr old Olan Mills studio shoot then likely the music will sound dated

I think it's to do with taste .i.e. if they have no visual aesthetic taste then they often don't have it musically either...it's a red flag when you can tell that people don't immerse themselves in modern media

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Re: MP3 thumbnails in metadata

Post by philsmith » Wed Aug 11, 2021 11:37 am

superblonde wrote:
Thu Aug 05, 2021 9:05 am

This is great info. I just tried an image in a WAV rendered with Reaper which has a new Metadata feature and macOS Finder is not showing anything but when played back in VLC, then VLC does show the image. It's a bummer macOS does not handle this in it's apps or Finder because I assume a majority of music supervisors are using Mac's.

When I submitted a track as WAV to TAXI, it didn't have any metadata, because I thought WAV didnt support it. Now I know it can. Maybe the related question is whether TAXI wants or expects metadata in WAVs.

I remember seeing a member profile which had unique thumbnails for each track on their profile so maybe this is how they did it while still using WAV.
Yes, there's so much misunderstanding out there. I hope one day Apple will treat WAVs the same as AIFFs, but its' hard to see while there's still so much misinformation out there. Frankly, there are so much better metadata editors/viewers out there I can't imagine why anyone would use iTunes. I've written one myself, which is why I know all about AIFFs and WAVs.

I've also written a cross-platform program which creates thumbnails. Send email to me@philsmith.com if you want a copy.

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Re: MP3 thumbnails in metadata

Post by philsmith » Wed Aug 11, 2021 12:00 pm

Casey H wrote:
Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:45 am
Wavs do not reliably support metadata.
This is the kind of misinformation I would like to see cleared up. ID3 tags were originally designed for mp3 files, because the great thing about mp3 files is that every frame starts with a number of continuous 1 bits which every player syncs to. So you can put anything in front of an mp3 file as long as it doesn't contain sync bits. Which is why ID3 has a "synch safe" scheme.

WAVE and AIFF files are derived from the IFF format designed by EA for the Amiga. They are siblings. Any program that can read AIFFs can read WAVEs with 1 minor adjustment: AIFFs are big-endian and WAVEs are little-endian. I know, I've written one. Both are comprised of "chunks", segments of data with an id and length. The are read sequentially only, by reading one chunk and computing the position of the subsequent chunk from the length of the chunk. The biggest chunk contains the sound data in Pulse-Code Modulation format. In both file formats, it's the exact same data, except for the difference in endianness.

Apple brilliantly added a chunk labeled "ID3" to AIFF files. In it they put ID3 tags exactly as they would be in mp3 files, including the "synch safe" scheme which is not needed in an IFF file. My gripe is that they didn't bother to do the same with WAVE files even though it would have been trivial to implement. They read WAVE files, we know, because they play them. So now people think that WAVE files can't have ID3 metadata when, of course, they can. I've written a program which does exactly that, and other programs can read.

What I'd really like is for this misinformation to cease, and for Apple to stop being so provincial. So what if WAVEs are from the dark side? We all use them. But I'm sure Apple won't change until people start complaining, and they won't complain if they aren't informed.

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Re: MP3 thumbnails in metadata

Post by Casey H » Wed Aug 11, 2021 2:37 pm

philsmith wrote:
Wed Aug 11, 2021 12:00 pm
Casey H wrote:
Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:45 am
Wavs do not reliably support metadata.
This is the kind of misinformation I would like to see cleared up. ID3 tags were originally designed for mp3 files, because the great thing about mp3 files is that every frame starts with a number of continuous 1 bits which every player syncs to. So you can put anything in front of an mp3 file as long as it doesn't contain sync bits. Which is why ID3 has a "synch safe" scheme.

WAVE and AIFF files are derived from the IFF format designed by EA for the Amiga. They are siblings. Any program that can read AIFFs can read WAVEs with 1 minor adjustment: AIFFs are big-endian and WAVEs are little-endian. I know, I've written one. Both are comprised of "chunks", segments of data with an id and length. The are read sequentially only, by reading one chunk and computing the position of the subsequent chunk from the length of the chunk. The biggest chunk contains the sound data in Pulse-Code Modulation format. In both file formats, it's the exact same data, except for the difference in endianness.

Apple brilliantly added a chunk labeled "ID3" to AIFF files. In it they put ID3 tags exactly as they would be in mp3 files, including the "synch safe" scheme which is not needed in an IFF file. My gripe is that they didn't bother to do the same with WAVE files even though it would have been trivial to implement. They read WAVE files, we know, because they play them. So now people think that WAVE files can't have ID3 metadata when, of course, they can. I've written a program which does exactly that, and other programs can read.

What I'd really like is for this misinformation to cease, and for Apple to stop being so provincial. So what if WAVEs are from the dark side? We all use them. But I'm sure Apple won't change until people start complaining, and they won't complain if they aren't informed.
This is not misinformation. Put tags on a wav file. Then send the file by wetransfer to 3 other people. See if the tags show up at all on what they play their music on. That's what matters. If a sup gets a song from you and plays on on his/her favorite player (Windows Media Player, iTunes, Groove Music, whatever) and the tags aren't shown, it's pointless. No one cares about this tech-splaining about ID3 tags. Step back. What is the PURPOSE of the tags (in OUR world of pitching music) to begin with?

PS If you PM me, I'll give you my email address and you can wetransfer me a wav file you tagged. I'll let you know if the tags show up on players on my end.

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Re: MP3 thumbnails in metadata

Post by superblonde » Wed Aug 18, 2021 1:38 am

The metadata I put in my test WAV was exported from Reaper DAW and the tags were visible in VLC player. macOS Finder (i.e. the similar thing to Windows Explorer) and Quicktime Player didn't show it. Probably ffmpeg will show that tags are in the file too.

Regardless of whether macOS currently supports showing the info to the user or not, it is much easier to write metadata at the time of creating the WAV and MP3, which are usually done at the same time, in creating the Final_Final_Really_Final_Mix.WAV vs. sometime years later when Apple finally allows it's apps to show the data and then the problem is having hundreds of WAV files all over without metadata..

There was a member who posted on the forums earlier this year who had various thumbnails for their various tracks, the thumbnail matched the genre of the track, on both the soundcloud and the member profile playlist. So apparently that aspect of that member's mastering process was planned out ahead of time, to make a really complete package with the tracks standing out.
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