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[grahamk]

Hello All,

 Just noticed a problem with my ape files. Ratings saved in the tags in version 240 don't seem to be getting picked up by other instances of MC running older versions (120).

 Inspecting the tags in the file it appears that what used to be called "Media Jukebox: Rating" may have been changed to "Preference"? Has the tag format changed?


Thanks,
 Graham

[Alex B]

You are correct. This seems to be changed. I don't know why. In my opinion the name should be just plain "Rating" if the purpose is to make the field more usable with other programs or devices.


This would be a good time to get rid of the "Media Jukebox:" part completely.

For example, if a file has an APE or Ogg tag named as "Conductor" it is not possible to make it appear inside MC without using external tools and renaming the tag as "Media Jukebox: Conductor".

scthom did the right thing when he decided to make his FLAC plugin to write & read all field names as they are inside MC's library options (i.e. without the "Media Jukebox:" part).

[grahamk]

Yep -they changed it. Updating all my MC instances to the latest version and "update library from tags" on all my ape files seems to sets things straight. Rerunning auto-import doesn't catch the changes for some reason. Also, "update tags from library" doesn't change files with the old format to the new. Both formats seem to work in some directions, but not all. The new format is picked up in some instances, but not all. Ugh.

MC developers hear my plea - please, when changing things like this, make them backwards compatible! I am now off to re-write my automated programs that read ape files and tags and makes decisions based on the rating field. :-(

Graham

[Matt]

scthom did the right thing when he decided to make his FLAC plugin to write & read all field names as they are inside MC's library options (i.e. without the "Media Jukebox:" part).

Maybe you're right.  We always put a prefix on non-standard tags so we don't clobber tags in unexpected ways.  It also makes it easy to get rid of all the JRiver fields if a field is removed.

[scthom]

I don't actually write them all exactly as MC spits them out.  I do transform some to more flac/Vorbis standard (e.g. "Track #" into "Tracknumber" or "Name" into "Title") but there's only a couple.  Same thing with the Wavpack plugin and the APE tags.

[Alex B]

I don't actually write them all exactly as MC spits them out.  I do transform some to more flac/Vorbis standard (e.g. "Track #" into "Tracknumber" or "Name" into "Title") but there's only a couple.  Same thing with the Wavpack plugin and the APE tags.

Yes, I know. I simplified the reply a bit. Naturally JRiver does similar things with the commonly used basic tags.

I think you do something also with the FLAC date/year values. Actually, I may have noticed some strange things with the "year" behavior, but that's OT here. (I'll report in the plugin forum if I stumble on that again.).

As you may remember, I criticized the tagging behavior of your Wavpack plugin first, but I have changed my mind.

In general, I don't think that users like me who have 50000 already tagged files in an MC library care much how the custom tags are saved to the files. All basic tags are saved in a common format and they work with other programs and devices.

However, If I happen to buy a new device which supports e.g. the mentioned "Composer" tag I would like to be able to add that tag with MC.

A real life example is the Rockbox firmware (for iPods etc). It supports the "ALBUM ARTIST" Ogg Vorbis field for grouping multiple artists albums, but unfortunately MC writes that field as "MEDIA JUKEBOX:ALBUM ARTIST".

Most useful the possiblility to easily link a custom Vorbis comment or APE tag field with a similarly named library field would be for MC newcomers if they happen to have a lot of custom tags that are created with other programs.

A few years ago most other programs supported only a few common ID3v1 and v2 tags. MJ was one of the rare programs that allowed proprietary custom tags. Back then it was natural to follow the ID3v2 comment system with other file formats and use a prefix for identifying the creator of the custom tags.

The situation has changed since then. All other programs that don't limit tagging of these formats allow writing new custom tags with the actual visible names. The Vorbis comments and APE tags don't have the ID3v2 limitations and the "Media Jukebox:" prefix is redundant and limiting.


EDIT

Matt, what is the story behind the Preference tag? I tested several programs, but couldn't find any that uses it.