I have released WMP Tag Plus, a Windows Media Player plug-in for viewing and editing metadata tags of MPEG4, Vorbis, FLAC and WavPack files.

WMP Tag Plus is different from the existing tag support plug-ins in the fact that it has a deeper integration into WMP, while the other plug-ins rely more or less on a workaround. This means that you can now use the Advanced Tag Editor to edit the tags of MPEG4, Vorbis, FLAC and WavPack files, which wasn't possible with the existing plug-ins. Another advantage is that WMP Tag Plus can set the playback length of these files in the library, which makes seeking possible when playing them.

WMP Tag Plus is written for Windows Media Player 11 and 12.

Download WMP Tag Plus

Update (30/09/09): Some more extensive testing revealed two more bugs that I hadn't noticed earlier. The first one happened on files with filenames containing special characters (such as é or ü). Tag reading and writing failed on these files. The second bug prevented the genre-tag of some files from being read correctly.
These bugs are now fixed and the WMP Tag Plus installation package has been updated. If you have already installed it, you can just re-download the package and install it over the previous version.

Update (09/10/09): The second beta of WMP Tag Plus has been released, and includes Vorbis, FLAC and WavPack tag support, on top of the MPEG4 tag support that was already present in the first beta.

Update (22/10/09): WMP Tag Plus is now officially released, only some minor issues had to be fixed since the release of the second beta. The official WMP Tag Plus web page is at http://bmproductions.fixnum.org/wmptagplus

Update (07/11/09): WMP Tag Plus 1.1 fixes a bug that prevented tag changes from being written correctly to certain FLAC files. This update is recommended if you are using the FLAC tag support of WMP Tag Plus.

I got so excited upon seeing this that I immediately downloaded and installed it, without noticing the fine print that FLAC support is coming soon.

You might want to have a look at this concerning the missing length and bitrate fields for FLAC files played from the Media Library. (Or perhaps you already have a clear idea on how to fix it...)

When opening an external FLAC file in WMP12, the xiph Directshow Filters for Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Theora and FLAC and DC-Bass Source Filter are both able to provide seek. madFlac provides the length and bitrate but seek is broken. In any case WMP12's "Preview" can always skip successfully...

Thanks for the link, but I already knew about that thread. It actually was one of the reasons why I started writing this plug-in (if you view the thread in Google Groups, you will see that I even posted some replies).

I do have a clear idea on how to fix it, and it's already implemented in the plug-in WMP Tag Plus will set the length of files for all supported formats, so once FLAC support is ready, it will set the length for FLAC files too.


That's correct, but with the emphasis on "external". Files being played directly from the library won't be seekable. WMP Tag Plus fixes this.

That's great! Thanks in advance.

fantastic. couldn't come at a better time. thanks for the work and i look forward to the flac support.

(was just reading through this thread and was wondering what happend to your guy's wonderful ideas.
http://groups.google.mg/group/microsoft.pu...c9c48e535f0bf8)

I am pleased to announce that the next beta of WMP Tag Plus is ready for download. On top of MPEG4 tag support, this release now includes tag support for FLAC, Vorbis and, as a bonus, WavPack. WMP Tag Plus is now UAC (User Account Control) aware too.

Download WMP Tag Plus

If no real issues arise, this beta will become the final release of WMP Tag Plus 1.0. Again, please let me know if you find any problems, so they can be fixed before the final release.

After deleting the FLAC files and re-adding them to the library everything works great. Thanks!!

P.S: While you're at it what about tag support for APE?

EDIT: I just noticed that some/all tags failed to be read from files with non-ASCII characters in their filenames (depending on the Unicode plane I suppose).

What version of WMP and Windows are you using? Does this only happen with FLAC files, or with Vorbis and MPEG4 files too? Would it be possible to give me some examples of filenames that fail?


