I am making images of my audio cds to back them up (using EAC). Then i load the cuesheet in Foobar 2000 to encode the cd to mp3 as well. Then the mp3s are tagged according to the cd-text in the cuesheet.

I have had some problems tagging my mp3s when it comes to special characters like æ, ø and å. When Foobar have encoded my cd image, tags containing these letters are displayed correctly in Winamp, but in Foobar a "?" appear where the letter should be ("D?dheimsgard" instead of "Dødheimsgard"). After i have encoded the cd images, i want to add something to the comment tag field. I use the masstagger in Foobar to do that. The comment is added without problem, but now the æ, ø and å characters in other tag fields of the mp3s are displayed wrong in winamp too. I am using Windows 98 SE (does it matter?)

I don't know anything about how tags work. I don't understand why the tags first are displayed correct in Winamp, but not in Foobar. I read somewhere there was a bug in the ID3v2 tag support 1.10 in foobar, so i changed to 1.11. But then all the mp3s i had encoded earlier was displayed completely wrong in Foobar :


I am wondering which settings to use for the ID3v2 in Foobar. Should i enable the "Write ISO instead of UTF" option? What does it mean? Should i use ID3v2 tag support 1.10 or 1.11 in Foobar?

Should i perhaps use another tagger to add to the comment field? I have UltraTagger, Mp3Tag and Tag. Perhaps i should use one of them? Anyway, when i am using Foobar to encode my images, it adds tags automatically to the mp3s. I want the tags to be displayed correctly in all players (in Foobar too), and also on portable mp3 players. How?

Have you tried Database > Reload info from file(s) after updating tags? The latest 1.11 should be able to display and write both in ISO and in UTF-16 properly, even if tags contain non-ASCII letters/characters.
So IMO you don't have to need other taggers.

Perhaps it does write the tags correctly now, I haven't encoded any mp3s since i installed 1.11.

I was talking about my mp3s that have been encoded and tagged by foobar before i installed 1.11. If i load these mp3s to foobar after installing 1.11 they are simply displayed as:
11. ????????? - [??????????? ?? ??? ???????? ???????? ?? ??????? ?? ??????? #00] ???? ??????? [4:45]

I guess v1.10 have written the tags wrong in some way. But it is displayed correctly in some players (Winamp). Is there any way i can take these tags that only some players can read correctly, and convert them to tags that any player can read (portables too)?

You say 1.11 writes the tags properly in both ISO and UTF. If that is the case, should i use ISO, or UTF to be sure they can be displayed on a portable player (as well as any other player)? What is the standard of doing this? How does winamp do it (mp3s tagged in winamp seems to always work)?

The v1.10 didn't work for me at all. The files tagged in 2bytes code with it had never been displayed correctly
neither with Winamp nor QCD player, vice versa. Hence I don't have stuffs tagged with it.

Anyway, I think you need to tag your files again with 1.11(or another tagger). Since I don't know what portable players you have, I cannot tell exactly which ISO or UTF is suitable for your portable player. IMO ISO-8859-1 tags have more compatibility than UTF-16 tags, Winamp(in_mp3) and my iMP-350 read both correctly, though.

Mh - try it out.... even if I know that most people here say that with 1.11 UTF+BOM writes correct tags I still have some problems with them (The problem is that except from WindowsMediaPlayer all programms are reading the tags correct, but the WMP still displays garbage when I use UTF (on all of my Windows Systems)), but with ISO I have encountered no further problems so far with the 1.11.....

(So I personally keep to ISO until I have the time to do a proper research on the WMP problem on my side as I do use the WMP6.4 for basic doubleclick access (its the one player that loads fastest and I have not to meddle with some playlists and such - streight plain WMP6.4 is what I want in those situations )

To me both ISO and UTF seems to work well now that i am using 1.11. I don't use WMP.

