I am a dj with a big digital music collection.
Since I have started my music collection iTunes was the software I used to tag & organize my files & the music library itself (basically manually, recently I have discovered Doug's Scripts which expand iTunes functionalities). I assume the same can be done with MP3Tag or even better, but I need help to understand how to use it & what I really have to do to get what I want.
So my first doubt is about ID3. It seems this is fundamental on MP3 files.
I have read ID3V2 incorporated significant improvements over its predecessor (it is more flexible & admits images).
But I don't really understand the difference between ID3V2.3 UTF-16, ID3V2.4 UTF-8 & ID3V2.3 ISO-8859-1.
I am basically interested in MP3 files used on iTunes, Serato DJ (& other profesional dj softwares) & media player likes iTunes or VLC.
According to a guy who friendly helped me time ago, he told me to configure the MP3 tag option menu like this:
Read everything
Write just ID3V2.3 UTF-16
Remove ID3V1 & APE
*notice I am using MP3tag V3.0.1 on MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6.
I would like to better understand for what reason this configuration is useful
Why not using ID3V2.4 UTF-8 if it is newer?
What happens when I remove ID3V1 & APE & just keep ID3V2.3 UTF-16?
If I read ID3V1 & APE but then & will delete it, it means no metadata from ID3V1 & APE is saved? If it so, for what reason should I be interested in read them?
Is it known which ID3 uses iTunes?
Other djs have told me to delete all fields & just use the metadata fields I strictly need, but this scares me a little bit as I do not understand deeply what deleting this metadata means, so I prefer to delet the minium & just when it is strictly necessary (for example when a field is shows differents values on iTunes & Serato DJ).
If anybody can provide some info, help, is very very wellcome!!
That is a lot of questions, most have been answered if you search the forum. Many users here have come from an early start with iTunes. I personally still use it today as a service in my home, but not to rip or edit anything now.
To answer some of your direct questions;
Your current settings (according to your screenshot) are probably the most typical ones recommended here. This will maintain the highest amount of compatibility with players on virtually any desktop or mobile platform. There are expanded options with id3v2.4 but you will need to confirm if all of your music platforms will support it. I think Serato does not, please check.
Again this depends on your use case. If you don't need them, I would consider removing them. But first...
I would check to make sure there anything in the APE tags you need have been saved to id3 first.
I would ignore what others tell you and do what you need for your use case and preferences. Tag data storage size is virtually nothing compared to the audio data space, so anything you have that is valid is easier to keep and not need, than it is to want it later and have to recover it from somewhere.
Ultimately it is your library and how you manage it is up to you. As long as the information you keep let's you find and play your music your way, that is all that matters.
& am not able to know If I need as long as I do not understand it.
But the general idea you are saying is that is better to keep than deleting & then realizing you need to recover data that have been deleted.
So yeah, it looks I should delete the minium & still have no clues about how to better understand how to manage the metadata to get what I want, i guess is not an easy answer & takes time (discovering that a metada field could show different data on different softwares was a revelation; this is a previous post Tag value for genre inconsistent between Mp3tag and iTunes
Since you're using an outdated and unsupported version of Mp3tag for Windows on Mac via Wine, I'm moving this topic from Mac (which is for the native Mac version of Mp3tag) to Support
You would have to decide which program you want to believe: MP3tag that accurately shows the data in the tag fields or other programs that manage their own database which may supply outdated data as that database did not get synchronized with the tag data.
If you want to rely on programs with their own database and without the guarantee that modifications initiated in those programs are actually written to the file tags then this will make your collection fixed to one particular environment and the collection will not be portable to other devices or storages - at least not with up-to-date data.
So the criterion
should trigger an alarm and make you check in MP3tag which data can really be found in the tags.
For future tagging it would also mean that you use only MP3tag for modifications as otherwise you have to do it always several times: in the programs that store modifications only in their database and MP3tag that modifies the metadata only in the files.
So how can I know if iTunes/Music & the deejay software are using their own database? Asking to their support?
I have several playlists for every type of inconsistence I find between iTunes & Serato DJ. This way I easyly know which & how many songs are affected by any kind of inconsistence. I can share examples if you want to test by yourself.