As far as I know, APE is just a tagging format used in different audio formats (such as WavPack). Do you mean Monkey's Audio?

nice that was fast.
99% of my flac made it in.

the one album i code not add properly is godspeed's "f#a# ∞" i think it is the '∞' character in the album name that is giving the problem. just a guess as it is one of the only flacs i could not get in there. i can zip it up and upload to a share if you'd like a sample to play with.

the single other issue i have is this, and it is a little strange and i am kind of guessing at how it manifests.
it appears that when WMP adds an mp3 to the library it uses the song tag's 'album artist' field to populate the WMP's artist information, and the 'artist' field to populate WMP's 'contributing artist' information.
so let's say i have a compliation album that i put 'various artists' into the song tag's 'album artist' field, and the actual artist for each song in the song tag's 'artist' field. if it is an mp3, WMP will file it under "various artists", with each song having it's contributing artist as the actual performer of the song. if i add a flac of the same album, it does not process the 'album artist' field, and instead the album will end up with WMP adding each artist seperately.

i really hope that makes sense. again i can send a zip of a flac vs. mp3 version of the same album with the same tags if you'd like to compare how WMP treats them.

i cannot thank you enough for this contribution. it has made MCE an actual viable solution. you did some great work here. let me know if you need any help or more input.

Thanks for the information. There indeed was a problem with filenames containing Unicode characters such as '∞', but I'm pretty sure that I have been able to fix it. Please re-download WMP Tag Plus and install it over your current installation. Re-add that one album to your library and check if the tags are now being read properly.

Regarding your second problem, WMP Tag Plus does support the album artist-field of FLAC files, but only when it's stored as a Vorbis tag. FLAC files can contain both ID3 and Vorbis tags, so I guess that your FLAC files contain the album artist only as ID3, resulting in WMP Tag Plus not being able to read it. I could verify this if you would PM me a sample FLAC file (1 file is enough).

BTW, you still haven't told me your WMP and Windows version

Thanks very much for adding WavPack support to your plugin!

Once you have a final release (or maybe you have?) I will put a link up on the WavPack site (if that's okay).

David

Please do, David, that would be great. The current version can be considered a "release candidate". If no big issues come up during the following week, it will become the final release.

hey that worked perfectly for the unicode character.

i pm'd you two files for album artist thing.

hey seek works for the flac files as well. my system is win7 x64 pro, so that makes it WMP12.
great job.

WMP12 on Windows 7 x64.

Well APE tags originated from Monkey's Audio, so yes. It shouldn't be hard to add support for .ape files now right? (Like how FLAC uses Vorbis comments...)

EDIT: Yes, the latest version does fix the Unicode filename problem. Thanks!

Thanks for the files. It looks like the FLAC file does contain the album artist as a Vorbis tag, contrary to what I was expecting. However, I noticed that this was stored as "ALBUM ARTIST", while WMP Tag Plus only checks the "ALBUMARTIST" field (without the space). I could easily fix this, so please re-download and reinstall WMP Tag Plus and re-add the files (once again, sorry ). Check if WMP Tag Plus now reads the album artist correctly.


I'm afraid that it is actually quite hard to add support for Monkey's Audio (.ape) files. WMP Tag Plus uses TagLib, which does support APE tags in WavPack and MPC files, but doesn't support the Monkey's Audio format at all. If there are a lot of requests for it, I might add support for this in a future version. Someone else could make this too; WMP Tag Plus has pluggable tag support and I'm planning to put some API documentation online soon.

Be aware that some people/applications use ALBUMARTIST, and others use ALBUM ARTIST. Welcome to loose tagging formats.

For reading, the best practice would be to read either. For writing, that's really up to you on which one you think should be the 'correct' one. Winamp & dBpoweramp, for example, write ALBUMARTIST. foobar2000 writes ALBUM ARTIST. The previous popular tag extender, Mab_fr's WMPTSE used ALBUMARTIST.

i will check the second i get home. stuck at work now and itching to try it out. (the system is off when not in use so no remote.)



i am using tag & rename to tag the all the music files, which i now realize is using "album artist". i did notice with foorbar that it is captured as "album artist" when checking the songs as well.

this tag extender works 1000x better than the previous popular tag extender. if the above issue is in fact corrected, i have no album that did not get placed into the library exactly as it should. PLUS now you can seek though the file and the time is correct. fantastic work.

just got in and it looks perfect my friend. i can't tell you enough how great this is and what great work you did here. thanks for the effort.

one other thing, unrelated to your plugin but it is related to WMP tagging... does WMP read the "Disc Number" tag value??

I don't use APE files, but they are quite popular too (second only to FLAC for lossless audio I suppose?)... It will definitely be something to look forward to.

