Hi everyone.

A new convert, here, to the world of Foobar2k. The learning curve is steep, I've got to say, but I see so much potential I'm VERY excited!

Briefly: using 0.9.1, xp Pro, local sound library, soundblaster audigy 2 throwing digital sound out to a DAC/Hi-Fi through ASIO (ASIO4ALL).

So onto the questioning. The majority of my music is in a collection of various lossless formats but I'm consolidating all of the above into FLAC as I'm praying MPD will have corrections to the stuttering in its next round of updates and then I'll be able to have lossless playback on my 3rd Gen ipod (since I can't/won't use ALAC for reasons involving my many linux pcs and just a beef I have with proprietary formats -- neither here nor there).

In any case I've been happy taking advantage of the conversion utilities packaged with fb2k to run conversions and keep tagging information in tact. It seems that fb2k uses OGG as the tag format (I couldn't find this anywhere in the documentation, though). I'd like to know a little bit more about the tags. I've gone to the guides sites above, checked out the wiki but haven't found a complete reference.

Is TAGZ it's own tagging format or is it just another name for the scripting engine that's writing OGG tags?

Also, I know that many of my tags are Id3v2, some are ape, some are id3v1 -- I'd like to consolidate all of those, as well to OGG and then back-populate the less advanced ID3v2 with the relevant information -- is this possible? If so how?

Lastly (for now), is there a function reference somewhere for scripting? I was looking for some basic functions such as an IF... THEN... or just the reference guide in general and haven't been able to locate it.

Any and all help is appreciated -- many thanks.
~cheuschober

Too much text. Didn't read it all. But as for you last question, here you go:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...ormat_Reference

- foobar does use Vorbis comments for FLAC.

- TAGZ is just the name of the scripting system used in foobar (the same one in mil3s's link).

- You can change the tag types by selecting the relevant tracks (as in, this'll only work if all the tracks you're selecting are in a format capable of using multiple tag types, which as far as i know is just MP3), right-clicking, and going to 'Tagging' > 'MP3 tag types...' in the menu. You'll have a list of check boxes for ID3v1/ID3v2/APEv2. Just deselect the ones you want to erase or select the ones you want to apply. If you want to 'back-populate' your ID3v1 tags, i imagine you'll have to apply ID3v2 to all of them, then erase all the ID3v1 tags, and then re-apply all the ID3v1 tags. (yeah it's not the best system but that's how you do it)

- In addition to the page mil3s linked to, there's a tag-format reference that comes with foobar. It's the titleformat_help.html file located in the program directory. It's not as complete as the Wiki though.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Missed that page in the wiki.

In a brief followup if my tags are in this assorted lot is there a way to bulk-force them all to vorbis?

Also...

I've tried some scripting (which is so cool to be able to do!) but before I run off and reinvent the wheel is there any easy way of making sure special characters characters don't make it into tags and/or filenames? Are there any stock scripts people tend to use to rectify this?

Again best,
~Cheuschober

IIRC, select "Tagging" > "Rewrite file tags" from the context menu, and foobar will rewrite tags using it's preferred format (Vorbis comments for FLAC).

Perhaps you could test on some copies first.

NB: The "Properties" dialogue will tell you what tag types your MP3s have, it may be worth seeing if it is the same for FLAC files.

Just for clarification if anyone reads this later I did a little specification reading -- FLAC can have ID3's in addition to Vorbis tag information however it's not part of the official spec and thus not guaranteed that any of the tags will be read and can vary from decoder to decoder -- it's then suggested that you delete all ID3 tags from FLAC files to avoid confusion.

Well yeah, but i meant capable through foobar. I don't think foobar gives you the option of using different tag types on any other formats. Maybe MPC, i dunno, i don't use it.

Most modern formats except MP3 actually have a single well-defined tag format, so there is no need to offer a choice for them.