I haven't got my portable player yet, so i don't know whether i should use ISO or UTF. Will it probably be able to read both? Or is it more probable that it must be one of them (which one?). Are portable mp3 players able to display characters like æ, ø and å?

If i use the ISO setting in Foobar, should i also enable the "decode and write tags using system codepage"? (and what does it mean?)

If i use the UTF setting in Foobar, the "write BOM" option is already enabled. Should i keep it enabled? (and what does it mean?)

Both of them should be displayed correctly, if the player follows ID3v2.3.0 properly.

Yes.

To avoid the endian issues, I understand so.

FYI, I made mp3s contain letters you mentioned for testing, my iMP-350 display both of them correctly.

Thanks for testing the characters.

So the "decode and write tags using system codepage" option should be enabled if i use the ISO option? What does it mean, how does it affect my tags?

a) Well, sorry - as I said its a problem I have and with WMP.... even if you have not fallen for it I thing I should add the line that I do not intend to say FooBar got it wrong - it could well be the M$ side of that problem wich is the cause..... (as all other proggies are getting the correct tag) - but for me its at the moment only the viewed experience instead of true knowledge in regards to all facts needed....

b) codepage is no good idea.... as the author of MP3Ext is stating..... he included it because it seem to be a common practice among windows proggies (wich for me means I leave it disabled)

c) for UTF+BOm, etc.... take a look at the ID3Specs

[d) And the MP3Ext side is why I am also confused about the UTF+BOM behaviour of Foo as I always thought that my MP3 Tags with MP3Ext where correct Unicode - wich none of my Windows Systems had problems in displaying in WMP, but those with Foo have them....]

I'm a bit of a newbie... wondering if I'm missing something.

First, the big picture: my goal is the same as Garathor's... Rip my CD collection accurately; do the CD-rip part as quickly as I can (i.e. store WAV files or CD images), then compress as needed -- probably save as FLAC images and also make a set of separate MP3s, well tagged for my new AudioTron.

The audio part (EAC->FLAC->FOOBAR->LAME->MP3) is working great. (OK, I do need to find that VBR "length setting" utility I saw somewhere...)

My big problem -- capturing, saving, encoding ALL the tag info. I've read a ton of postings, figured out a lot, but have some major gaps. I know how to make it work if encoding each file direct-from-CD in EAC.

BUT -- how do I do it when running batch-encodings, e.g. WAV image (or separate WAV's) encoded later on? MAREO only seems to be for use per-track, so that doesn't help. EAC can make a nice CUE sheet. But it only stores a few bits of tag info. Not year, genre, etc etc. EAC doesn't store the CDID anywhere, so that doesn't help.

QUESTION How do I save all the tags for all tracks, and how do I re-load them during the later encoding process? Is there a tool (hopefully that works with EAC) that will put ALL the tag info into a CUE sheet? And will FOOBAR read all that? Or how else do you do this?

It's hard to believe my question is not answered in 100 places on the web. After all, isn't this a pretty normal thing -- to batch-rip a CD collection, and have the encoding part run while I'm not sitting here changing disks?

Thanks for any ideas! This is a great forum!

Pete

pholzmann: Oops sorry... Nope... in my experience what you want is not possible... I am eager to learn otherwise... but so far as I understand programms and formats the only solution for you would be by doing it all by one proggy & one database....
Doing a rip with EAC+Cue&wav only stores the information within a normal txt-file... going with EAC+ID3 Tags and MP3 is another thing (all Info IS stored in the tag) - as I am only MP3 encoding I do not know about the other codecs.... But so far I have not encountered any tool that is capable of converting all possibilities to whatever you want.... learn about each codec you are using, the tag specs and the progs you are using... (So far all sides I know of that ever tried to archive a database with all possibilities of cds & songs when artist/songname or whatever where supplied as request info - where shutdown a few days after I came to know about them (wich does not mean anything as I am one of those that are strictly & conceptuanal legal with the exception of fair use (I am allowed for my one backup))...