EDIT: Added a taglib feature request here

WMP Tag Plus will now read both fields, and will write ALBUMARTIST, so I guess that should be alright.


I think WMP does actually read it, but doesn't seem to be using it anywhere. In WMP 11, you could still view and edit this tag with the Advanced Tag Editor, which is unfortunately removed in WMP 12. There isn't something like a Disc number-column that can be enabled either.


Thanks. I have voted for the request and added myself as CC, so I will be notified when something changes.

Ah! this is real nice to see, thanks for the notice in the topic about 'WMPTSE'. The problem with that plugin was that is wasn't actually writing the tag information into FLAC files.

I hope this works, so I can finally start using my flac collection again

So, I spend some time.. and have to conclude it is NOT working for flac files. This is what I have experienced:

Clean WMP library (the latest WMP, comes with Windows 7). Put one album of flac files in directory 'music' (no subdirectory's). In WMP I have added the directory 'music' as the library directory. WMP finds the album (10 files). I search for album details with internetservice of WMP and I download correct titles and additional tag info. Then hit update media details. What happens: files are placed in subdirectory's ('rip file option') and have been given the right titles in file name. So far so good. Then I delete the WMP database file from my c: drive. Now I start up WMP again.. it start building a fresh new library.. If the plugin was doing allright, I should have written the correct titles hardcoded into flac files. Now this is where it goes wrong, because once finished building the library again, it shows the old titles and not the new one I received by looking up the album..

WOuld be real nice if you could fix this in the plugin.. thnx!

Thanks for the report. Did you use Apply media information changes (in the Tools menu) after the tags were updated? This command forces WMP to immediately write the changes to the files. This is important, because WMP usually waits a while, before writing the changes in the background. Also, please make sure that you don't have any other tag support plug-ins for WMP installed, as these could be getting in the way of WMP Tag Plus.

I currently don't have access to a Windows 7 system, so I can only try to reproduce your problem later tonight. In the meantime, could you disable the "Rename music files" and "Rearrange music in rip music folder" settings, and check if the changes get written to the FLAC files if you edit the tags manually in the library? Don't forget to use "Apply media information changes" here too. You can verify that the changes got written by removing the files from the library, and adding them back through Tools - Advanced - Restore deleted library items (so there's no need to rebuild the library). You can also use an external tagging tool such as AudioShell.

Hey Tim,

I did indeed apply the media information changes. And that also resulted in the files being placed under subdirectory's and renamed filenames with correct titles. I will check out your options asap, first, since I'm not at a windows xp machine, I will do exactly the same like I did yesterday on the windows 7 machine, just to make sure it's not caused by something I'm doing wrong.

I'll get back to you.

Okay, completely NOT getting this. Here is the situation, on a Windows XP machine with WMP 11.

I have a song from Van Morrison, called 'Oh the warm feeling'. Funny thing is that in WMP online database it is wrong saved: 'Oh the Warn Feeling'. That is how I can check if things are adjusted or not.

So I have loaded the file into WMP. Title then is called 'warn', also in filename with small caps.. I load information from WMP database.. It finds the song, and I hit the ok button. Title is called now 'warm' in WMP. Also it immediatly changes filename to 'Warn' with caps. Then apply media changes, first it changes files (can see by timestamp) nothing seem to happen, then at last, when whole album has been changed, it changes back to file name 'warm' and also small caps. This also happens in WMP where titles are changed back (so it is not corresponding WMP database anymore) and with small caps.

Another funny thing: if I check tags with Audioshell, it tells me title is 'Oh the Warn Feeling'. If I check tags in WMP it tells me 'Oh the warm feeling'. I have deleted the database and let it rebuild again: still the same situation. No tags are written, although Audioshell displays correct tags.

So I have also checked if tags were written if I uncheck "Rename music files" and "Rearrange music in rip music folder" settings. Still the same problem.

Also checked to manually edit the file. After I change the title of a song and hit apply media changes, It changes back to original name???? Then If I check in explorer with Audioshell, it has been changed? Still wmp won't read it out.

