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Gear / Technical Help => Ask The Tapers => Topic started by: ts on March 31, 2022, 12:12:46 PM
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Just started tagging. About time, huh. :yack: Anyway, I'm using a program called mp3tag and not sure if my work flow is right. I've been tagging the 24 bit wav files to save time, but it appears when I review the flacs, the tags are gone. :shrug:
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Just started tagging. About time, huh. :yack: Anyway, I'm using a program called mp3tag and not sure if my work flow is right. I've been tagging the 24 bit wav files to save time, but it appears when I review the flacs, the tags are gone. :shrug:
WAV's don't transfer the tags to the FLAC's. Tag the FLAC's.
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Yes, tagging is for .flac, .mp3, .ogg, .vorbis .aiff etc
.wav's need no tagging as, unless you are burning them to a CD, you are not sharing .wavs (and the tags will not transfer to the CD, as .cdwav are audio, not data files.
I was reluctant, to say the least, to start tagging until someone described it to me this way: while sitting in my car listening to a show of mine,he pointed to the dashboard which read "gdyyyy-mm-ddtxxx"
HE goes, "if you tagged them they would read: "Grateful Dead, date, venue, etc." he sold me right then. I've been using foobar2000 tagging ever since as foobar2000 is part of my workflow now that I tag .flacs
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There can be tags, and markers, appended to the WAV file as metadata, but FLAC won't recognize that except noting it as extra metadata. Even though FLAC doesn't recognize what that metadata is, it can still retain it (note the "retain foreign metadata" checkbox in TLH, which tells it to either retain or strip that data away).
Your recorder may well include this kind of metadata in the WAV (storing markers, perhaps tags and other info) and your DAW may or may not recognize that.
BWAV or broadcast wav format is a standardized format for metadata appended to a WAV file.
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Just started tagging. About time, huh. :yack: Anyway, I'm using a program called mp3tag and not sure if my work flow is right. I've been tagging the 24 bit wav files to save time, but it appears when I review the flacs, the tags are gone. :shrug:
WAV's don't transfer the tags to the FLAC's. Tag the FLAC's.
Ok, one more stupid question. Run the checksums after the flacs are tagged?
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Just started tagging. About time, huh. :yack: Anyway, I'm using a program called mp3tag and not sure if my work flow is right. I've been tagging the 24 bit wav files to save time, but it appears when I review the flacs, the tags are gone. :shrug:
WAV's don't transfer the tags to the FLAC's. Tag the FLAC's.
Ok, one more stupid question. Run the checksums after the flacs are tagged?
If you are talking about FFP, no need to differentiate - those checksums are on the music portion only and are the same pre or post tagging. I tend to run them pretagging as they are in my workflow as part of the conversion from WAV to FLAC. But, it doesn't matter.
If you are talking about MD5, please don't run them at all. This is my opinion and I know the old schoolers will disagree, but at this point, you don't want the checksum failing just because someone changed a tag element.
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This is only my opinion, but if you're making an album title, it's helpful to tag the album name with [year]-[month]-[day]-[venue][city][state][country] such as 2022-04-01 The Palace Chicago IL USA. For those of us with big collections, it's much easier to check if we have a show when it's organized by date rather than [venue][city][month][day][year]. My method will help you sort shows sequentially with-in your operating system and help identify gaps in the collection with ease.
Just a pet peeve of mine, but I've taken to retagging all my downloads anyways.
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This is only my opinion, but if you're making an album title, it's helpful to tag the album name with [year]-[month]-[day]-[venue][city][state][country] such as 2022-04-01 The Palace Chicago IL USA. For those of us with big collections, it's much easier to check if we have a show when it's organized by date rather than [venue][city][month][day][year]. My method will help you sort shows sequentially with-in your operating system and help identify gaps in the collection with ease.
Just a pet peeve of mine, but I've taken to retagging all my downloads anyways.
I do the same! Any tags are better than none, but tags that result in nice ordered chronological lists are a mitzvah and a half.
