Suggestions for additional non-standard tags Options

[n0v!ze]

Sorry if this has been asked before - I did a couple of site searches before posting but found nothing relevant. I'd like to gather some input on how to include the following information (recommended tag names, pitfalls to avoid) with ID3 v2.3 and/or Vorbis:

- Band Country: to distinguish Killers (FRA) from Killers (US), should this be part of band [sort] name tag or better not?
- CD Release Year: to distinguish re-releases from the original release (not talking about cover versions here)
- Release Country: to distinguish US and European releases from Russian re-releases and extended Japanese releases
- Track Type: to distinguish Instrumental, Acoustic version, Single Edit, Live version etc.
- Remaster: to distinguish between original (or simply re-released) version and later remastered version
- Vocals Gender: male/female/mixed/multiple/none etc. so that I can search for Metal songs with female vocals
- Label Number: not to be confused with UPC/Barcode, this is the Label's ID often to be found on the CD cover on the small strip between front and back cover
- Gapless: to differentiate between tracks with silence inbetween and live songs or intro / main track titles
- Net Track Duration: calculated or measured audio track length after trim, i.e. with no silence at the beginning or end included

Any suggestions are highly appreciated.

This post has been edited by n0v!ze: Jul 8 2012, 16:31

[Apesbrain]

You can add custom fields to ID3 and FLAC (Vorbis) tags using Mp3tag. Just load and highlight the music files to be edited, right-click to "Extended Tags...", create a new field (little star icon) with whatever FIELD and VALUE you want. The trick will be whether the software or hardware player(s) you then use will be able to read those tags and let you sort or select on them. I just confirmed that foobar2000 will read them. Something like iTunes or Squeezebox may be more difficult.

I'd avoid using a custom name that has already been reserved in the ID3 or Vorbis tag standard (GIYF). (While you're there check the standard to see if a tag for what you want has already been defined.) As long as you are consistent, field name format doesn't so much matter. Use all CAPS and optionally "_" for spaces, for instance: BANDCOUNTRY or BAND_COUNTRY. If you use Mp3tag, you can display your custom fields on the Tag Panel so you won't forget to add them to your files.

[n0v!ze]

Perhaps I should add that this information is not primarily intended for use in the player. It is a) for naming the album artist and album directories (so that albums from Killers (FRA) and Killers (US) don't end up in the same folder, or to mark an album as Japanese Edition), and b) naming track titles so that studio and live versions don't end up with the same file name. Assuming that folder and file names get automatically set from tag information.

Why shouldn't there be spaces in tag names? Why all uppercase? I noticed that dBpoweramp writes all lowercase and MusicBrains tag matching table lists Vorbis names with spaces.

[Porcus]

Perhaps I should add that this information is not primarily intended for use in the player. It is a) for naming the album artist and album directories (so that albums from Killers (FRA) and Killers (US) don't end up in the same folder, or to mark an album as Japanese Edition), and b) naming track titles so that studio and live versions don't end up with the same file name. Assuming that folder and file names get automatically set from tag information.

Right. So you are basically requesting a TITLELASTNAME, an ALBUMLASTNAME and an ARTISTLASTNAME?
Title: could be populated with 'live', 'Britney Spears cover' etc.
Album: could be populated with 'live', 'demo', 'bootleg' etc.

For the Artist thing, I think I would rather have 'NAMEITBYTHIS' (give it whatever name you want), where
- for ordinary releases, the artist
- for classical music (i.e. composer-sorted music), the composer
- for various artists comps: "Various Artists" if so you prefer, or maybe a prefix that puts it first or last in the alphabet, rather than at V.

[JJZolx]

Sorry if this has been asked before - I did a couple of site searches before posting but found nothing relevant. I'd like to gather some input on how to include the following information (recommended tag names, pitfalls to avoid) with ID3 v2.3 and/or Vorbis:

How? You'll have to add the information manually with a tag editor, exept maybe for 'Net Track Duration', if you're serious about that.

As far as recommended names goes... if the field is non-standard, then you can name it pretty much anything you like as long as you don't use a name widely used for something else. No software is going to work with non-standard fields, so it makes no difference. With a good tag editor it's trivial to rename a field if you need to do so in the future, so the choice of field names really isn't a big decision.

As suggested above, avoid spaces in vorbis field names. I know of only one program that chose to name one custom field that included a space, and it's not well supported. I believe field names in vorbis tags are case insensitive, so do whatever you like. I use mixed case because when I view the tags using dbpoweramp's Windows Explorer shell extension they're easier to read.

- Band Country: to distinguish Killers (FRA) from Killers (US), should this be part of band [sort] name tag or better not?

