Converting ID3 tags in FLACs to native FLAC tags, Help me convert ID3 to FLAC native! Options

[Luna-Tick]

Hello all!

I wrote the vast majority of my CD collection to Flac and checked them with the Flac test (the -t option of Flac), they played fine and all seemed wonderful.

Sadly life is no longer roses and chocolates. Now as I come to rip the whole lot to Vorbis files, Oggenc is spewing an error that the files are 'not a supported format'. As the flacs which I have produced since moving to Ubuntu (with sound juicer) seem to work, I am starting to worry that all the files which I made from CDex are going to give me grief.

It seems that the FLAC files which were written by CDex are using ID3 tags while the ones which work are using the native FLAC tags. I get this impression from looking at the file info in programmes like XMMS.

It seems, looking at the files with Metaflac, that the files may also have the information in the files as well and if I delete the tags "metaflac --remove-all-tags" XMMS will still see all the information in the ID3 tags.

If I open the file with Easytag, it shows up as having a 'FLAC Vorbis tag' ; identical to that of the ones which work fine. This reenforces my guess that my files have both.

I have tried many programmes and am not getting very far. The closest that I came was to keep removing all, deleting and adding fields in Easytag; eventually the tag was replaced by a native FLAC tag and it then went through Oggenc without a problem. Obviously I can't do this for all the FLACs which I have.

Does anybody know of a script/programme which can (as a batch) convert FLAC ID3 tags into FLAC native tags? Or, if it is all that I need, a programme which strips off a FLAC ID3 tag?

Thanks all, it seems ridiculous to have to re-encode them all just because the tags are wrong.

This post has been edited by Luna-Tick: Aug 14 2005, 02:48

[Synthetic Soul]

I would use:

CODE

TAG.EXE --recursive --remove --force FLAC *.flac

... to replace existing ID3v1 tags with FLAC tags - but as gfngfgf says, always best to test on some copies first. Be warned that the command I quote will work recursively - so test in a folder with no important subfolders. I have briefly tested this myself and it works.

Even though I adapted Tag from Case's original I don't use its intracacies that much - I just use it for simple tagging from the command line.

@gfngfgf

I have absolutely no problems with you linking to my website for Tag. I hold Case's last version, as well as those I've released. NB: Case's last version can also be found on RareWares I believe.

Personally I would recommend 2.0.43+, as it makes sense to be using the latest FLAC, OGG,and VORBIS libraries. It's also useful to have the -f switch, in case you begin using another application that uses it, like FLACAttack.

[Luna-Tick]

I would use:

CODE

TAG.EXE --recursive --remove --force FLAC *.flac

... to replace existing ID3v1 tags with FLAC tags - but as gfngfgf says, always best to test on some copies first.  Be warned that the command I quote will work recursively - so test in a folder with no important subfolders.  I have briefly tested this myself and it works.

Update: This seems to work. After going into Windows and running this recursively on a test group of FLACs, I returned to Ubuntu and Oggenc seems perfectly happy .

As I say, it would be nice if Tag was available for Linux, but this isn't a perfect world . I should be able to use this method without too much grief - especially seeing as the new ones seem fine and I will only have to fix the old ones once.

Thanks a lot, people .