XYplorer Beta Club

Was doing this function to make sure I knew how it worked as a user on another forum (Airliners.Net http://www.airliners.net/discussions/no ... n/1765434/) asked for help on how to do this task so I obviously said "XY!"...

Anyway, after updating the ID3 tags from the filename, the Preview tab remains blank, and doesn't get refreshed so one has to select another tab and then reselect Preview....I'm presuming this behavior is not the ideal? As one thus cannot easily see that the tags have been modified.

This user is trying XY, but seems to be having some issues so am trying to help him there, and via email...I suggested he come here also.

j_c_hallgren wrote:Was doing this function to make sure I knew how it worked as a user on another forum (Airliners.Net http://www.airliners.net/discussions/no ... n/1765434/) asked for help on how to do this task so I obviously said "XY!"...

Anyway, after updating the ID3 tags from the filename, the Preview tab remains blank, and doesn't get refreshed so one has to select another tab and then reselect Preview....I'm presuming this behavior is not the ideal? As one thus cannot easily see that the tags have been modified.

This user is trying XY, but seems to be having some issues so am trying to help him there, and via email...I suggested he come here also.

Isn't this just a refresh problem? If he reselects the file the data are updated. His main need was the renaming and this works, right?

admin wrote:Isn't this just a refresh problem? If he reselects the file the data are updated. His main need was the renaming and this works, right?

Yes, that part is a refresh issue, in that having the Preview tab go blank caused him (and me) some confusion...When you rename a file, the results are shown immediately without a user invoked refresh, so in this case, having the Preview reappear automatically would be preferable, I believe.

As far as the renaming, he was/is still having some "issues"...it's easier for me to just point you to the other forums thread instead of recopying it all here, so look at http://www.airliners.net/discussions/no ... 1765434/#8 and then the screen shots in reply 10 there.

He's got a problem with length (not sure exactly where, if just IP) and properties not showing results...[/url]

j_c_hallgren wrote:

admin wrote:Isn't this just a refresh problem? If he reselects the file the data are updated. His main need was the renaming and this works, right?

Yes, that part is a refresh issue, in that having the Preview tab go blank caused him (and me) some confusion...When you rename a file, the results are shown immediately without a user invoked refresh, so in this case, having the Preview reappear automatically would be preferable, I believe.

As far as the renaming, he was/is still having some "issues"...it's easier for me to just point you to the other forums thread instead of recopying it all here, so look at http://www.airliners.net/discussions/no ... 1765434/#8 and then the screen shots in reply 10 there.

He's got a problem with length (not sure exactly where, if just IP) and properties not showing results...[/url]

XY only supports ID3V1.1:

Song title: 30 characters
Artist: 30 characters
Album: 30 characters
Year: 4 characters
Comment: 30 characters
Genre: 1 byte

I guess his titles are too long?

Getting back to this thread finally...yes, from the discussions at A.Net, i found that he was expecting the newer ID3v2 style tags, so XY won't handle it for him...and tonight I got this email from him, which I'll share here as nothing really personal it it:

From: "Diamond \(Kevin\)"
----------------------------------------------------------------
I am frustrated!

Such a great product (XY) comes along and does all this wonderful stuff, and yet it won't take me to my final destination.

If you have any influence* over the author(s), please press them to make
their 'mp3/special' features work with the latest and greatest tag format!

Also, please allow the users the option of including the file extension in
the song title field. That is my way of knowing that the song has been
properly named and that the ID3 tag matches the filename.

Take care,
Kevin

* somehow I get the idea that you have a lot of influence with them. :-)

But from wikipedia, it seems that to support these newer tags for updating takes a fair amount of effort and I don't really suspect that XY will go that far in that direction as it's somewhat of a specialty function....

j_c_hallgren wrote:Getting back to this thread finally...yes, from the discussions at A.Net, i found that he was expecting the newer ID3v2 style tags, so XY won't handle it for him...and tonight I got this email from him, which I'll share here as nothing really personal it it:

From: "Diamond \(Kevin\)"
----------------------------------------------------------------
I am frustrated!

Such a great product (XY) comes along and does all this wonderful stuff, and yet it won't take me to my final destination.

If you have any influence* over the author(s), please press them to make
their 'mp3/special' features work with the latest and greatest tag format!

Also, please allow the users the option of including the file extension in
the song title field. That is my way of knowing that the song has been
properly named and that the ID3 tag matches the filename.

Take care,
Kevin

* somehow I get the idea that you have a lot of influence with them. :-)

But from wikipedia, it seems that to support these newer tags for updating takes a fair amount of effort and I don't really suspect that XY will go that far in that direction as it's somewhat of a specialty function....

Well, I never got much feedback from the music users, so I'm kind of unwilling to do much in that direction. Unless I find myself needing ID3V2 it won't happen. Technically it's easy, but the interface would be difficult because ID3V2 has more fields and does not fit as nicely into the info panel. Too much trouble... Also I can't believe that there aren't any apps existing doing what the guy wants...

admin wrote:Also I can't believe that there aren't any apps existing doing what the guy wants...

There are a lot of tools to do this, both free and paid. My weapons of choice would be any one of these 3, in order of preference:

* foobar2000 (free)
* Mp3Tag (free)
* MediaMonkey (free & paid)

admin wrote:Well, I never got much feedback from the music users, so I'm kind of unwilling to do much in that direction. Unless I find myself needing ID3V2 it won't happen. Technically it's easy, but the interface would be difficult because ID3V2 has more fields and does not fit as nicely into the info panel. Too much trouble... Also I can't believe that there aren't any apps existing doing what the guy wants...

Well, the field for music tagging and management is already quite full of specialized players.

I don't have any use for tagging within a file manager. The interface for doing so is usually clumsy and lacks all of the power that is needed to really handle the task. No offense Don, it's a nice bullet point, but I'd be surprised if there's a lot of people that use it frequently.

One problem with having the support is that there are so many audio formats out there, and a lot of different implementations for metadata, that the ability to do ID3v1 tagging simply isn't enough. To complicate that more ID3 versions differ quite a bit, even between 2.3 and 2.4. Furthermore, the large corporations like Apple and Microsoft, have done what is their norm and implemented their own versions that throw the spec out the window.


It all becomes quite complicated very quickly and if done incorrectly it could be exploited to allow code execution through buffer overflows. (See the recent vulnerabilities in FLAC.)

---------------------------

What that guy wants can be done in a number of apps. Foobar2000, MP3Tag, The Godfather, Tag & Rename can all do this. I use Foobar and MP3Tag for all of my tagging needs.


In MP3Tag he would want to load the files, select the ones he wants to update, and then go to Convert->Filename - Tag.

A new dialog will open and he should enter "%artist% - %title%" (w/o the quotes), and can then preview it and/or apply the changes.