Is the Date format actually supposed to be a "Double-Date"...? i.e. 1999\\1999

[leeuniverse]

So, I was messing with MediaMonkey and the wanker has no setting to auto-edit ONLY the Tags you want to touch, and the dang thing among destroying many other Tags, also added this "double-date" format to it.

Is this technically for compatibility the "format" dates should be in, i.e. 2001 (two slashes like shown above in my Title) 2001 instead of simply 2001? Only Mp3tag shows this, Picard, MediaMonkey, nor Windows Explorer show this.

Oh, also the Genre.... Is it supposed to be like Rock\Pop\Hard Rock etc.?
(double slashes of course, the forum is removing one slash)

Should "I" be editing the Tags this way going forward in Mp3tag, and the other programs mentioned above instead of using the ";"?

[ohrenkino]

For year, see here:

Duplicate year fields on random tracks

Hey, Seemingly in random (both random tracks and random timing), Mp3Tag will mess up a track's year. It would change a track's year into a year//year format instead of simply year. For example, a song that came out in 2007 could be changed to display 2007//2007 in the year field, as opposed of course to simply 2007. This has been happening without my intervention (I am very pedantic about my music's metadata and personally and manually made sure everything is the way I like it) for quite some…

[trucken]

I observed this kind of changes (e.g. 2007 to 2007//2007) if I use Native Instruments Traktor with set the function Write Any Tags Into File as on.

I was thinking as above, that must be Mp3tag, but it was not.

But I have duplicate some tags in Denon's HEOS app on TV, e.g. Artists (3 or 4 times). Not all files, as above, in random.
What I think, it is probably problem with tags write for Ape in Tag Settings of Mp3tag.

[ohrenkino]

@trucken

What I think, it is probably problem with tags write for Ape in Tag Settings of Mp3tag.

I think that this is a myth.
APE tags only caus trouble if you let them get out of sync. Then you usually get less data displayed than expected. Writing or reading APE does not necessarily lead to multi-value tags. The unexpectedly added field of the same type is usually a problem of other programs.

[leeuniverse]

Okay, so I get how to "remove" them if I want, but are the DATES "supposed" to be shown as double-dates with the slashes between?

Cause, MediaMonkey did this to many/most of my files, and this is shown in Mp3tag, when before I used to have a single date.

[ohrenkino]

So ask the folks at MediaMonkey why it ignores the existing YEAR field and writes another one.
Mp3tag is only the messenger and reports accurately what is found in files.

[leeuniverse]

Okay, so I did further testing with two plugins MediaMonkey has which apparently ensure the proper ID3 formatting standards for separators is used, and it now is clear that:

1. When you separate Artists, Genres, and also use the Year standard rather than the exact date, that the actual ID3 standard IS to use two backward-facing separators/slashes. So we are NOT to use commas, semi-colons, forward slashes, etc. Those are NOT the "proper standard". Even though Windows and other programs WILL show a "semi-colin" as the separator, likely for clarity/english rather than technical formating.

2. It also appears that the double-date IS the ID3 standard to be using for the date tag. Since that IS what the date plugin formatted it as

So, FYI all...

And yes, Mp3tag IS reading/showing the proper standard if it's entered correctly.
If for example we have the commas, semi-colons, etc. in our tags separating things, it DOES show that instead. But if you have those, change them to the proper separators, the "two backward slashes".

There of course might be separate use cases, like older programs etc. that don't like them, but for the proper standards and modern programs, the slashes ARE the standard to be using.

FYI...

[MotleyG]

Does this MM plug-in define where it has defined the “proper” ID3 tag from? I cannot comprehend how showing the year twice can be considered ideal. Same for any other tag. If there are different field values, that would make sense… sort of.

[ohrenkino]

The 2 backslashes are teh way that MP3tag shows multi-value fields. These 2 backslahes are not really in the data as the fields are separated by a binary zero in reality.
The way MP3tag displays it is just a help for the user to see that there are more than one field of the same type in a file. Check the extended tags dialogue for that.
That other programs do not show the backslashes is no real wonder as most programs cannot cope with / ignore multi-value fields. (The WE is a good example for the ignorance)
I still stand to my opinion that some other program has added another YEAR field to your files and that you notice that now. Mp3tag as the messenger.