The most weird case I have found is a track that shows different genre value. But MP3tagg shows a completly different metadata: it misses some metadata fields I use & use some fields I do not use; even does not seem the same track!
I noticed it is using ID3V1, ID3V2.4 & APEV2
I fixed, but as I said, no idea what happened, what I did, etc.
Now the track is ID3V2.4 not V2.3 no sure if this is fine but as long as I do not see a problem on iTunes/Serato DJ I am happy.
Your setting is to read all tag versions, including APE tags.
Since your files previously contained APE tags, MP3Tag only displayed those. When multiple tag versions are present, APE tags take precedence, and the other tag versions are suppressed in the view..
You can see these option-settings also in your screenshot of the extended tag-view.
In the brackets you see the the tag-versions that are in your file(s).
In front of the brackets you see which tag-version is displayed in priority. If you disable to read ape-tags it would look like this
The ape-tags are still in the files but because of the changed option-setting for MPEG they are not read.
If APE tags and ID3v2 have different content, it's possible that you'll see something different in MP3Tag than in other programs. Inconsistencies in the displayed tag content don't necessarily have to do with other software having certain content only in its database and not in the metadata.
Thank you poster for your comments, Specially the following:
I now understand the sence of the tag version in first place & the list in brackets.
But do not understand where you get this configuration where ID3V2.4 is before the brackets tag versions:
What I did is deleting the APEV2 metadata.
Just wondering if is it possible to decided which tag version is in front of the brackets as you did it? I mean: if I have a file with metadata in all tag versions & MP3tag version is configured to be able to read all of them, & you don't want to delete any data, is it possible to tell the audio file use first this tag version? This will work on all softwares (all softwares will respect this tag version as the main one to use)?
What is the appropriate word when talking about ID3, APE, etc.? Is "tag version"? metadata schema?
Yes. Or read the programs documentation and specification. Or ask the internet.
Just a hint: iTunes definitely has a database and only reluctantly writes modifications back to the files.
Your findings
is an indication that most of your work has disappeared in the iTunes database and not in the files.
And then apparently, you used programs that did not write the same data to all tag versions.
So the fewer tag versions you keep in the files, the better. And how few is few is determined by the player and which tag versions provide the best amount of information.
IMHO this is ID3V2.3 as that is most widely supported.
As I wrote it will look like this if you disable to read APE-tags and have enabled to read ID3v2. You have ID3v1, ID3v2.4 and APEv.2 in your file and not reading APE gives the priority to display the ID3v2.4 Tags. The part of the documentary I gave a link to talks about the priority in reading.
I think both would be correct but tag-version is commonly used.
The tags of your MP3-files were treated probable by different software in the past. Maybe one of these wrote ape-tags to your files. It is also possible that you enabled in Mp3tag to write APE-tags. A problem occurs when the tags contents of these versions get out of sync. If you for instance have special fields with this content only in APE and not in ID3v2 you can loose this content if you just delete APE-tags.
I was aware iTunes has a database, it is an xml file. But I though this is for specific iTunes data like for example in which playlists is a track in or how many times a song has been played, etc. I though the metadata fields already exist on the audio file are also edited on the file metadata fields not only on the iTunes database.
Sorry ohrenkino, what you mean by
Not sure the following is correct
The file looks perfect in iTunes, looks almost perfect in Serato DJ (just genre field was not showing the same data than iTunes), & MP3tagg was showing completly different information. What I think has happened here is that this track (downloaded from internet) has already metadata at least on APEV2. I could edit metadata fields on iTunes as the changes I did o iTunes I saw it on SeratoDJ, but I guess iTunes just works with ID3.
Which makes me think that even iTunes has its own database file, it edits the audio file metadata fields for sure as SeratoDJ shows what I have edited just on iTunes.
Considering the use I did on MP3tagg & that I have no idea about tag-versions (since now haha) & don't know what APE is for, the following is probably incorrect:
--
Yeah, for this reason the good way to clean the tag versions is to cut & paste. This way an APE's metadafield you don't want to lose will be now ID3V2, is that correct? I think the best way to do that is manually, one by one, but I suspect you probably love to bulk edits.
This means that some changes are stored only in the database.
