Topic: wav file tagging (Read 4999 times)

johnp · « **on:** April 23, 2003, 11:45:41 am »

I have a somewhat large library of MusicMatch id3 tagged wav files. and as it turns out I do not relish the thought of having to re-rip and or manually tag my entire library to begin the transition to Media Center. So... is there a way to read id3 tags from MusicMatch wave files? If not, would someone be willing to write a quickie import utility that reads the tags from the wav files, (provided I give them the format of the file), or lastly can someone share with me the format of the Media Center Database so I can write my own import utility?

Thanks,

John Pimentel

Matt · « **Reply #1 on:** April 23, 2003, 11:48:02 am »

Are they compressed as MP3, or are they just big uncompressed WAV's?

If they're MP3, try renaming one to a .mp3 extension and see what happens when you give it to MC.

If they're WAV's, that's worse because WAV files aren't supposed to have ID3 tags.

Let us know.

zevele10 · « **Reply #2 on:** April 23, 2003, 11:57:59 am »

Most of the MusicMatch tags are MC compatable.
Only Notes do not work

johnp · « **Reply #3 on:** April 23, 2003, 05:59:00 pm »

They files I am talking about are big fat uncompressed wav files. Which as you probably know are RIFF format files with industry standard headers and identifiable chunks / labels

The beginning of the file is pretty standard RIFF format stuff, but the last chunk in the file has all sorts of good info in a chuck called id3_. The underscore in this case represents white space since RIFF tags must contain 4 byes.

So anyway if you search through the wav file with a hex utility like xvi32, and find the id3_ tag, you will find right after that several other tags that have artist, album, genre, track# track title, track length, even the album art in jpeg format is in there. I can give you the gory details on the tags etc if you want.

So what I am looking for is a way to import this info into the MC database. I am somewhat handy with perl so I could probably go that route if I knew the format of the MC database, but I am sure a real SW person could do a much better job than I, and I think it would be a handy utility for us X-MusicMatchers.

At any rate let me know what you think. I am willing to help in any way I can.

Thanks,

John

johnp · « **Reply #4 on:** April 24, 2003, 02:51:52 pm »

Quote

Most of the MusicMatch tags are MC compatable.
Only Notes do not work

This is good, how do I get them into MC from the MusicMatch files??

Matt · « **Reply #5 on:** April 24, 2003, 03:07:50 pm »

Is the ID3 chunk at the end? Is it in the ID3v1.1 format? (128 bytes)

Who created these tags? It's not too standard, but we could still add support for _id3 chunks in a future release if there's enough interest.

As an aside, you may want to try a lossless compressor like Monkey's Audio -- it'll use less space, stay bit perfect, and fully support tagging.

Thanks.

johnp · « **Reply #6 on:** April 24, 2003, 08:43:20 pm »

Hi,

The id3 tag is at the end, it is generated by the MusicMatch application and is variable length largely due to the fact that the size of the album art .jpg section changes with the size / resolution of the image itself. After each label in the chunk, there is a 7 byte piece of data that seems to be the length of the following information.

For example, in a sample file that I just looked at, the first label after the initial header of 18 bytes is TIT2. This is the Track Title. In this case it is TIT2 is followed by 7 bytes as are all the other labels. The contents of these 7 bytes appears to be the length of the data to follow. In this case the track title was Nice, Nice, Very Nice which is a byte count of 21. The data in the length field was 16h or 22. They add one for some reason that escapes me. Perhaps a fill of some kind??? At any rate so far there are 50 bytes by my count.

The next label is TRCK. This is the track #. It is again directly followed by 7 bytes of hex data. In this case 03h. The following data is 01 ascii which is 2 bytes +1 = 3 bytes. Again they added 1 to the byte count for reasons I can't quite understand.
So now the byte count is up to 63=50+13.

The next label is TCON. The is the genre label. The record length data is set to 11 and the actual data is 10 bytes long per the usual format. So now we are up to 84 bytes.

The next label is TYER. this is the year recorded. The record length is set to 5 and the data is 1975. The byte count rolls on to 99 bytes.

The next label is APIC. This is the album cover art. The record length for this is 2,429,263 bytes and this has the actual data for the cover art. In this case it is a bitmap image.

At his point we are way past 128 bytes so safe to say it is not a normal id3v1.1 if they are suppoesed to be that size.

Next is the TPE1 label which is the artist name follwed by the TLEN which is the track length in microseconds and finally the TALB which is the album name.

The rest of the file is all zeros till the end of file.

So, how complicated would it be to grab this nicely packaged info and stuff it into my new MC database?

Sorry for the excruciatingly long post.

Regards,

John

Matt · « **Reply #7 on:** April 25, 2003, 07:23:33 am »

We can't add this for 9.0, but maybe in a future version.

Otherwise, you could parse the stuff out and save it to a .MPL file. (MC's XML playlist format -- which MC can import and export)

And you really gotta check out a lossless compressor like APE.

Thanks!

johnp · « **Reply #8 on:** April 25, 2003, 09:05:10 am »

Matt,

Thanks for the tip. Can you explain the .xml/.mpl import export procedure in a little more detail?
The questions that come to mind are...