What if you have two bands of the same name in the same country, which is also common? The effects of using the same ARTIST with different ARTISTSORT strings will vary. Some programs may consider the two to be distinct, but I think it's rare. The only really foolproof method is to make the ARTIST strings different.

- CD Release Year: to distinguish re-releases from the original release (not talking about cover versions here)

In ID3v2.3 there is a designated field for this (TDOR). I'm not sure what you'd call it in vorbis tags. Mp3tag uses ORIGYEAR, which will be written verbatim to vorbis tags, and mapped to TDOR in ID3v2.3.

- Release Country: to distinguish US and European releases from Russian re-releases and extended Japanese releases

I suppose you could keep this, but like the Remaster field above, it won't be used by any software to distinguish albums, so it's not going to be that useful unless it's incorporated into the album name, or perhaps in the comments. And like 'Band Country' you can easily have several masterings or different editions issued in the same country, so it alone can't be used to distinguish a particular release.

- Track Type: to distinguish Instrumental, Acoustic version, Single Edit, Live version etc.
- Vocals Gender: male/female/mixed/multiple/none etc. so that I can search for Metal songs with female vocals

You can create and set custom fields for these, but probably the only way it's going to be useful is if the information appears in the GENRE field.

- Remaster: to distinguish between original (or simply re-released) version and later remastered version

To distinguish different masterings/releases I generally add something to the album title, with more detailed information in the COMMENT field. For example such an album title might be The Stylings of Silver [RVG] and then in the comments 2002 RVG edition.

- Label Number: not to be confused with UPC/Barcode, this is the Label's ID often to be found on the CD cover on the small strip between front and back cover

I usually store the label and catalog number when I rip a CD. It's not recognized by any software that I use, but it's easy to enter at this time and I may use it to differentiate releases some day down the road.

- Gapless: to differentiate between tracks with silence inbetween and live songs or intro / main track titles

Is that actually necessary? Some of the tags above seem like a lot of work, but that one might be a lot more if you also have to listen to figure it out.

- Net Track Duration: calculated or measured audio track length after trim, i.e. with no silence at the beginning or end included

Seriously?

[AliceWonder]

Sorry if this has been asked before - I did a couple of site searches before posting but found nothing relevant. I'd like to gather some input on how to include the following information (recommended tag names, pitfalls to avoid) with ID3 v2.3 and/or Vorbis:

- Band Country: to distinguish Killers (FRA) from Killers (US), should this be part of band [sort] name tag or better not?
- CD Release Year: to distinguish re-releases from the original release (not talking about cover versions here)
- Release Country: to distinguish US and European releases from Russian re-releases and extended Japanese releases
- Track Type: to distinguish Instrumental, Acoustic version, Single Edit, Live version etc.
- Remaster: to distinguish between original (or simply re-released) version and later remastered version
- Vocals Gender: male/female/mixed/multiple/none etc. so that I can search for Metal songs with female vocals
- Label Number: not to be confused with UPC/Barcode, this is the Label's ID often to be found on the CD cover on the small strip between front and back cover
- Gapless: to differentiate between tracks with silence inbetween and live songs or intro / main track titles
- Net Track Duration: calculated or measured audio track length after trim, i.e. with no silence at the beginning or end included

Any suggestions are highly appreciated.

For CD release / remaster - with Vorbis Comments I use:

ALBUM DATE=
-- The original release date of the album regardless of the type (Record, 8-track, whatever it was first released as)
RELEASE DATE=
-- If not the original release but a re-issue / re-master, I use this track for the release date of the source media. The presence of a RELEASE DATE tag thus usually would indicate a remaster. I know of one case where a re-issue had identical PCM data (Chagall Guevara - originally released by MCA, re-released by Sparrow) so I guess it doesn't always indicate a remaster.
CATALOG NUMBER=
-- That makes it easy to find out whatever info about the release I may want to know in the future. Looks like what use LABEL NUMBER for (I've also see it LABELNO)

I can't comment on others as I don't use them, but VOCALS GENDER looks like one I should. It would be cool to auto-generate playlist of 80s female pop for example.

[AliceWonder]

As suggested above, avoid spaces in vorbis field names.

There's no good reason to avoid spaces and spaces make them more human readable.

You have to allow spaces in the value so anything that parses vorbis comments is going to have to know how to deal with spaces anyway.

[LosMintos]

- CD Release Year:

I use DATE for the release date and ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE for the date the album was released first.

- Track Type: to distinguish Instrumental, Acoustic version, Single Edit, Live version etc.

There I use VERSION.

- Remaster: to distinguish between original (or simply re-released) version and later remastered version

There I have RECORDING TYPE, that can be Studio, Live, Remaster, Bootleg, ...

- Label Number:

CATALOG #

:-)

This post has been edited by LosMintos: Aug 3 2012, 11:12