I know that about rating.
File formats with only little support like wav files do not get updated at all, AFAIK.
Also, I think that some changes are only written to a file if the file is played.
So, it may seem like the files have all the data they should have but in fact that data is only stored in the database.
That is why I think that MP3tag should be the only program to modify the tags and then the players should read the tag data.
A word on the tag versions and their priority:
You cannot set any property in a tag version to prioritize it over other versions when read. This interpretation is a feature of the reading program - and there every program may treat the tag versions differently. So if there is no technical need to have many tag versions in a file, then the easiest way to make a tag version priority 1 is to have just 1 tag version in the files.
If your tag versions change from V2.3 to 2.4 then this is due to the settings in the Options>Tags>Mpeg.
One further thing:
Id3V2 tags are (mostly) stored at the front of a file, ID3V1 at the end and APE also at the end but as absolutely last pieces of data.
In my opinion it makes sense that iTunes edits the rating in the database & not the file. So I am ok with this!
Yess, I was aware of that, I always though wav format does not have metada fields to edit like MP3 audio format but I now suspect what is happening is that is just iTunes which is not able to edit wav metadata fields, is not?
Not sure, but, what I can tell you is that when working with more than one software you can have maded changes on one software & the other will not show until you refresh the track (playing the track is one way to refresh it).
Finally, a good reason to purchse MP3tagg.
Another good reason to purchase it.
Sometimes when I have tested deleting tag versions & just keeping the ID3V2.3 I have not seen any difference or advantatge, so I was not understanding for what reason I should just keep ID3V2.3.
Thank you!!
So (for my case) you probably recommend to just keep ID3. ID3V2.3 or V2.4?
For what reason you say the following:
--
Ok, good to know, but what is the difference between having a tag version data at the front or at the end? Front means more important? More used?
More convenient for streaming purposes as the tag information could be read before the whole audiodata was transmitted. That was the main reason why the location for the tag data was changed (AFAIK).
The tag data at the end has the advantage that when the metadata is changed only the end of a file has to be appended or concatenated and not the file completely rewritten when something is added at the front.
Do you mean by Cut & Paste with which you can cut the whole tag of a file and paste it again, or do you refer to cut & paste of content of a single tag-field?
There is no difference in the possibility of loosing tag-content whether you do it by simply save or cut & paste. The general rule is that you will save only content that is displayed in the extended tag-view.
What you see in Mp3tag's extended tag view depends on the settings for the "Read" options and the priorities of the tag versions in Mp3tag. If you have APE tags and only these are displayed in Mp3tag, you won't be able to transfer these tags to another tag version using either cut & paste or a simple save unless you also enabled this other tag version in "Write." However, you will also lose all tag contents, e.g., in ID3v2.3, that weren't displayed, because when you read APE tags, they have priority and obscure the ID3v2.3 tag contents.
The rule is:
Saved will only that what Mp3tag displays in the extended tag-view to the tag-versions you have enabled for writing.
So if I am just care about keeping the ID3V2 metadata & should cut & paste except for those tracks that has APE, as paste wiill replace the ID3 metadata for the APE metada. Is that correct, is not?
If it so, could happen that a data I want to keep is not on the ID3V2 but just on the APE (I mean something like Artist which is a field that exist on ID3), & when I do cut i will lose it forever?
As you can see, this file contains only ID3v1 and ID3v2.3 tag-versions.
There's a fairly popular software for replay gain analysis of MP3 files called MP3Gain. It writes its analysis data in APE tags. So let's run an analysis with this software, using the read and write options you used above. The results will look like this:
What happened?
You can see from the header that the files now have ID3v1, ID3v2.3 and APE-tags. Because of your option for READ all tag-versions should be read. Because APE-tags take the priority you won't no longer see the content of other tag-versions than APE. You now mark the file in the list-view, press CTRL-X for cut and CTRL-V for paste the tags and expect that according to your write-option, all tags (Replay_Gain and your ID3v2.3-tags like artist, album and so on) are saved as ID3v2.3-tags. You will get surprised. All you can see are the Replay-Gain tags. All previously existing ID3v2.3-tags are lost. Both tag-versions only contain the replay-gain-tags.