1. What is the format of the XML file?
2. What is the procedure for importing the data?
3. Do I need to handle the cover art separately, or can that be included in the xml as well?

Thanks for the advice on APE, I wil have a listen and see how it compares to uncompressed audio on my friends high end 2 channel rig.

Best regards,

John

Matt · « **Reply #9 on:** April 25, 2003, 10:00:01 am »

Quote

The questions that come to mind are...

1. What is the format of the XML file?
2. What is the procedure for importing the data?
3. Do I need to handle the cover art separately, or can that be included in the xml as well?

Export a playlist as .MPL and look at it. Hopefully it'll be self-explanatory.

As an aside, if you gave your WAV files good filenames, MC can fill the information from them.

Quote

Thanks for the advice on APE, I wil have a listen and see how it compares to uncompressed audio on my friends high end 2 channel rig.

Don't bother. It's mathmatically lossless so there can't be a difference. You can easily verify it by doing a bit-by-bit comparison.

In fact, APE is safer because it knows if it got corrupted (built in error checking) -- with a WAV you'd never know.

waterboy · « **Reply #10 on:** April 26, 2003, 11:48:45 am »

I have an Audiotron from Turtlebeach. I would also like to use Media Jukebox for ripping wav files. I cannot because media jukebox will not tag the wav files so that audiotron can read them.

So I am stuck with Audiostation because it is the only software which supports tagging readable by audiotron.

More and more people with audiotron's will be using WAV files because disk space is cheap (Audiotron does not support lossless of any kind). This is why I think you should consider a patch for audiotron WAV ripping. It probably would be simple for the right person.

waterboy · « **Reply #11 on:** April 26, 2003, 11:48:49 am »

I have an Audiotron from Turtlebeach. I would also like to use Media Jukebox for ripping wav files. I cannot because media jukebox will not tag the wav files so that audiotron can read them.

So I am stuck with Audiostation because it is the only software which supports tagging readable by audiotron.

More and more people with audiotron's will be using WAV files because disk space is cheap (Audiotron does not support lossless of any kind). This is why I think you should consider a patch for audiotron WAV ripping. It probably would be simple for the right person.

xen-uno · « **Reply #12 on:** April 26, 2003, 12:45:18 pm »

Maybe JRiver could set up their real-time conversion engine (for TIVO) to do ape to wav conversions (which should be super-fast) for the Audiotron. I don't know what's involved here. I plan on using MC/Girder/AIW Remote with a soundcard supporting SP/DIF out. This will be a whole lot more flexible than the Audiotron could EVER hope to be.

10^-27

paulj · « **Reply #13 on:** April 26, 2003, 12:52:52 pm »

Quote

It's not too standard, but we could still add support for _id3 chunks in a future release if there's enough interest.

As an aside, you may want to try a lossless compressor like Monkey's Audio -- it'll use less space, stay bit perfect, and fully support tagging.

I'd love this feature, assuming it would allow writing the tags to wav files as well as reading them. Right now, if I ever lost my MC library, I'd have to re-enter all the tags for over 300 albums.

I store most of my CD's as wavs on an external firewire drive. The reason I don't use ape is two fold: One is for portability with a Mac, and the other is simply for performance when encoding for various portable devices. If space is ever an issue I'll have to make a choice of platforms and stick with it for music.

johnp · « **Reply #14 on:** April 26, 2003, 03:22:14 pm »

I tend to agree that having the tag info in the file is a better way to do things. I t allows inter operation with other vendeors such as MusicMatch and Audio Request servers also use this sane format. In fact the systems that Audio Request cal the "Rip Station" is nothing more than a PC running Music Match. J River might be able to get a piece of that action if they had the same wav file tagging format. As mentioned before, It should be simple enogh to do for a talented SW developer. An I am sure JRiver has several such developers at their disposal.

I also agree that while APE compression may be cool, having interoperability with other systems is more important in light of the fact that storage space is incresingly inexpensive. I spend a lot more GB on DVDs that I will ever use on audio.

An FYI: I should warn those interested in the Audio Tron piece that Turtle Beach's AudioTron does not read wav file tags even when they are there as far as I know. At least not the format that I am talking about here that is compatible with Audio Request and MusicMatch.

Regards,

John

johnp · « **Reply #15 on:** June 14, 2003, 08:26:45 am »

Hi there,

I noticed on the features page http://www.musicex.com/mediacenter/features.html
that it says you now support MusicMatch tags. Does this now include wav file tags!!

Please say it is so.

Regards,

JOhn

zevele10 · « **Reply #16 on:** June 14, 2003, 08:38:17 am »

ALL MusicMatch tags on mp3 are suported in MJ/MC

All ............................ on WMA ,execpt art sleeve are suported in MJ/MC

If you do not want to use APE because of of limited hardware/software support , you may use WMA 9 loosless : you can tag them in MusicMatch and MJ/MC read the tags.

