After I tag an AAC file using Atomic Parsley, Amarok can read it, iTunes can read it, but FooBar can't. Does anyone know why this would be? Foobar can read all my files tagged with iTunes, so that's why this really confuses me since I thought it was one in the same. Thanks!

I'm just going to bump this one time, then I'll let it die I promise.

I tested a "scene" MP4/AAC file tagged using AP "0.8.4 (utf8)" and found that the tags are mostly compatible, and most do not fail to read using foobar2000 0.9.2b3.

The lyrics do not seem compatible, nor do advisory or other such tags - at they do not appear as additional metadata. I didn't test anything else like artwork, podcast tags, or TV tags, as I don't have much use for these or the time to properly test.

Can try it again, and then if you still have problems, provide more details (possibly a AP metadata dump of your file that does not read at all)?

Problem possibly found - AP sucks on Windows. No Unicode, buggy port in general.

My rips seem to come from OS X origin, and use AP that does support UTF-8.

Thank you very much for looking into this for me. I went ahead and did it all again and documented the whole process. Here's my console:



And here's the resulting file:

http://www.pkulak.com/silence.m4a

That file there is read fine by both iTunes and Amarok, but Foobar loads it as if there were no tags attached at all.

Thanks for the additional information.

I downloaded your file and it indeed does not work correctly.

However, what version of AP are you running? I have no such --writeBack option. I was able to reproduce your problem with this small test file, and also noticed this same program is giving me problems with other "compliant" software as well.

I did notice that AP does not work with files using MP4 chapters (Nero spec) - "3gp(6) files are no longer supported." I have also noticed other major problems with MP4 tag compatability today as well, in further testing, not just with foobar2000 and AtomicParsley and iTunes, but between other unrelated MP4 software as well.

I'll let you know when I know more.

Older versions of AtomicParsley seem pretty broken. Don't use them. Not to mention the newest versions containing such non-sense as:



Need I go on? This all seems very "immature" to me, and biased against foobar2000's adoption of Nero tagging scheme.

Anyway, when using the latest AP (0.8.8) version on files encoded by iTunes or Nero that are untouched by previous versions of this software, I'm not able to reproduce these problems. I would however suggest you stay away from this software as testing shows it is pretty touchy and full of hacks.

You can use foobar2000 to set tags using the command-line as well:



Hope this helps.

I just tried tagging a neroAacEnc.exe file with the latest AP and it didn't work. However, just for kicks I encoded the same wav with iTunes then tagged it with AP and Foobar could read it fine. I think I'll post a link to this in the new Nero encoder thread and see if the devs there can make any sense of it.

I wish I could tag with Foobar but Wine doesn't seem to want to let me.

I really think the problem here is AtomicParsley. I have no problem using QuickTime and/or iTunes to write metadata to NeroAACenc encoded files. I've not yet tried to see if AtomicParsley successfully works with these files and if they are cross-compatible, but at this point, I don't really want to be bothered. Let us just hope that the Nero MP4 tagging specifications will be made public soon and more third parties can officially support their tag types, which includes per-chapter tagging (as used in foobar2000) is very useful.

As far as I'm aware, AtomicParsley and other software that implements Apple iTunes compatible metadata does so by examination of files and reverse engineering. Published specifications would do everyone a lot of good here.

The best solution that should be coming soon would be the release of the command-line NeroAACtag, which should give you an easy way to write metadata that will be read by both iTunes and foobar2000/Nero specifications and will solve your problems.

If NeroAACenc works with your WINE, I would assume their next release will as well. What is the problem you are experiencing now when trying to use WINE with foobar2000 for command-line tagging?

Yea, leaving AP alone at this point is a good idea. And I don't mean to make it sound like like AP's bugs are your problems, of course.

Right now I can't seem to tag with Foobar because I get a permissions denied message on the file. I assume this is because Wine doesn't let a program access files outside of the Windows sandbox, which I usually would appreciate. I suppose I could write some script to move a file, tag it, then move it back, but that's pretty hacky when a Nero tagger is hopefully right around the corner [crosses fingers]. (neroAACEnc works because it's a stand-alone and does not need to be run from "Program Files")

For a "definitive" solution, check this thread.