Author Topic: FLAC tagging question (xACT) (Read 9352 times)

ashevillain · « **on:** June 03, 2011, 02:00:36 PM »

I had a show with a song that has an ellipsis in the title (as an example: Find It...Quick!). I used xACT for the tagging if that matters. Problem is that the song title shows "###" instead of "..."

I'm wondering if anyone knows if this issue is related to:

1. xACT tagging the file wrong?
2. other programs reading the tag wrong?
3. the "." not being a supported character for FLAC tags so it gets replaced by "#" no matter what software is used to tag/read the file?
4. some other issue I'm not aware of?

If the "..." is not supported what do people usually put in it's place? I don't like the "###" in there. I guess I might use a comma or underscore if I have to.

Patrick · « **Reply #1 on:** June 03, 2011, 02:41:45 PM »

I had this problem recently and I put spaces in between the periods. Makes for a very long song name when playing in your favorite player, but it's better than seeing #'s.

example: "Monkey . . . Knife . . . Fight"

ashevillain · « **Reply #2 on:** June 03, 2011, 03:07:59 PM »

You know what's weird? I just manually typed the title for that track instead of letting it pull the name from the text file and it appears to have worked. It reads just fine with the "..." in Toast, Cog and VLC. I guess the problem is in xACT (or maybe the shntool functionality) pulling info from text file...must not like the consecutive periods. I had the same problem when using the shntool len function to create the setlist with the track times.

It will be interesting when I burn the discs with Toast (using CD-text)...in this case it might depend on whether my CD player will display that character.

H₂O · « **Reply #3 on:** June 03, 2011, 03:37:25 PM »

I think it's a bug in xACT as I have seen this issue with various characters in xACT (the look fine in Foobar or a player - pull up in xACT and the characters are replaced with #'s).

Typically I see these issues with non-ASCII characters (i.e. Unicode characters)

Such as:
ü

So the period may not be the same period that is in the ASCII character set -> Is it an existing TAG or one you entered - have you tried rewriting it?

ashevillain · « **Reply #4 on:** June 03, 2011, 03:53:04 PM »

Quote from: H²O on June 03, 2011, 03:37:25 PM

So the period may not be the same period that is in the ASCII character set -> Is it an existing TAG or one you entered - have you tried rewriting it?

In my first post I had tagged the file with the Auto-name function and it appeared with the "###" characters in Toast, Cog and VLC. Also the shntool len function had the same characters.

In my second post I manually typed in the track name for the tag and it appeared with the correct "..." characters in the same 3 programs.

H₂O · « **Reply #5 on:** June 03, 2011, 04:36:28 PM »

It could be converting ... (three ASCII) into … (a single Unicode Character) some text fields may do this automatically (i.e. in MS-Word).

It's funny I copied the ... char out of MS-Word and pasted it into this text field and it takes it but ends up converting it to
( … )
when I post the message - so maybe something similar is happening in SMF as well.

H₂O · « **Reply #6 on:** June 03, 2011, 04:41:41 PM »

In Unicode it is:

U+2026

…

Horizontal Ellipsis

H₂O · « **Reply #7 on:** June 03, 2011, 04:44:40 PM »

My guess is that it is a type bug somewhere xACT where a unicode char is being cast to a ascii char - but this is only a guess - Scott Brown would be able to shed light on this (if it is a bug at all).

scb · « **Reply #8 on:** June 05, 2011, 01:33:09 PM »

xACT is (was) just calling the command line "metaflac" command. The way cocoa works, though, was converting any unicode arguments I was passing to metaflac. I spent a bunch of time yesterday and this morning to change the way tags are working. xACT no longer call the command line "metaflac" and will read and write the tags directly. i've also added support for album art

need to do some more testing and cleanup tomorrow

H₂O · « **Reply #9 on:** June 06, 2011, 03:54:52 PM »

THX - One other request - can you add in the ability to add in tags using a cue file or when you split a larger file using a cue file it will tag the new files based on the information in the cue file?

ashevillain · « **Reply #10 on:** June 06, 2011, 03:58:11 PM »

Quote from: H²O on June 06, 2011, 03:54:52 PM

THX - One other request - can you add in the ability to add in tags using a cue file or when you split a larger file using a cue file it will tag the new files based on the information in the cue file?

Do cue sheets even hold that type data? I thought they only held the split point data, not tagging data.

H₂O · « **Reply #11 on:** June 06, 2011, 04:03:21 PM »

Cue files can hold:
- Artist
- Album/Venue info
- Track Name
- Track Number

People use them in foobar/Cog/VLC to play CD "images" and provide the same information found in seperate tagged files (i.e. instead of a tracked version of DSoM there is a single FLAC file with an associated CUE file - this allows for preservation of Pregap, etc). I would think this may bleed over into our realm at some point where some purests want a single FLAC and associated CUE file instead of a bunch FLAC files.

