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[donkenjo]

I am new to Media Center and just evaluating if this application fits my requirements.

I have quite a number of music cd's in ogg format. As a music fan I often add extra meta-data to the files. Such are performer, lyricist, location and so on.

Is it possible to add those fields to Media Center to be displayed and edited? I am quite sure Id3v2 supports fields for this information, too. Is there a config file to edit?

Another thing I noticed when setting a ranking, is that this is stored in the media file. I like this pretty much since information is kept with the file.

There are two problems that make the tagging feature useless for me and are a clear reason not to use this otherwise very good program.

1. A big flaw is, that the data is stored not in the standard fields but as custom data. This makes it useless. There is a field recommendation, that is used by some other programs which I tried, too. Using it would make the meta-data transparent to other applications.
Is it possible to configure this behaviour?

   RANKING=3
instead of
   MEDIAJUKEBOX:RATING=3

Link: http://reactor-core.org/ogg-tag-recommendations.html

2. Ogg comments can exist multiple times. Like when a song is sung by two people. This would mean that a tag with the same name exists two times.
Mediajukebox just reads the first occurance, which is not good, but enough. Anyhow when editing and saving this comment the second occurance of the comment is removed.

This seems to be a bug, since data is lost here. When reading only the first occurance, only this occurance may be overwritten when editing.

3. The worst thing is that, Mediajukebox leaves information about itself. This is no meta description for the music in the file and is not to be stored with every song.

Why do they do this? Can it be turned off? Is it a "Mediajukebox was here" note? Is this debug-version info?
Anyway, this is no meta-information for a specific music file and a clear reason not to use mediajukebox, though I like the interface and the view features very much.

   MEDIAJUKEBOX:TOOL NAME: Media Center
   MEDIAJUKEBOX:TOOL VERSION: 9.1.308

---

Is any of this behaviour configurable?

Best regards
Michael Baar

[KingSparta]

Is it possible to add those fields to Media Center to be displayed and edited?

yes, you can create as many fields as you need, some taggs may not be saved to the file, it depends on the tagging system the file uses. not sure about ogg.

[donkenjo]

For the custom fields. I tried to added a field named "LOCATION" which I already use in some files... that the application did is creating a new field "MEDIAJUKEBOX:LOCATION".

If I had wanted the field to be called "MEDIAJUKEBOX:LOCATION" I would have entered this. Is there anyway to remove that nasty MEDIAJUKEBOX: prefix???

Best Regards,
Michael Baar

[KingSparta]

there anyway to remove that nasty MEDIAJUKEBOX: prefix???

if you did it would not work correctly in MC9 since MC9 keys off the prefix

but you should also not see the prefix if your using MC9 when viewing the tags from the file listing or the properties page.

your looking in the raw data area and that tells you everything about the tags.

[donkenjo]

Too bad, that's what I guessed. I really like the flexible way Mediajukebox does queries and data display.

I do not want to have meta-data stored application specific. A location is a location independent of the application used to display it. It's for example a cities name, which does not depend on the program it was written down with.
Maybe am a little bit of a perfectionist here, as a software engineer, but meta-data should discribe the file content and that does not change with the application used to browse it.

Same goes for storing the application name and version. It's either configuration data or just a way to leave traces, but it does not describe that file content.

I would like a tool that stores the data transparently, so any other tool that supports, say ratings, would be able to read that, too. e.g. Helium 2

This behaviour could easily be configured in some kind of definition file or even in the existing dialog. It would be a field mapping for each supported file type. Maybe you could make this an option switch: prefix / field mapping.

Best regards,
Michael Baar

[JimH]

You shouldn't have a problem reading MC tags from other programs.  If you do, please let both parties know.

The problem with tagging is that "there are so many standards to choose from".

[MachineHead]

there anyway to remove that nasty MEDIAJUKEBOX: prefix???

but you should also not see the prefix if your using MC9 when viewing the tags from the file listing or the properties page.

Problem is you see this info when using something else to view the info. This makes MC somewhat non-compliant because it adds this prefix. Other programs do not, and still have the ability to use meta-data without a prefix.

[donkenjo]

Indeed! And if every utility I used would have left some advertisers of it's own it would be dozens...

[KingSparta]

Problem is you see this info when using something else to view the info.

ID3v2 Field Description: Media Jukebox: Tool Name

The data in the field: Media Center

everything is in acordance with the ID3v2 specs

i would think the other programs should not be showing the Field Description for normal display

[MachineHead]

Problem is you see this info when using something else to view the info.

i would think the other programs should not be showing the Field Description for normal display

I would think MC could made to not do this and still have superb meta-data handling capabilities.

[JimH]

donkenjo,
KingSparta, though he does not work for JRiver, knows more than most of those who do, in fact, more than most.  You might learn from him if you are interested.

Jim
(I do work for JRiver)

[donkenjo]

donkenjo,
KingSparta, though he does not work for JRiver, knows more than most of those who do, in fact, more than most.  You might learn from him if you are interested.

Jim
(I do work for JRiver)

Guess I could... but I'm more interested in getting a solid, configurable solution - from someone with enough self confidence not to write editor version numbers in music files ;-)

I'm going to keep watching the market. For now I will stick with the Winamp 5 library which has a quite similar user interface. It can acutally edit id3 and ogg tags without removing additional things or adding waste.

Anyway, thanks for support. Without the tagging issues I would have bought your software right away.