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This is only my opinion, but if you're making an album title, it's helpful to tag the album name with [year]-[month]-[day]-[venue][city][state][country] such as 2022-04-01 The Palace Chicago IL USA. For those of us with big collections, it's much easier to check if we have a show when it's organized by date rather than [venue][city][month][day][year]. My method will help you sort shows sequentially with-in your operating system and help identify gaps in the collection with ease.
Just a pet peeve of mine, but I've taken to retagging all my downloads anyways.
kindms advised me to do it that way long ago. IMO< for live music, and folks with large collections, this is the preferred method.
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This is only my opinion, but if you're making an album title, it's helpful to tag the album name with [year]-[month]-[day]-[venue][city][state][country] such as 2022-04-01 The Palace Chicago IL USA. For those of us with big collections, it's much easier to check if we have a show when it's organized by date rather than [venue][city][month][day][year]. My method will help you sort shows sequentially with-in your operating system and help identify gaps in the collection with ease.
Just a pet peeve of mine, but I've taken to retagging all my downloads anyways.
Why would you want the venue name before the country?
I'd rather sort shows by city/state/country first, and THEN venue, so all San Francisco shows on the same day alphabetize together, rather than all the Capitol theaters or Orpheum theaters or fillmores together?
2022-04-01 San Francisco, California USA - Orpheum Theatre
Oh yeah I also started using the ~ tilde to add more info like "university of wisconsin" or whatever if it's on a campus or in an entertainment complex or something.
2022-04-01 Madison, Wisconsin USA - Der Rathskeller ~ University Of Wisconsin Memorial Union
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I think the great thing about tags is you can do what YOU need/want to them without changing the music files. I'll keep tagging them in a consistent manner, a manner that generally works for all and if not, please don't tell me and just do what YOU need to do.
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There can be tags, and markers, appended to the WAV file as metadata, but FLAC won't recognize that except noting it as extra metadata. Even though FLAC doesn't recognize what that metadata is, it can still retain it (note the "retain foreign metadata" checkbox in TLH, which tells it to either retain or strip that data away).
Your recorder may well include this kind of metadata in the WAV (storing markers, perhaps tags and other info) and your DAW may or may not recognize that.
BWAV or broadcast wav format is a standardized format for metadata appended to a WAV file.
BWF.
But you nailed it in all points above.
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I only use mp3tag to get bulk crude info on board like artist name otherwise I use Foobar2000 with the Live Show Tagger. ITs heaven for folks like us.
If you have bulk renaming to do then I highly recommend Bulk Rename Utility. It fixed terabytes worth of mixed GD and JGB folder naming conventions for me in minutes.
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This is only my opinion, but if you're making an album title, it's helpful to tag the album name with [year]-[month]-[day]-[venue][city][state][country] such as 2022-04-01 The Palace Chicago IL USA. For those of us with big collections, it's much easier to check if we have a show when it's organized by date rather than [venue][city][month][day][year]. My method will help you sort shows sequentially with-in your operating system and help identify gaps in the collection with ease.
Just a pet peeve of mine, but I've taken to retagging all my downloads anyways.
Why would you want the venue name before the country?
I'd rather sort shows by city/state/country first, and THEN venue, so all San Francisco shows on the same day alphabetize together, rather than all the Capitol theaters or Orpheum theaters or fillmores together?
2022-04-01 San Francisco, California USA - Orpheum Theatre
Oh yeah I also started using the ~ tilde to add more info like "university of wisconsin" or whatever if it's on a campus or in an entertainment complex or something.
2022-04-01 Madison, Wisconsin USA - Der Rathskeller ~ University Of Wisconsin Memorial Union
Everything is sorted by year for me, so whatever follows is pretty irrelevant. But the order from most specific to more general seems fairly logical to me. But otherwise this:
I think the great thing about tags is you can do what YOU need/want to them without changing the music files. I'll keep tagging them in a consistent manner, a manner that generally works for all and if not, please don't tell me and just do what YOU need to do.
