http://www.jfaul.de/
MPEG Audio Collection 2.90 (1st May 2001, 1.12 Mb)
MAC - an ultimate freeware utility for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP

It is designed to organize your audio file collection. It is fast and easy to use, scans selected drives for supported audio files and lists them in an Explorer-style tree-view interface. You can retrieve all information about your audio collection and you can play files as well.

*added: support for Windows Media Audio files (*.wma)
*added: support for ID3v2.2.x tags
*added: support for ID3v1, ID3v2, APE tags in Monkey's Audio files
*added: support for ID3v2, APE tags in MPC/MPEGplus files
*added: support for ID3v2 tags in Ogg Vorbis files
*fixed: bug with Ogg Vorbis tag fields
*improved: new MPEG reading engine
*improved: encoder guessing for MPEG CBR files

these people should be shot

Great program, but I agree with Peter... why add ID3v2 tag support to MAC, MPC and Ogg when it isn't supported in any of those?

worse, id3v2 may damage those format and won't be read by anything else. blah.

I just informed the people at #vorbis about id3v2 support.. and to put it mildly, they were NOT happy...

It was pointed out that Vorbis stream with id3v2 or even id3v1 is invalid.

Heh. What's with this "English (Zimbabwe)" language choice?

lets drop him a mail about the ID3v2 Tags

Soon some moron will create an input plugin for Winamp that supports, or at least skips, ID3 tags.

It already happened with a well known format <cough>. The tag wasn't part of the specs, but, because some $%#$$#s insisted on using the tag, a plugin that skipped that appeared.

It all depends on the demand for such a thing...

Regards;

Roberto.

it's not worth the trouble i guess. libvorbis seems to happily ignore all sorts of id3 tags i put (tried with hex editor), my vorbis tag updater just eats them (burp).

Vorbis + ID3(v2) = corrupted Vorbis stream

It will break all official tools (including, of course, ReplayGain)

--
GCP

To zZzZzZz:

You are right

By the way:
MAC does not write ID3v2 tags in OGG files at all! Only reading such kind of files...

hmm... i use v2 with MPCs and those two things fit well in my case (using EAR plugin to read them). i know this is probably NOT the perfect match, but i don't have any distroyed files or sth.

just my 2c.

Yay! My last excuse for not switching to APE tags has been fixed! Thanks Mr. Faul!

Indeed, thanks a lot! Happy to see this useful little program defrosted.

Uosdwis

It works because MPC developers were too kind and included support for skipping ID3v2 tag in the beginning. I think ReplayGain won't accept those files as valid MPC and that's how all programs should treat them. I hope you realize that it will never be supported officially.

id3v2 is supported just as much for mpc as it is for mp3.....
It's not supported by mp3 standard either.

ID3v2 tag is imitating MP3 frame, that's why it works with MP3s. It will not work in anyway with MPC unless decoders skip it. Frank should remove all ID3v2 detectors to demonstrate it's effect on MPC.

Let's remove seatbelts and airbangs and demonstrate the power of a mercedes.

just leave it as it is. if you like APE you can add it - nobody's saying 'no'.

and i'll also give APE a try.

It wasn't openminded Klemm that added skipping of id3v2-tags.
Andree did....


but apart from that.....
I'm using id3v2-tags saved in tag-files so the audio-mpc file is not affected.
I WILL change to APE if my favorite tagger does.....Or another one I like does.

Just some things I can't understand:

- Why to develop an own tagging format if there are some wide used (standard) tagging formats?

- Is it too hard to support alternative formats? For example, just skip well known tags?

- Why to use "built-in" tagging formats? Is it not easier to have tags at the the beginning/end?

- Do you think, ID3v2 format is not developped good enough?

That's smart move, that way they won't harm anyone or anything.

You should suggest MikaelS to add support in Helium. APE 2 specs are pretty much set up and it's always possible to use APE 1 while waiting for final specs. That way Helium could also easily support Monkey's Audio.

VERY interesting questions.

maybe somebody will give us right answers without burning us down 1st.

I did...

he's thinking about it...
He doesn't want to spend too much time on it if it's only used by very few ppl.
We'll see.....
I'll do my part.

he's aware of that as far as i know.

If you are refering to MPC, that's exactly why APE tags were chosen.


That's what current plugins unfortunately do. The standards are for different format and designed only for that one particular format. This v2 tag is very handy for MP3 because it was designed to be considered as audio by decoders, so it won't harm data. Why should tags still be coded as mp3 frames when it has no effect for other decoders?


Probably explained somewhere by Ogg developers. I guess they weren't happy with "standards" either.