Now here it comes: I changed the filename manually to 'test'. Without an active database, I opened the file: it shows title 'test' like I have adjusted. THen I rebuilded my database, and it loaded the 'Warm feeling' title again. That is interesting, since it was NOT in tag anymore, and also not in filename. Where did WMP get the title from? I also manually opened the file again, title now shows 'Warm feeling' again....

pfffffffff.

conclusion
As far as I can understand, does the plugin indeed change tags in flac file (since Audioshell shows changed tags, and also file timestamp is adjusted). But: WMP somehow is forced to read a hardcoded filetitle tag, somewhere in the FLAC file instead of title tag or filename.

Well enough bugtesting for now hhehehe.. this should be valuable information for you

Thanks for doing some more investigation. I tried to reproduce the problem by following your previous message but everything worked fine on my system. This makes me suspect that it only happens on certain files.


I think it would be best to go on with this, the rest is too confusing for me too Would it be possible to send me this file through PM? Something like Yousendit will do fine. Hopefully, this will allow me to reproduce the problem so I can start debugging it.

I have just send a pm..

might it be that it has something to do with the files being stored an a network attached system (NAS Synology DS 207+)??

Thanks for sending me the file. WMP Tag Plus indeed doesn't write changed tags to the file correctly (it does actually save the changes, but doesn't overwrite the old values, and gets the old values again on the next read). AudioShell does seem to read the new values, so that explains why you were seeing different things in AudioShell and WMP. WMP Tag Plus uses TagLib to read/write tags, and I'm pretty sure that this is a bug in TagLib, so I have reported this on their bug tracker. I guess the only thing we can do now is wait, and hope that a TagLib developer will quickly notice and fix this...

The bug only seems to happen on certain FLAC files, I think that most files will still work fine.

Nice you have undertaken action so quickly..

and also to see that I'm not crazy.. hehehe

will see what happens!

thanks!

So I wanted to try out your plugin, having seen the purported advantages over the WMP Tag Support Extender. However, when I tried to install it I got the error: "Setup was unable to find Windows Media Player on this computer. Please make sure that at least version 11 of Windows Media Player is installed, this is required to use WMP Tag Plus." This is odd, seeing how I am running Windows 7 x64, which has WMP 12 installed. I use the Shark007 codec pack with the x64 components, and I have tried using both the 32-bit and 64-bit WMP's by setting them in the x64 Components settings manager.
So, my question is: why?

Thanks for your help in advance.

I installed the x64 Components Add-on myself and noticed that it made some changes to the registry that confused the WMP Tag Plus installer. Please re-download WMP Tag Plus, this problem should be fixed now. Note that WMP Tag Plus only works on the 32-bit version of WMP.

Thanks for the timely response. I am actually in the process of reinstalling Windows 7 in honor of the launch (yeah, I'm one of those people reinstalling all the time). I will try this in a few minutes.
Just curious, why are all these extensions 32-bit only? What would be the work to get a 64 bit version up and running? And also, is your source available? I'm trying to get into windows development (particularly WMP/C) and I would like to look through the source of a few of my favourites.

It would require quite a lot of work to make an x64 version of WMP Tag Plus. Besides that, it would add two more test cases, on top of Windows XP and the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista and 7. In my opinion, it really isn't worth all the trouble: the 32-bit version of WMP works just as good and just as fast as the 64-bit version. I guess that the other extension developers feel the same way about this.

The source code of WMP Tag Plus isn't available. I wouldn't recommend it as a starting point anyway, because WMP Tag Plus relies on API hooking to add metadata support, which requires at least some programming experience and a good understanding of the Windows internals. The plug-in uses very little of the actual WMP API.

BTW, WMP Tag Plus is now out of beta and is officially released, the plug-in's web page is at http://bmproductions.fixnum.org/wmptagplus

OK, understood. I do however have another interesting problem. Sometimes when I open windows media center (player) I have no media, and it tkes a little while to load. Then other times I have media, and it all loads twice. I've checked the file locations, they are the same. I'm not really sure what to make of this.

That doesn't really sound like it could be caused by WMP Tag Plus. Does this still happen after uninstalling my plug-in? Maybe your WMP library somehow got corrupted and needs to be rebuild? (be aware that rebuilding the library will make you lose all play counts, and possibly ratings too)

Well this is definitely something that has happened since the installation. However, I exited WMP and restarted and for the last few times it seems to have stabilised. I really like this plugin and will definitely remember to include it in my apps that must be installed on a new computer. Thanks for all your hard work.
As a side note, I have my HomeGroup computers linked, and I am trying to play media over the internet (at university). I can play the MP3's but the FLAC's do not play. Do you know if it's just a bandwidth issue or does your plugin not afford this capability?

