How to create custom fields that can be later mapped and used with "Convert" functions

Hello everyone!
I have set up custom fields and don't know if I am doing things correctly. My goal is to populate these fields in MP3Tag and hopefully be able to map them to new fields that may come to itunes or others in the future. That way I can enter the data now and just map the fields in on swoop later.

The way I have done this is by going to the Columns and creating a new column through "Customize Columns". I set up the name, eg "Genre2" and assign %genre2% to the value and the field.

I can also do this with the tag panel. I must be doing something wrong, because when I try to use the "Convert" tool "tag>Tag" the fields don't show up. I know I must have done it a different way because I do see a genre 7 in the extended fields, but no genre2, genre3 and so forth. I have tried to read on this but cannot figure out what I did differently with "genre 7" other than it has a space in its name instead of "genre7".

If someone can explain to me how to do this properly or point me to a link I may have missed while searching here. I would sincerely appreciate it.

Thanks!

If you want to add more than just one field of the typoe GENRE (or in fact any other type of field) you can use the extended tags dialogue and simply add another field of already used ones.
Like that you do not have to separate them to user-defined fields.

User-defined fields get added to the list, after you have entered them manually at least once.

Thanks ohrenkiko. I will try to figure out how to use extended tags. I will also check if I can get them new fields to show up by manually entering them, though I have not had much success. What do you mean by manually entering them? Do I do it in the tag panel or in a column?

The field selection list sometimes shows only the MP3tag standard fields. If you have user-defined fields then you have to type in the name as you cannot select the name from the list.
You can enter the field name as well in the tag panel definition and the column definition.

Thanks for clearing it up. I will try to read up on using extended tags see if that works better for me.

OK, I have done some experimenting and reading and I think I figured out what you are talking about. What you are suggesting is adding another GENRE field to the file by adding it in the extended tag window. I assume if I did that I would have multiple values for Genre, but how would those map, as they would have to map to the same field?

Could that cause problems in itunes, as I know they advise against multiple values in a field (not that I always follow there advice), or would it not? If I had multiple values would they map over as separate values, kind of like when I have artists separated by " / "? In that case itunes GENRE would read as classical, chamber, romantic, piano, relax with some sort of delimiter between them, whether it be a comma, semicolon, forward slash etc?

If this was the case, would I be able to use the GENRE field in itunes for creating smart playlists where I could have the GENRE be any of those values? For example, if I had a playlist that includes all songs with any of those GENRE values, be it classical or romantic or chamber, would a file tagged with multiple values for GENRE in the extended fields work? Would itunes treat each of the values as discrete so the same song could be in a playlist including songs with the GENRE classical and also on another playlist including songs with the GENRE romantic?

The only other problem I see is that believe I would have to do this for each file individually by bring up the extended tag window for each, and that would not be feasible due to time constraints. On this project alone I am tagging over 1500 files, so I need to do things in batches. I am not sure if that is possible.

I also like to set up the user defined fields in the Tag Panel so I can edit multiple songs in one pass. I do not think I can add multiple GENRE fields to the Tag Panel as when i try to do it, it will not save.

One thing I could do is use things I have set them up and then, if a scripting or batch option exists, I can maybe populate the GENRE field with a "Tag to Tag" convert function where GENRE = %genre% / %genre2% / %Genre3% and so on.

Thoughts? :thinking:

I think that iTunes does not support multi-value-fields and simply uses the first one.

I do not think that iTunes uses the "/" as separator between individual artists. Actually, I think that iTunes does not care about multi-value fields or fields with separators at all.
Window Media Player, though, uses "; " as separator or "/" (AC/DC is actually a problematic name for this player as you a group called AC and one called DC).

If you want to enter several values for one type of fields in the tag panel, use the double-backslash as delimiter \\, e.g.classical\\romantic\\chamber . MP3tag interprets that as indicator to create several fields of the same type, in this example you would get 3 GENRE fields.
But what's the point if the player does not support it. You are free to find the peculiarities of the various players and choose the best for your purposes.
In respect to playlists: I am sure that iTunes understands imported playlists. So create them with MP3tag which most certainly will be able to read multi-value fields or fields with separators.