I have always wondered why people rate ape 2 tag over id3v2 tag .
So i finally decided today to find it out .
I searched with the following "advantages of ape tag" .
And alas i get a result that asks to broaden up my search .
I try again with different combination of strings .
Still no luck

So i finally decide to post it .
And ask .
What actually are the advantages of ape version 2 tag over all the
other tagging schemes .

Are you talking about mpc ?
IDv2 seems to be more difficult to implement to another format than mp3. They can corrupt a mpc or an ogg file.
Advantages are for developper only. For users, there is no difference I think. Except than IDtag v2 in a mpc file are not read by a mpc plug-in, that mpc file are not read at all in winamp 3 if ID2 are embedded (at least with the old plug-in), that encspot2 can not read header info, etc...
So don't use IDv2 with mpc or ogg vorbis. And remove them if tags are embedded. Ape2 are great too.

+custom keys

Hi folks,

Well, If I'm correct, ID3v2 tags are stored at the beginning of the file when ape tags
are stored at the end.
The consequences is that with APE tags, the musical information always start at the
same place (offset) in the file. Writing the APE tag is just a question of appending data at the
end of the file. When writing ID3V2 tags, you have to write the tags info first then write back
the musical data afterwards. Depending on the amount of data in your ID3V2 tags, the
musical information will start at a different offset in the file.
Placing the tags info at the start of the file is convenient when streaming, you get the file
infos first then the music but it's a bit more complicated to handle for a tagging software !

ID3v2 tags are mainly used with mp3 but in could well be used with other format.
APE tags are used with APE files ! and MPC but could be used with mp3s !
OGG tags are used with OGG files, could they possibly be used with other formats ?

IMHO, the design of APE tags - originally introduced by Matt Ashland for the APE losless format -
is much cleaner than ID3V2. Especially in its 2.0 version - by Frank Klemm for MPC - where you can add any field of your liking (singer weight, backgroud vocalist phone number, etc...)
Note that the OGG tagging system is also very well designed and extensible.

To successfully edit APE tags with MPC or APE files take a look at MediaJuekebox : http://www.mediajukebox.com/

In the hope it will help, have a nice day

C.

*lol* We're talking "stalker-style" here if you intend to add all that...

cmagic > Thanks for explanation.

2 things : if APE tags are stored at the end of the file, it may produce a gap with an hardware player (sweet dream), by stressing the optical lens. And if i remember correctly, MediaJukebox cannot read and write APE2 on mpc file. That's too bad....

You're right, MPC/APE2 are not supported in MJ8 right now, but we may have some hope
for the future ...

How can i do that .
The winamp plugin for mpc surely does'nt allow that .
OGG , i know does allow for it .



Holy crap . And i have been taging my file with id3v2 .

Thanks all for the help.

You can easily convert and remove them with TAG from Case :
http://home.wanadoo.nl/~w.speek/tag.htm

MPCScan (from Case too) can check all your mpc files, and tell you what are polluted with IDv2.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~cse/mpc/index.html

MPC is gapless, and it will stay that way on hardware players.

Access time... The next file must be partially pre-decoded in a buffer. If tag are located at the end of a file, the lens must go at the end in order to read the tags informations, and come back at the beginning in order to read the audio-data. This can introduce a gap, or enlarge it !

They are hardware CD-A player who introduce a gap, even if the CD-A is a gapless medium.

I think there's this saying "Don't cross your bridges before you come to them", but anyway, i think this gap issue can be handled somehow. Nothing is set in stone yet, maybe you even have a good idea for an intelligent decoding routine? Maybe pre-buffering based on a playlist? Or pre-buffering of all APE tags from the songs on a CD (should be no big problem with today's 8 MB buffers, and each tag being a few bytes)?

Yes, this issue is not a fatality. But hardware constructor (or enginner) are not always clever...
I have a Napa Discman. I think (but I'm not sure) that the gap between two mp3 track is larger when IDv2 are embedded.
In all case, tags located just before the audio-data are less « stressing » for an optical disk player.

PS. If I remember correctly, TDK released a mp3 player (the Mojo ?) with special IDv2 disposition, in order to reduce the gap between two tracks.

Here I go again with my compatibility crap...

I assume that APE tags can work with MP3s too right? What is the status of APE support in Winamp? For ALL files? Can there be a "tag" plugin that will work the same, no matter what file you are playing? Maybe for Winamp3?

Lots of questions, but as long as there is IDv1 and IDv2 for MP3, OGG for OGG, APE for APE and MPC, etc... it's just one big mess that I dont want to deal with, and neither will most people.

Winamp has proven to be a leader in what the computer music community supports. Maybe if Winamp moved to a unified tagging system, the rest would follow...

APE tags with mp3's will cause gaps because no player to my knowlegde (Winamp's default nor MAD works) skips them correctly. They add silence.

Jan: I would consider that a bug. After all, why is Winamp (or any other player) "playing" silence when the data is not what it expects? It should immediately jump over those frames, and just start playing the next valid frame.

But that is kinda what I mean when I say that Winamp should add support. Make it just one tagging system, then MAKE that system work with any format. It would also help if the LAME devels added support in the encoder, gapless or non-gapless.

I find a little confusing the use of tag and his front end to do that thing.
Please someone could tell me what command line would convert id3v2 tags to ape2 tags (keeping id3v1)?

EDIT: some typo

Noone mentioned unicode support? I really like to see portuguese characters in bossanova tracks, or french characters, or cyrrilic characters the way they should appear and not substituted with characters from current codepage.


Don't know how to keep id3v1, but for id3v2 -> apev2:
--removeid3v2 --force apev2

This way the id3v1 gets deleted though. But perhaps it cannot live together because the two live in the end of file. Anybody knows about it?

You can add both ID3v1 and APEv2, but most programs will only find the tag that is closer to the end of the file. If you wish to do this, use Tag with command "Tag <files> --force ID3 --force APE2 --removeid3v2".
Btw, it seems foobar2000 can't read multiple tags from a file currently, I'll ask Peter to fix this.

Yes this way keeps both tags but winamp or foobar2k anly read the last one (id3v1). Perhaps it's not a good idea to keep both.

Case, is there anyway to get Tag to update ape2 tags from id3v2 tags?

I ran Tag --force ape2, but it seems to have given Lyrics3v2 tags priority over id3v2 (i think), and so some files where tagged wrong, and now i can't update the ape2 tags (apart from manually with foobar). If not, it would be my feauture request for Tag (Or even better would be a --convert option to convert tags from one format to another)