FLAC ID-Tag

[JLoftus]

In the help file, under "ID3v1.1-tag editing", it is noted:

While previewing an MP3 file you can view and edit its ID3v1-tag. If a file has (also) ID3v2 tags then those tags are shown and no editing is possible.

Is there any way to edit (or even just view) the ID-Tag fields for FLAC files?

[admin]

Could you send me such a file, please?

[JLoftus]

PM sent with a link to a FLAC sample that has ID-Tag information.

Thanks for looking into this!

Windows Explorer may not show the ID-Tag information, depending on what applications you have installed in your machine, but FLAC Frontend will allow you to view and edit them, http://xiph.org/flac/

[JLoftus]

Thanks for the quick reply Don!

Of course I chose a poor quality file, I didn't even listen to it, shame on me, that sounded horrible!

I have tens of thousands of FLAC files and wish to add a [custom?] columns in XY to show some ID-Tag fields

[admin]

The file does not seem to have ID-Tag information, at least not in the format used by MP3s. Any idea about the format I should look for?

[JLoftus]

From here: https://xiph.org/flac/faq.html#general__tagging

What kinds of tags does FLAC support?

FLAC has it's own native tagging system which is identical to that of Vorbis. They are called alternately "FLAC tags" and "Vorbis comments". It is the only tagging system required and guaranteed to be supported by FLAC implementations.

Out of convenience, the reference decoder knows how to skip ID3 tags so that they don't interfere with decoding. But you should not expect any tags beside FLAC tags to be supported in applications; some implementations may not even be able to decode a FLAC file with ID3 tags.

Here's an app, try this to see the Ogg Vorbis tags in the file I sent: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/EasyTAG

[admin]

Well, your file certainly has FLAC Vorbis tag, not ID3 tags.

Actually, the official docs say this on https://xiph.org/flac/documentation_for ... rview.html:

As a convenience, the reference decoder knows how to skip ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags. Note however that the FLAC specification does not require compliant implementations to support ID3 in any form and their use is strongly discouraged.

[TheQwerty]

Xiph does a pretty decent job with their documentation...
https://xiph.org/flac/format.html#metad ... is_comment
https://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html

[JLoftus]

Is there any current way to view these tags in XY?, if so, can you briefly explain how? And if not, do you think this is something that can be added to XY?

Thanks!

[admin]

I could do it, but I think I won't, sorry. Too little demand. After many years I can safely say that the audio crowd overall holds a clear second place to the image crowd. I'm a musician myself, I know how they tick. You better make business with photographers.

[JLoftus]

OK, well thank you for looking at this anyway, I do appreciate it.

[TheQwerty]

Is there any current way to view these tags in XY?, if so, can you briefly explain how? And if not, do you think this is something that can be added to XY?

Thanks!

Not in the preview pane.*

However, if the information is available in Windows Explorer as a column then XY can also display it either as a column or in the info tooltip for that file.
I don't recall if it worked natively in Windows or only after I installed the K-Lite codec pack, but here I can view the metadata in details mode:

Screenshot of XYplorer showing metadata columns for FLAC files.

2016-02-24 091706.png (15.84 KiB) Viewed 9522 times

These columns can be added using Custom Columns and selecting the appropriate shell properties (FYI: Artists is actually Contributing Artists).

This information can also be displayed on the Meta tab of the Info Panel:

Screenshot of XYplorer's Meta tab showing FLAC metadata.

2016-02-24 092523.png (16.37 KiB) Viewed 9522 times

Hope that helps!

*Technically, if you found a decent Windows Explorer Preview Handler for FLAC that shows the metadata then the recent Preview 2.0 changes would make it possible but requires adding FLAC to the Office Files previewed formats category. No idea if such a preview handler exists though.

[TheQwerty]

I could do it, but I think I won't, sorry. Too little demand. After many years I can safely say that the audio crowd overall holds a clear second place to the image crowd. I'm a musician myself, I know how they tick. You better make business with photographers.

I think you were a few years too late for most people's music management needs - at least in achieving the attention/polish to attract them. Besides, the majority needed to interface with iPods and that meant putting up with iTunes and the only way to not lose your marbles there is to just accept that "Apple knows what's best" and not think about it further.

Had I known about XYplorer in the early 2000s many of my wishes would have been music related. Then life got busy and now I just find it easier to pay for streaming access to someone else's meticulously managed library than deal with those headaches.

XY is well positioned for images though. The timing is perfect with the quality of smartphone cameras and the fact that the major photo services still have rough edges. In fact, with Google killing off Picasa soon there might be an opening to attract customers by offering more in the way of editing/managing photo tags (EXIF).

[JLoftus]

...I don't recall if it worked natively in Windows or only after I installed the K-Lite codec pack

@TheQuerty, thank you. Couple notes: Indeed, the additional fields (Album ArtistContributing artists) show the "Artist" FLAC tag in Explorer, but, this did not display any information within XYplorer until I installed the K-lite codec pack (I chose the basic download). This does help, but, still falls short for one important thing for me: I add a new FLAC ID-Tag which does not appear in any of the extended Property fields for Explorer, and as such, I can't display this tag in XY.

I might have opted to settle for reusing some other of the 200+ extended property fields that Explorer supports, but none of them suit me for the name of the field. Moreover, I would rather use the FLAC native tagging so systems which use that can honor my new tag.

Anyway, this is a start, thank you again.

[highend]

Don't know if it supports "new" tags, but you could try
http://kevinboone.net/README_gettags.html

There is a native Windows binary and it reads at least the standard tags (from .flac as well)

TRACKNUMBER 1
TRACKTOTAL ...
TITLE Hello
ARTIST Adele
ALBUM 25
DATE ...
GENRE ...
PUBLISHER ...
URL ...

This in combination with a custom column...