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[PK_NYC]

I was wondering if anyone had a good solution for tagging classical music mp3 files. If I understand id3v2.4 specification correctly, there are dedicated fields for orchestra and conductor information (TPE2 and TPE3, respectively) and a lot more, but I can't tell whether there is any way to set these from within Media Center. If this cannot be done, would MC recognize these fields if I were to populate them with an external tagging untility such as Dr. Tag? Would it be possible to add these colums to different views, sort/search on them, etc.? Alternately, can someone suggest a better way of tagging the information needed to properly describe a piece of classical music?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
P

[DocLotus]

After much soul-searching I finally came up with this solution that works for me.

In Properties/File Info...
* Album.... the name of the album - Billy the Kid.
* Artist... the composer (not the conductor or orchestra) - Aaron Copeland.
* Comment... the orchestra &/or (conductor) - New York Philharmonic (Leonard Bernstein).

[Jaguu]

Created user specific fields for composer, orchestra, conductor, choir, soloist, movement, opus.

That was before MC9 introduced the composer field. It might be too complex as it takes a lot of time to enter all the extrra information, so the simplified method of DocLotus seems to be quite appropriate, if you are not a real classical freak!

Also, if you use a composer field the artist field might become obsolete. So the big question remains: How to use the artist field properly!

Also named my albums according to the following rules:

Directory: [Artist] - [Album]
File: [Artist] ([Track #]) [Name]

I keep the album name simple, but the name rather complete. Sample:

Composer: Beethoven
Conductor: Leonard Bernstein
Orchestra: Royal Symphony Orchestra, London
Album: Symphonies No. 2+8
Name: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36
Movement: 2. Adagio
Opus: op. 36

Some other members of this forum also posted some ideas some time ago, so I search for classic or classical might give you more insight!

[Deivit]

Yoy may want to check this thread also:

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=MediaCenter;action=display;num=1046599750;start=1#1

and especially the interesting post written by Phydeaux.

[PK_NYC]

Thanks for your input guys. So far I have been using the composer field in MC 9 and using the artist field for the soloist or the orchestra, but obviously that is not a particularly consistent method. I am a bit hesitant to create custom fields since these cannot be read by any other program (I am seriously thinking of moving to an Apple PowerBook once my laptop takes its last breath), so I was hoping for a way to use standard ID3v2 tags. As another poster noted in the thread linked by Deivit (thanks, Deivit, I completely missed that one), all the required fields already exist in ID3 specification, but they are still not supported by a lot of software. Maybe for the time being I am best off using the Comment field for conducter, opus, and other information, and deciding whether to use the artist field for the soloist or the orchestra so things stay consistent. Is there any hope for extended id3v2 support in the near future?

Thanks again for all your replies.