[poster]

Double records in YEAR ex (2012/2012)

Have a loook with the extended Tag-View (ALT-t). You will see that there are 2 year-tag-fields. In the extended tag-view you can delete one of these. There is also an action of the type "Remove Duplicate Fields". A possible reason why this happened maybe the use of Mediamonkey for tagging. If you use Mediamonkey and want to use it also in the future: there is a setting in Mediamonkey that can avoid this. Add this to the file mediamonkey.ini: [MP3Tagging] DisableFrames=TDRC;TDOR; Enable…

[leeuniverse]

Unfortunately, not my issue... There is ONLY "one" Year Tag.

So, looks like I have duplicate dates "within" the same Tag field for some reason, and it appears to have been the plugin for MediaMonkey that removes the full date, replacing it with the year.
Some reason it thinks that the double-date thing IS the proper formatting.

Same for the Multi-value Plugin, it changed any ";" semi-colons to double backslashes \.
According to the info this change is proper D3 whatever standards. But, I'm just not sure about why it's being done for the "year" also, and thus duplicating it?

BTW, I just tried the "remove duplicates" solution as mentioned by the thread mentioned above, and no "secondary" Year field is created for me to remove as a duplicate, or at least that I can see.
When I run "remove duplicates" it deletes not just the Year dups, but also all of my extra Genre tags listed in each file.

[poster]

Are you sure that you don't have multivalue year fields after using MM?
Mp3tag always shows double back slashes in the simple tag view when there are multivalue fields.

MM always writes these double year fields when it saves data. So any MM- Plugin does this too, when it saves data.

Die you try to change the ini-file as mentioned?

[leeuniverse]

Okay... Here are the FINAL Results, after a ton of testing, I finally FIXED IT.

Had to use 3 different programs for it to all come out right. Now, maybe I could have eventually figured out how to do it with less, but I was trying every combo as possible.
The programs I used are MediaMonkey, Mp3tag, and Tag Scanner...

The reason I had to use 3 programs is because each would "do" and "show" you things differently that the other didn't etc.

1. I used MM to "save all" files to put them back to 2.3, figured it might be the better format to use for compatibility. Using MM also caused the Genre tags to not put the double-slashes, but placed semi-colons instead.

Doing this allowed me to use the "remove duplicates" in Mp3tag, because when I was trying to use it before per other instructions in this thread/linked, the Action would end up deleting ALL of my extra Genre Tags, leaving only the first.

2. Selected all files and then with Mp3tag did Actions "remove duplicates".
When I did this, I looked at the files within Tag Scanner and it was showing double dates (when before it wasn't under Tag 2.4), and also, one of the dates it was actually showing the second date for many files having a "full date" instead of just the Year.

BTW, Mp3tag has NEVER shown me the "full date", only the year. So, this is a limitation/flaw with Mp3tag that needs to be fixed. I shouldn't have needed to use Tag Scanner to see the actual field data and extra fields.
Note also that things often displayed differently between the two programs, this is why I had to use both to actually see what was going on. And yes, Extended Tags View in Mp3tag DID NOT show me these things, extra year fields, etc.

3. Then went to MM, cleared the database, rescanned files.
Then used the Date to Year plugin to remove the dates replacing them with the Year instead.

4. Then went to Mp3 Tag ran "remove duplicates" again, and FINALLY, all extra fields have been removed, and the Year field only shows the Year in both Mp3tag and Tag Scanner.

Problem solved....

BTW, this all took dozens of "try's" trying the different programs, looking at them at each step, trying different things, etc. etc. to finally figure out a process that actually fixed my tags.

Hope you all enjoyed that roller coaster, I sure didn't...

BTW, I will I think be posting a Bug Report on Mp3Tag and Tag Scanner showing different info.
Another thing they would do for example, is Mp3Tag would just show a single year, and then when I viewed the same files in Tag Scanner, it would show TWO years. And vice/versa would occur.
You can see how incredibly frustrating all this was to figure out. Massive amounts of testing...

Thanks all....