I do. Quite many here thinks so too. I guess someone can give links to some comments about ID3v2.

first, id3v2 is overdeveloped, the "standard" is total mess, not many programs actually handle all id3v2 variations which are allowed by the "standard" (eg. they allow multiple character encodings - that's pure BS, why have multiple ways to do the same ? to make software developer's life more difficult ?).
second, the main problem of all sorts of id3 variations is the fact that id3-reading software developers need to modify their code whenever id3.org people decide to add new fields. this is total crap, i really don't understand the point of using some idiotic field codes instead of full user-friendly and developer-friendly field names.
third, id3 tags are designed for mp3 files only (iso mpeg decoders know how to skip them). they DAMAGE all other files (unless particular file format specs say that "this and only this version of id3 is OK here"). unfortunately, people started to id3v2-tag MPCs files already and MPC developers were forced to add (partial) id3v2 support to their player code, at least to make those files play at all; all thanks to people like you. if you want to mess with some format, RTFM carefully first. Ogg Vorbis has its own tagging, you should use it just because it's way better than any id3; and if you use id3 with Vorbis, people will throw rocks at you, and we'll provide the rocks.

I think mpc got ID3v2 tag skipping because EAC adds those darn things by default. It was probably too time consuming to tell everyone what was wrong with their files.

Please explain, why the Ogg Vorbis tag format is better as ID3v2?

Maybe it is true, but anyway, please be more precise...

I would not compare the both, just one thought: if each new audio file format would have own tag, we (users) will not get a standard tagging format. It's a pity...

because Vorbis can basically do everything id3v2 can do, except for embedding non-text fields (blah, who needs them ?); Vorbis doesn't require all reading software to be updated to recognize new fields (field names stored as human-readable strings); it's up to users to add new fields, they don't require changes in tag-writing software neither. and you claim that you have written code to dealt with those ? you are clueless.

Its probably be seen by the regulars before, but I stumbled on an interesting article for a standardised tagging format for .ogg files here

Why better?

You overplay. New fields are not important at all.

Complitely right, but what advantage for programmers? Users do not read tags in a HEX-editor

Agreeable, but not important.

I do not. Did I said?

I just want to repeat: I do not want to compare the both tags, I want (as a user) one/two good developed and/or wide used tagging formats.

It's not coded, easier to read.

Why then was ID3v2 revised so often?

I'm programmer and user and I do read tags in hex editors sometimes. And I hate concept of ID3v2 so much that I have never used them.

http://www.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/sv8/apetag.html

oh god... just listen to yourself.

bad! bad, nasty tags!

For programmers? Yes, but for users?

I don't know. The most used version 2.3 exists for years...

I prefer APE tags too - the format has all advantages of ID3v1 & ID3v2, but will the Xiph-team prefer it as well? I think, no...

That was badly expressed, I know, especially since I have used them with mp3s. I should have left that away as I meant I won't support them and never have.

case: no problem .

that's the disadventage of not talking face2face...

One suggestion for developers:

To support at least two tagging formats:

- ID3v2 (if needed at the file beginning)
- APE tags (if needed at the file end)

In my opinion, these two formats are the best combination! Just an opinion...

For users it's no difference. Except when player does not support some field in tag and user won't see it. When tag constains simple text every field can be displayed easily, no matter if player recognizes them or not.


Well, vorbis has specified it's own tagging standard and I believe they have their reasons. Maybe they weren't even aware of APE tags. But I don't think it matters that much to have new tagging format when it's simple to use. It's not a big deal to support Ogg tags when Vorbis team even provides good libraries for handling them.

APE 2.0 can be in the beginning of file, at least after the header in MPC. There won't be support for ID3v2 there.

Of course! To have own format only is a comfortable way

I know some people who do not want to use the compiled library from Xiph, but own code. They are not alone

I agree. I would have liked to make my own code for reading and writing Ogg tags too, but I couldn't find documents anywhere how it should be done properly. I hope they make better documentation when 1.0 is released.

Full agreeable

Guys, you know there is something called irc

Heh, I wonder how conversation about tags can get so heated. I can understand support in your program for reading ID3v2 and recognizing files with them but I hope you respect formats enough to disallow saving such tags. ID3v2 is as strange to mpc and ape as APE2 is for MP3s. I don't expect any mp3 player to play such files.

Ah, just noticed on your page that you only allow editing of ID3v1. Apparently this tag war was unnecessary.
Btw, I have a question/bug report conserning your program: I use it to catalogue my music collection on harddrive and add artist directories one at a time and when I have added maybe 100 directories it displays error that I'm out of system resources. Saving the collection and restarting MAC allows adding new directories. Is it a bug or is the program collecting some information in memory that is wiped when I restart it?

It seems to be a bug, maybe the program does not properly free resources
Anyway, I do my best to improve the prog although big lack of time... I'm student, and actually I don't have much time for developing, sorry!

No problem. I don't often need to add so many directories at once, but I wanted to make clean collection now that new version arrived. Hope you don't mind me attacking you about ID3v2 thing, it's really not your fault. And thanks for the great program

OK

Just an advice:
the encoder guessing works much precise now
(if you need that)

I never knew MAC can guess encoder. I tried to find the feature but couldn't, can you tell how it's used?