Think of like the FLAC file is the entire audio stream of the CD and that the CUE file is the Table of contents with CD-Text. EAC allows you to generate these from a CD with the correct options selected.

scb · « **Reply #12 on:** June 06, 2011, 08:41:08 PM »

i can take a look at it and see how much work it might be. also need to think how i'd actually do the interface

scb · « **Reply #13 on:** June 07, 2011, 12:22:22 PM »

ok, got something working. needs some testing, though. I need to make sure I didn't break the existing track name functionality

H₂O · « **Reply #14 on:** June 07, 2011, 12:23:42 PM »

I would think you could just add a check box to the shntool screen "on split attempt to tag" or something like that. Or just make it automatic on a shntool split using a cue file with corresponding fields.

I don't know how integrated the two are - if at all.

scb · « **Reply #15 on:** June 07, 2011, 12:33:53 PM »

I don't want to make it totally automatic because I don't want you to split using a cue and have it just tag it with the wrong tags if it failed. the way i just made it work was a second step through the tags tab. you choose a cue sheet, it populates album, artist and pops up the track name window. you can verify/add/update and then just hit tag. it's an extra step, but i like having some user verification in there, especially since cue sheets only have a small number of "standard" tags

scb · « **Reply #16 on:** June 08, 2011, 04:30:17 PM »

i might go back and put in a way to do it in 1 step - but with a "does this look ok?" step before tagging

greenone told me of another bug that I fixed this morning

i'm playing around with adding the dvd-audio functionality from DVD-Audiofile into the util tab of xACT. for right now I might just have it do 1 group (instead of the 9 in the dvd audio spec)

H₂O · « **Reply #17 on:** June 11, 2011, 06:24:59 PM »

Sounds good - Thanks!

scb · « **Reply #18 on:** June 14, 2011, 04:07:03 PM »

changes so far in 2.13. I've had a bit of free time in the past week

   -Added ability to tag MP3, Monkey's Audio, and WavPack files. Changed FLAC tagging to make unicode-friendly. Added ability to add album art to FLAC, AAC, Apple Lossless and MP3 files.
   -fixed bug when "Delete original files" option checked and task canceled that resulted in original files still being deleted. Check now in place to prevent this.
   -added user preference to delete files or move to trash when "Delete original files" checked. Default is to delete.
   -added ability to convert Apple Lossless files to LAME mp3. Tags and album art will be copied to the mp3.
   -Added ability to parse a CUE file for tags (album, performer, track names). From the "FLAC/M4A Tags" tab, select "Load Tags From CUE sheet…" from the File menu and choose a cue sheet. xACT will attempt to parse the metadata from the file. Note: previous "Load track Names from file" was moved from the Edit menu to the File Menu.
   -added ability to make DVD-Audio disc image from flac or wav files. note: the tool that authors the dvd-a data may picky about wav files having standard headers. If wavs don't work, try flac files.
   -fixed bug when using "shntool fix" to fix sector boundary errors on files with no file extension.
   -fixed bug when converting files with no extension to SHN
   -fixed bug in custom shntool len format when time was not last
   -fixed bug that caused a crash when verifying md5 checksum file with invalid checksum format

H₂O · « **Reply #19 on:** July 21, 2011, 03:04:06 PM »

New version works great!

Hey I have run into one possible bug:
If you try and add a picture (album art) that is over 4 or so MB xACT acts like it is added but when you go back through the files it is not there - also in one case it corrupted the flac files (although for some reason the TAGs where still there - but missing the album art of course).

Can anyone else confirm this issue?

scb · « **Reply #20 on:** July 24, 2011, 07:39:39 PM »

i'll see if i can find any documentation on the max picture size

macdaddy · « **Reply #21 on:** October 08, 2012, 12:26:09 AM »

is there a way to do this from a .txt file, the way liveshowtagger works in foobar..? not sure how to make a .cue file from a txt file...

tia

scb · « **Reply #22 on:** October 09, 2012, 09:54:51 AM »

i've never used foobar, so I have no idea what you're asking

macdaddy · « **Reply #23 on:** October 09, 2012, 02:58:34 PM »

I was hoping for a feature that parses the txt file, adding tracknumber, artist, date, song to the flac fileset. also has the ability to add/create other tags like album and comment. the ability to edit/create tags and to add album/cover art automatically (if the proper sized jpg was present in the folder) would be sweet, too.

thx for asking.

ashevillain · « **Reply #24 on:** October 09, 2012, 03:04:29 PM »

Quote from: macdaddy on October 09, 2012, 02:58:34 PM

I was hoping for a feature that parses the txt file, adding tracknumber, artist, date, song to the flac fileset. also has the ability to add/create other tags like album and comment. the ability to edit/create tags and to add album/cover art automatically (if the proper sized jpg was present in the folder) would be sweet, too.

thx for asking.

There is already a feature 'Load track names from file' located in the File Menu.

macdaddy · « **Reply #25 on:** October 09, 2012, 08:31:40 PM »

never even thought to check the file menu...

I will do that next show I work on...

sorry for the waste of bandwidth.

moved the conversation to a more appropriate thread.