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[negopus]

I am a big fan of ID3V1 tags, that are the only ones that I use in MP3 files, as they are the only ones to be compatible with portable players. In order to use ID3V1 tags efficiently, I have defined a personal mapping of the 128 byte values in the "Genre" field to the genres of my interest. I have found that there are some genres, such as "Primus" or "Porn Groove", that I will never listen to, so I can use their byte value to fit my purposede of detaild music classification.
I would like to see a customized ID3V1 mapping feature implemented in Media Center. Of course, the mapping can be customized for each library.
Grapically, in the User Interface, genres belonging to a standard ID3V1 tag could be highlighted with a different font/color (user-definable) and an hotkey (and/or icon) would quiclky switch between standard mapping and custom mapping. Genres that do not fit the user defined mapping would be stored only in the Media Center database but not in the ID3V1 genre field, where a "null" value would be written instead (not 0, that corresponds to "Blues"). Genres that are mapped to the user's custom mapping, in additioin to the different font/color, would be higlighed with a small sign in the corner of the displayed "Genre" field.
Negopus.

[KingSparta]

this is not going to happen I was a hardcore ID3v1 person after J river fixed alot in ID3v2 taging i swiched over due to the limitations of ID3v1

I did talk to matt about this at one time, and they were not willing to intertain the Idea and seemed they wanted to move on to ID3v2 and there own tagging.

[negopus]

I am not very enthusiast about ID3V2 because:
- it can't be read by portable MP3 players
- it requires really a lot of hard disk work to add tags to MP3 files
- I want to keep some information private, into the Media Center database only, and not to give it away to others
I would't dislike to be working with ID3V2 when on the PC, but I need a way to map ID3V2 to ID3V1 genres when moving files to portable MP3 players.
Negopus.

[JimH]

The tagging standards are already tangled enough.  We won't deviate from current ID3v2 tagging.

[negopus]

To achieve the portable MP3 player compatibility, I would need an external script/batch tool (it could even be outside of Media Center) that takes every MP3 file, reads it ID3V2 genre (text field), maps it using a table and writes the ID3V1 genre (byte field). Sure, at the end of the process the ID3V1 and ID3V2 genres would not always match (they never were supposed to...), but this would allow a more decent classification in portable MP3 players.

[aussie1]

MC reads the V2 tags. However, when you update a tag, it writes to both the V1 and the V2 tag. Therefore, you should be able to use V2 tags in MC and V1 tags on your portable with no problems so long as you adhere to the V1 restrictions.

You can put whatever data you want in the V2 tag for genre. Make sure you use the codes from the V1 spec and it will work fine.  These codes are published on the Internet. Then, create a custom field in MC to for more robust tracking of genres and styles.

Most of the portables on the maket seem to be moving away from V1 towards V2 anyway. Once you start using the V2 tags for a while you will not want to go back.

[KingSparta]

, when you update a tag, it writes to both the V1 and the V2 tag

you can turn on or off id3v1 and or id3v2 if you wish also

[negopus]

Then, create a custom field in MC to for more robust tracking of genres and styles.

Great!

The addition of a custom field satisfied one of my requirements: having a decent classification of music by genre, while adhering to the limited ID3V1 single-byte standard for genre tag.

Media Center is a very good program, but you have to spend a lot of time learning to use it (that is, its learning curve is very steep).

Custom tags are defined in Tools | Options menu. Rreally counter-intuitive: one would think that in Tools | Options menu the program options are configured, not the library options.

Tweaking with custom tags I discovered, with my great pleasure, that for each tag you can choose whether to save it in file tags or not. So, disabling the saving of certain fields, I can keep certain fields private, and their contents is not given away with MP3 files. This was one on my requirements for Media Center.

Negopus

[themurph]

, when you update a tag, it writes to both the V1 and the V2 tag

you can turn on or off id3v1 and or id3v2 if you wish also

How do I turn off id3v1 tags? I manually removed all v1 tags from my MP3's before importing into MC9 and have noticed that MC9 went and added v1 tags right back.

[negopus]

You choose the tag behavior in menu Tools | Plug-in Manager | Input | MP3 Plugin. You can choose whether to save ID3V1 and ID3V2 or not.
Negopus.