But not the art sleeve

johnp · « **Reply #17 on:** June 14, 2003, 09:35:53 am »

So the answer to my question is no? Matt had mentioned earlier that it would be included soon, I just wondered if that was done yet based on what I had read on the feature page.

I really do prefer using uncompressed wav files. Space is not and issue and I am a purist when it comes to audio, not to mention the system interoperability issues I have already mentioned in this thread. No amount of talk will ever convince me otherwise.

Bottom line. No wav file tagging support = I stick with Music Match.

Regards,

John

KingSparta · « **Reply #18 on:** June 14, 2003, 09:58:03 am »

johnp's Bios

Company founder John Pimentel comes from a background of Systems Engineering and Integration with an emphasis on Computer Networking. More importantly, he has a life long love for home theater and audio entertainment. This combination of experience and desire allowed him to engineer a system that not only has meticulous attention to detail in the system design and performance, but also has a strong emphasis on integration. This complete integration is not only with the A/V system in the home theater room, but with consideration that the A/V system should be enjoyed throughout the entire home. To that end, the development of the AVPP was focused on a creating a listening and viewing atmosphere that would not be restricted to a single room, but instead could be enjoyed throughout the home, and would further leverage the power of the Internet to enhance the experience.

http://www.musicmountain.biz/whatisanavpp.html

johnp · « **Reply #19 on:** June 14, 2003, 01:54:06 pm »

Guilty as charged.

JP

johnp · « **Reply #20 on:** June 16, 2003, 11:19:43 pm »

Just another quick note on the subject. I had similar discussions with the folks at slimdevices.com for their SlimP3 server. They said the MusicMatch tags followed the ID3_V2 conventions exactly. If anyone is interested, I would be hapy to send you a file to examine, or you could easily generate one of your own using MusicMatch or Audio ReQuest.

Regards,

John

JimH · « **Reply #21 on:** June 17, 2003, 04:29:00 am »

John,
Go Ape. You'll never regret it.

The sound is identical, bit for bit.

If you're worried about standards, APE is far more standard than WAV. You can always re-create the WAV later if you decide I'm wrong.

MC can mass convert your WAV files.

Jim

johnp · « **Reply #22 on:** June 17, 2003, 06:49:39 am »

Hi Jim,

Thanks very much for the reply. If I were to go with APE as my standard format, I have two concerns.

1. I would not be able to read tagging information from current wav file databases that exist for my customers. This would create an upheaval that I am not really enthusiastic about delaing with.
2. I would not be compatible with Audio ReQuest systems. Since I am still relatively unknown in the Custom Home Theater world, it is a huge benefit for my clients, (A/V Dealers & Custom Installers) and a selling point for my systems to be able to mix and match my systems with ARQ systems. On the same line is the fact there is a large installled base of ARQ systems that I would like to go after once I have alll the features in my system that I need to compete.

So... much to my delight I have found that Media Center has most of what I need to do just that. (Compete with the big boys) I just have to work out the remote control issues (working with Benjamin Sweet and Mario Cascio for commecial solutions to that) and also this issue of wav file tagging. It seems if that feature could be added (which appears to be a pretty easy thing to roll in since you already have support for identical tags in MP3 files), MC9 would be a slam dunk for me.
As an aside, adding this feature would also give a smooth migration path to existing MusicMatch customers. Who in their right would want to try to convert 1000+ CD libraries? I think this would be very beneficial to MC sales in the long run.

Best regards,

John

JimH · « **Reply #23 on:** June 17, 2003, 07:01:11 am »

John,
I'm sorry, but I misunderstood your need. We can take a look at it. Write specific e-mail to nikolay @ jriver.com.

I'm going on vacation tomorrow so I won't be able to help for a few weeks.

Jim

johnp · « **Reply #24 on:** June 17, 2003, 08:43:24 am »

Hi Jim,

Thanks again for your prompt attention. I will send an e-mail as directed. I am of course happy to assist in any way possible in making this happen. I am very motivated to make the move to Media Center becasue of it's awesome features. I am controlling mine as we speak with Glissando and MusicLobby and it is very slick. Too bad about the cover art though. It doesn't show up on either one, but that is for another thread

.

Thanks again,

John

KingSparta · « **Reply #25 on:** June 17, 2003, 10:31:13 am »

John maybe you can Pack MC9\MJ in your product you sell.

johnp · « **Reply #26 on:** June 17, 2003, 10:51:43 am »

Absolutely, nothing would make me happier. We just have to nail down a few details on this wav file tagging bit, remote control and multi zone and we'll be in good shape.

Who knows, perhaps you will see a "Powered by Media Center" logo on my web site soon??

Best regards,

John

zevele10 · « **Reply #27 on:** June 17, 2003, 11:38:18 am »

So ,if you start on it:
On your way ,make ALL musicMatch SuperTag tags 100% MC compatible
==bios ,lyrics AND notes.
Because you know that many people use MM supertags and that MC would NEVER have such a thing.
Yes i wish you can ,but you know as much as i know that....
After lunch fix the artsleeve not show in WMA files ,ET VIOLA!

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: wav file tagging (Read 4999 times)

zevele10

zevele10

zevele10