Hopefully not taken as a directive, but a springboard for the OP starting out tagging their collection. I'm pretty damn happy if any shows I download have tags at all.
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Not telling anyone what to do, but if one were to decide, on their own and under no directive from anyone else, start labeling their folders with NAME YYYY-MM-DD LOCATION then the shows will sort in chronological order when their computer sorts alphabetically. This may be of interest to those who believe that musicians and bands change over time.
I personally find this convenient and helpful when I have to look through 200 shows by an artist and figure out if I already have that show. Also if I am looking for a “Kid A”-era Radiohead show, it is easy to locate the general area of shows for the year 2000 and I don’t have to make an assessment on every single folder to see if it fits my timeframe.
Thanks.
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I need to apologize before I post my question ...
Sorry if this has already been mention, as I may have missed it in the previous comments.
That being said, what program is the best to use for tagging?
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I need to apologize before I post my question ...
Sorry if this has already been mention, as I may have missed it in the previous comments.
That being said, what program is the best to use for tagging?
foobar2000 with Live Show Tagger plugin for Windows
xACT for Mac
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I need to apologize before I post my question ...
Sorry if this has already been mention, as I may have missed it in the previous comments.
That being said, what program is the best to use for tagging?
foobar2000 with Live Show Tagger plugin for Windows
xACT for Mac
I like Tag for Mac as well (though I also use xACT sometimes):
https://sbooth.org/Tag/ (https://sbooth.org/Tag/)
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I'm curious why no one has mentioned XLD; which I use on a Mac.
I had forgotten about TAG, and I thought xACT had been discontinued (maybe I was mistaken about that?)
I guess my own process adds an extra step, since I do all my audio processing on a PC (which is not allowed to be connected to the internet), and then I tag the files on a Mac.
Honestly, the only reason I do it that way is because the typing is a lot smoother on my Mac. I actually use the same model keyboard for the Mac and the PC, but I've always had a devil of a time trying to type on any PC compared to any MAC.
As for naming conventions, I'm pretty sure that's always going be somewhat subjective, based on whatever works best for each person's own collection.
Personally, for ease of finding things on my hard drives, I end up re-naming (but not re-tagging) a lot of whatever comes from other sources, because all my dates follow this format: 20220425 (no dashes or dots), and Artist Names are sorted by Last Name, rather than First Name. I try not to worry too much about the other info if a show came from someone else, because the name and date will generally do the trick when sorting or searching.
For what it's worth, my own convention goes like this:
Artist Name yyyymmdd Locale (City State Province Country etc) Venue
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I thought xACT had been discontinued (maybe I was mistaken about that?)
Last update was June 2020, but Scott Brown is around still, active in the community. I don't think it is discontinued.
http://xact.scottcbrown.org/
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Artist Name yyyymmdd Locale (City State Province Country etc) Venue
Any reason to include the artist name in the album name?
I have a digital media player which by default clumps any album with the same name together - so it intermixes openers and the main act, but I always considered that a quirk of that particular player. Is it to avoid that from happening?
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Oh, I may not have illustrated this well, possibly...
The example I listed was mainly a generic overview of what a folder might be named; also, the various column headers that can be sorted:
Artist Name
yyyymmdd
Locale (City State Province Country etc)
Venue
Honestly, I'm not sure how various players might respond to various naming conventions, but I'm thinking that if sorting can be determined by Artist Name and Date, everything else would more or less fall into place.
• • • •
Any reason to include the artist name in the album name?
I have a digital media player which by default clumps any album with the same name together - so it intermixes openers and the main act, but I always considered that a quirk of that particular player. Is it to avoid that from happening?
Artist Name yyyymmdd Locale (City State Province Country etc) Venue
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That makes more sense. Thanks. I've run into a few shows where folks include the artist name in the album title and I've found the practice a little confusing, but harmless - after all, there's already a field for the artist name.