Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[TristanG]

Technically, MKV video container files can be tagged the same way (in the file) like FLAC music files, e.g. "Album". The only - but very important - remaining difference for the users seems to be that there is no gapless playback between MKV files.

Despite this fact, MC saves the metadata not in the file itself but still in the JRSidecar.xml.

Since there is no difference between a music file and a music video concerning the metadata, it would be great to can handle them the same way!

As a result, it would also be nice to have the opportunity to use only one category in the library called Music for both kind of files. From my experience, Video should only be used for movies.

[zybex]

Technically, MKV video container files can be tagged the same way (in the file) like FLAC music files, e.g. "Album". The only - but very important - remaining difference for the users seems to be that there is no gapless playback between MKV files.

Despite this fact, MC saves the metadata not in the file itself but still in the JRSidecar.xml.

Since there is no difference between a music file and a music video concerning the metadata, it would be great to can handle them the same way!

Sometimes modifying a tag or cover to the file requires rewriting the entire file as the current tag block doesn't have enough space to hold the new metadata/cover. This is doable on (relatively) small audio files, but really not nice on huge video files than can have tens of GB. That said, MKV is different and this is perhaps not a problem there.

Another concern is with backups - any small change to the file will cause it to be marked for backup again, so it's preferrable to leave these huge files untouched and just keep the metadata on the MC database or on the external sidecar files (which are only valuable if you lose the MC db and need to reimport the files).

Aa a crappy workaround, you can add a button to the MC Links bar to run a command that update the MKV metadata. With MKVToolNix it would be something like:
mkvPropEdit "[filename]" --set "title=[Name]"

I'm not sure what's the syntax to write other tags like Genre. There are alternatives like MKVTag that may work better.

As a result, it would also be nice to have the opportunity to use only one category in the library called Music for both kind of files. From my experience, Video should only be used for movies.

It's a video file, so "Video" Media Type is correct. There's another field for the [Media Sub Type] which can be set to Concert/Music/MusicVideo. You can use this to build mixed audio/video Views and playlists.
This is not related to how specific file types are tagged.

[Manfred]

From my experience, Video should only be used for movies.

I have Video of Type Movies, Series, Home Video, Music Concerts and Music Videos, Trailers etc. its not only movies and it works.

I agree that Backup or DR is a type of challenge for video. It's static content. I never change the content of the video, but meta data description is ongoing, e.g. sometimes Get Movie & TV information comes months delayed (for some German movies) or has a nicer poster.
The sidecar files have it's pro's (.mkv. sidecar, .jpg together in one place) and con's - whereas from a Backup & DR point of view, a directory like cover art linked to the database may be better.

[TristanG]

Thanks for your feedback.
The problem is the following: I tagged MKV-files with MP3Tag. Usually, like in all FLAC-files, the tags are shown in MC. But this doesn't work with MKV-files; as I've written, in the Tag Editor, the Album field is empty.
So I tried the other way round: I tagged the field Album in MC. But MC writes the Album-title only in it's own JRSidecar.xml-file, not in the MKV itself.

With the Composer-field there is an additional problem: Since it's a predefined field, in the Library-Manager I can't change the field-option "Flags" from "Audio" to "Audio; Video" (the same with other fields: the possibility to change the "Flags" afterwards would be requiered). So, even if I want to make an addition tagging in MC to use the JRSidecar.xml concerning not only the Album but also the Composer e.g. (who was also already written in the file itself, so double the time for tagging), it doesn't work.

For classical listeners like me, it's important to have the same usability for MKV-files like with FLAC-files. Therefore it would be great to have under options the possibility to deactivate the main category "Video" and instead the listing of my MKV-files for each title like the FLAC-files in the same category "Music\Album (Music\Artists, Music\Conductors and so on)", since they are music-files (only with additional motion pictures) and often I hear them without switching the TV on. Maybe I have to explain, that I've ripped the dvd's by title. For e.g. a concert of a classical pianist with several composers: The played sonata is one piece, therefore one file (prior a "mini-dvd/bd" because of the chapters, with MKVs it's possible to have only one MKV-file including the chapters), an etude from Chopin is another title, therefore another file (mpeg/mkv). With the MKVs, it's not longer necessary to use the Sidecar.xml, even the cover can be included like in FLAC-files - JRiver only has to support this correct (compatibilty with the tagging of FLAC-files, in this case with the abovementioned MP3Tag)!