Id3v2 and APE 2.0 MP3Gain tags displayed together?, A possibility in a future release? Options

[matthammy]

My mp3 music collection is tagged with both id3v1 and id3v2 tags for compatibility with my Creative Jukebox 3 mp3 player. I have MP3gain'd my collection which has resulted in all my files also containing the gain information in an APE tag.

As has been reported before foobar only recognises the gain tag information, the APE tag taking preference, displaying "unknown artist" instead of the information contained in the id3 tags.

I would prefer not to remove the gain tags from my files due to the unlikely event that I would ever want to reverse the changes.

Therefore, is there any possibility of foobar reading both sets of tags in a future release or would this involve an unreasonable amount of work?

[Prodoc]

I'm storing ReplayGain info in my files as well but I'm not using the APE tags, only ID3v1 and ID3v2. Therefor you don't have to use the APE tags if it's just for ReplayGain info. I'm not sure if you're able to move the ReplayGain info from the APE tags to the ID3v2 tags though. If not you've got to scan them again using Foobar.
Check your settings at Playback - Input - MP3 tag writing for the tags Foobar should write.

[matthammy]

Thanks for the info Prodoc.

Does anyone know how to copy replaygain information from an APE tag to an id3v2 tag?

I rather not have to rescan my entire collection of about 60gigs on my celeron 566!

[ssamadhi97]

I think setting the proper options in "Preferences -> Playback -> Input -> Standard inputs", "MP3 tag writing" and then using "Database -> Rewrite file tags from database" from the context menu should do the trick, but you might want to try this on one or two files first to make sure.

[magic75]

I don't think this will work. Sure the replaygain info that fb2k uses to play the files might be copied. But the undo info is MP3gain specific, and I don't think fb2k supports copying that info to id3v2 (or am I wrong?), and MP3gain does not support reading undo info and/or replaygain info from id3v2 (or am I wrong about that as well?).

I am also hoping this could be solved by implementing multiple tag reading in fb2k.

I think that the best workaround for now is to re-tag the files using fb2k:s masstagger, with id3v1+APEv2 writing enabled. Only problem is that you won't get id3v2...

[ssamadhi97]

Time for an experiment.

Though, I'd be severely surprised if Glen could've been arsed to make mp3gain read/write ID3v2 tags. ID3v2 tags are the spawn of satan and need to finally die out anyway.

Only problem is that you won't get id3v2...

That's not a problem, that's a blessing.

This post has been edited by ssamadhi97: Dec 3 2003, 19:11

[Mike Giacomelli]

My mp3 music collection is tagged with both id3v1 and id3v2 tags for compatibility with my Creative Jukebox 3 mp3 player. I have MP3gain'd my collection which has resulted in all my files also containing the gain information in an APE tag.

As has been reported before foobar only recognises the gain tag information, the APE tag taking preference, displaying "unknown artist" instead of the information contained in the id3 tags.

I would prefer not to remove the gain tags from my files due to the unlikely event that I would ever want to reverse the changes.

Therefore, is there any possibility of foobar reading both sets of tags in a future release or would this involve an unreasonable amount of work?

Unreplaygain you files and then let foobar handle the gain on its own.

[magic75]

Only problem is that you won't get id3v2...

That's not a problem, that's a blessing.

I actually agree with you, but I guess its a matter of opinion.

[magic75]

My mp3 music collection is tagged with both id3v1 and id3v2 tags for compatibility with my Creative Jukebox 3 mp3 player. I have MP3gain'd my collection which has resulted in all my files also containing the gain information in an APE tag.

As has been reported before foobar only recognises the gain tag information, the APE tag taking preference, displaying "unknown artist" instead of the information contained in the id3 tags.

I would prefer not to remove the gain tags from my files due to the unlikely event that I would ever want to reverse the changes.

Therefore, is there any possibility of foobar reading both sets of tags in a future release or would this involve an unreasonable amount of work?

Unreplaygain you files and then let foobar handle the gain on its own.

But then his files won't be played at equal loudness on his portable.

[phwip]

I found the easiest way to get round this problem is use Case's tag to copy the tags in my files to APEv2 tags. You can do this to your entire mp3 collection in a single step using the following command line:

CODE

tag.exe --recursive --force id3v1 --force ape2 --tofilen "tag log.txt" "D:\My Music\*.mp3"

This will tag every mp3 within "D:\My Music" and ALL SUBFOLDERS based on the existing tags and log the changes to "tag log.txt". I would recommend you test this on a unimportant folder before applying it recursively to your entire collection like this. But it worked for me.

The advantage of this method is that you don't lose anything: you still keep your id3v1 and id3v2 tags for use in your portable player. And the music is mp3gained rather than simply having the ReplayGain tags from foobar, so it will play at the correct volume in your portable too.

However, despite this workaround I would still like to add my support to the initial feature request in this thread. Rather than foobar2000 not reading other tags if it finds the preferred tag, IMHO it would be better if it would do this on a field by field basis. This is what Case's Tag does already: if I have a file with an apev2 tag that only contains the Replay Gain and mp3Gain values and it also contains an id3 tag with the artist and title, then Case's Tag will display all of these values. Whereas fb2k only shows the apev2 tag values. Of course if both tags contain an artist field (for example) then the software has to prefer one over the other. But not if the tags contain different fields.

[matthammy]

I tested phwip's suggestion on a couple of albums and I'm very happy to say that foobar now shows artist and track information!

Before I retag my entire collection are there any instances where having id3v1, id3v2 AND apev2 tags could cause problems?

This post has been edited by matthammy: Dec 5 2003, 00:04

[phwip]

Funny you should ask that, because I did this to my entire music collection a while ago and haven't come across any problems, but just now I have thought of one.

If you tag your files with all three tag types, then change any of the tag values in foobar2000 then it will delete a particular tag, depending on the "Tag type to write" selected in Preferences -> Playback -> Input -> Standard Inputs.

For example, I have the default "APEv2 and ID3v1" selected there, so if I make any changes from within fb2k it deletes my id3v2 tags, as indeed it states it will just above that box: "other supported types will be stripped from file". In my case this hasn't proved to be a problem because I don't actually really care about id3v2 as my portable player only reads id3v1. I only used to use id3v2 for storing long titles and suchlike and I now have that information in my apev2 tags.

The alternative option would be to set "Tag type to write" to "ID3v2 and ID3v1". However, that is actually an even worse idea because if you then change any tag value from within fb2k then it will delete the apev2 tag completely, and as a result you lose your mp3gain tag values as they were only ever stored in that tag.

So really it depends whether you can handle potentially losing your id3v2 tags.

EDIT:
Of course if you will never need to modify your tags then there is also no problem. Having said that, I never expected to need to modify mine but recently I have come across ones where the year is missing or wrong. So I guess you never know.

Also you could make any future modifications via an id3 tagger rather than fb2k, and then run the file through Case's Tag using the same command line again.

Finally, if you decide you don't really care about id3v2 tags any more then you can remove them as part of the tag copy operation using Case's Tag by adding --removeid3v2 as an option in the command line.

This post has been edited by phwip: Dec 5 2003, 02:11