Are the required DirectShow filters for FLAC playback installed on the target PC? That's the only thing I can think of, to be honest. WMP Tag Plus only handles the metadata, anything related to playback is handled by other components. I have never tested this, so it might work, but it just as well won't.

Just browsing this thread, and it may be worth noting that to get some 64bit codecs (flac, mov, whatnot) running on W7 64bit in Media Center using the shark007 codec pack (from here) you have to make WMP12 64bit the default instance of WMP (W7 comes with both 32 and 64 bit versions, and out of the box by default it runs 32bit). I guess that might mean having to run WMP12 (32) for tagging duties and WMP12 (64) at other times. Or something... which might get sort of annoying.

Still, when people are writing useful software and providing it gratis who's complaining at minor inconveniences?!

Are there any tangible benefits of running the 64-bit WMP?

I had to do it to get the 64 bit codecs (flac, mov some others, but those two I needed) from shark007 to work in W7(64) Media Center - which we use in the living room. Without making 64 bit WMP the default, Media Center would complain that it couldn't find those files: even though they showed up in its library, when you clicked to play them they wouldn't... at least that was the case for QT movies. Unconfirmed for flacs, as once I diagnosed the problem I set WMP 64 bit as the default and haven't seen the problem again.

This was even though WMP 32 bit and 64 bit were perfectly happy to play those mov files. So... confusingly for my setup the advantage of running WMP 64 bit is in the behaviour of Media Center, not WMP itself!

Should leave it at that - don't want to get the thread off-topic...

any news on the bug? I have tried today again with some other files, but all seem to have the problem.

One of the TagLib developers asked me to send a FLAC file that shows the problem, so I sent him the same file you sent me. That was last weekend, and no real news since then. I will ask them for an update myself this weekend if nothing has happened by then.

Another thing that might be useful, is if you could tell how exactly the FLAC files were created.

Hey Tim,

I checked against some deeper myself and found out something interesting. The flac files are on a NAS (Synology), and I haven given rights to read/write. When I change something to the files in wmp, eg: searching for album info and apply, I see now that somehow the rights are changed to only read. That might be the problem for not righting it correctly. I don't know if this is a bug caused by your plugin.. but it happens to mp3 and flac files.

I'm gonna post this on synology forum also. Will keep you informed.

Have you have any experience with the plugin in combination with network locations?

oh I forgot to mention that I have created the flac files from original cd's with exact audio copy program.

I think it's pretty safe to say that this isn't caused by my plug-in if it happens to MP3 files too. WMP Tag Plus doesn't read from/write to these files, they are completely handled by WMP itself. It certainly doesn't explain the weird behaviour with tags you were seeing earlier, that really seems to be a bug in TagLib.


No, it was only tested on local music files.

By way of follow up, you can use it as suggested above. The WMP x86 (ie 32bit) plugin for library management and tagging works as advertised. And provided you have x64 codecs set up, once it's in the library, Media Center should find it and play fine. Works for me on flacs (only one album so far, but it works).

One strange thing is that when viewed through the Music Library link in Explorer, which is how W7 organises things, a whole load of extra cover images not all of them from the right album - but all from the same artist in my case, show up in the folder. When you look at the underlying folder though, there's no sign of those added images. Closer examination shows that they are images from the other folders for that artist.

It all looks OK in WMP and WMC though.

OK - all those extra jpg images only happened to that one album. I'm guessing they will go away if I delete and rebuild the WMP database - but haven't got time for that now. A second album didn't pick up all the extra garbage. The Music Library in Windows 7 doesn't see the tags at all even though WMP and WMC do. No surprise really, as the program is a plug-in for WMP, not the OS!

tim...

I just cleared my library and re-added everything since i was updating all the files tags and wanted to start clean.

it seems that now it is not picking up the album art out of the flac file. if i have a folder.jpg with the files it will display that, but if i remove or rename the folder.jpg, WMP is not reading the art out of the file itself. i believe it is supposed to. let me know if i am wrong. i pm'd you a file.

thanks

WMP Tag Plus currently doesn't support album art, sorry for not mentioning this earlier. This is something that might be added later in a new version.