OK, this is kind of a weird question, and though I think it's been answered before, I didn't really know what to search for, since I'm not THAT familiar with the terminology, so my searches came up with no results. My apologies in advance.

Basically, I mainly use Windows to tag my files (dunno if it's a good idea or not) via the right-click>properties way. I had a bunch of songs that I re-tagged using this method, but foobar keeps displaying them as the way they were before I re-tagged them. I tried using the "tagging->reload from files" function but it didn't change anything. I also tried disabling id3v1, then 2, then APE tags, one at a time, and then eventually just re-enabled them because they didn't do anything. I'm at a loss here, mainly because there were a lot of songs re-tagged and if it's at all possible I would like to avoid re-tagging them through foobar.

Here are my questions:

1. What id3 version does windows use to tag files. id3v1? v2? etc.
2. What does foobar check first?
3. How do I set foobar to read whatever tagging format windows uses?


Thanks.

bump and update: I just used mp3tag to retag everything, and foobar still won't recognize the change. FWIW, the tags were originally in kanji, so I (by hand) changed each song title to romaji. However, foobar still reads the tags as kanji no matter what I do.


Anyone have any answers/insights/comments?

Do you mean the setting in "Advanced" preferences that is labeled "Preferred tag writing scheme"? That one does not influence what tags foobar2000 reads in any way. It will always read data from all tags it finds and combine them. Perhaps that is where the problem lies in your case. Try the "Tagging/MP3 Tag Types..." command on your files. If they have an APEv2 tag, you should remove that. Windows Explorer does not know about APEv2 tags and will not update them.

foosion: thanks for the response. The "Tagging/MP3 Tag Types" function was indeed the one I used. I tried messing with all of the available settings, to no avail (i.e., disabling APE does nothing, disabling id3v2 does nothing, both with the other two checked). Eventually I did mess up all of the tags on my files, but I have a backup of all of my audio files in case things like this happen, so it's no big deal. I guess I could just re-tag everything using foobar, but it's a pain to do it via the right-click->properties method. It's just weird to me that foobar won't read these tags, because AFAIK mp3tag said that the files were tagged with romaji on "id3v2.3(sometimes id3v2.4, I don't know how to standardize them all to 2.4 via mp3tag)", after which in parentheses it says "ID3v1 ID3v2.x APEv2". This would suggest that mp3tag updated all of the tags, but for some reason foobar just doesn't want to read them correctly. I'm at a loss at this point.

Thanks for your help so far.

It seems that the kanji data are in APEv2 tags, and the romaji in ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4. You can try removing the APEv2 tags from a few files in Mp3tag and see what happens in foobar. (To set Mp3tag to remove only APEv2 tags: Options, Tags, Mpeg, Remove, select only APEv2.)

About your other question, how to use always ID3v2.4:

foobar2000 defaults to ID3v2.4
Mp3tag defaults to ID3v2.3, but you can change this in the options

Windows Explorer, as far I remember, writes both ID3v1 and ID3v2.3, always. There are shell extensions that enhance the tagging capabilities of Explorer, and I think that a couple of them support ID3v2.4.

Thanks! That did the trick. Additional thanks for your info on tagging. As an aside, I've heard that APE is a better tagging interface in terms of efficiency and speed. Is this difference appreciable, and if so, is there a way to copy my current id3 tags to APE either through mp3tag or foobar?

This will largely be a matter of opinion, although we can assume Peter thinks so since he enables APEv2 tag writing in his program.
What you do break is backwards compatibility. Of course many (maybe even most?) programs choke on the id3v2.4 tags foobar writes anyways, so you could argue that you're not losing "that much" backwards compatibility over that method. However, since APE tags lack an "unsynchronization scheme" you run the risk of "ignorant software" trying to playback the tag as audio data, which results in a bit of static.

In prefs->advanced->tagging->mp3
...select your preferred writing scheme and make sure you check the "Force preferred..." option.

Then in the playlist select your files and go to Tagging->"Rewrite File tags".

Worked like a charm. Thanks for your help! I made a copy of the tags on id3v1,2(.4 I guess because it was done through foobar) and APE v2. That should hopefully ensure maximum compatibility.

Again, thanks to everyone's help in the thread - I don't know how I'd get through all of the nuances of foobar without your guys' help.