Split a tag to multiple tags

General Discussion
1

I'm trying to split a Tag Value to Multiple Tags.
For Example, here's a COMMENT tag along with it's corresponding value.

COMMENT: Categories – Trumpet\\Genius

What i need want to achieve is:

CATEGORIES: Trumpet
CATEGORIES: Genius

here's a similar problem. but i just can't figure it out.
Hopefully someone can enlighten me.

2

First create an action of the type "merge duplicate fields" for comment and use as separator the underscore _.
After this you have the contents of the comment fields in one comment field.
Now create an action of the type "Format tag-field" for CATEGORIES with the
format string: %comment%
This copies the content of COMMENT to CATEGORIES.
Then create an action of the type "Split field by Separator" for CATEGORIES with the separator underscore _.
You should now have multiple instances of CATEGORIES in the files.
Do whatever you like with the contents of COMMENT.

3

You have pointed to an outside forum's message, which depends on a forum thread from here ...
/t/9027/1

If you see this text ... "Categories – Trumpet\\Genius" ...
in Mp3tag within a listview field or tag panel field, ..
then you have to do with a so called "multi-value" tag-field, ...
because Mp3tag uses the "\\ double backslash" as the visual delimiter for multi values stored within one tag-field ...
Value 1: Categories – Trumpet
Value 2: Genius

Because you want to create a new multi-value tag-field CATEGORIES ...
out of textual parts from the tag-field COMMENT, ...
to be extracted from each single value out of the multi-value tag-field COMMENT, ...
then you have to do it in few steps.

  1. Copy COMMENT (meta values) to CATEGORIES (merged values).
    Action "Format value"
    Field: CATEGORIES
    Formatstring: $meta_sep(COMMENT,'~')
    Result ...
    CATEGORIES = 'Categories – Trumpet~Genius'

  2. Remove the unwanted text, for example by splitting the given text into parts.
    Action "Guess values"
    Source format: %CATEGORIES%
    Guessing pattern: %DUMMY% – %CATEGORIES%
    Result ...
    CATEGORIES = 'Trumpet~Genius'

  3. Make CATEGORIES multi-value.
    Action "Split field by separator"
    Field: CATEGORIES
    Separator: ~
    Result ...
    CATEGORIES = 'Trumpet'
    CATEGORIES = 'Genius'

  4. Ready.

All steps consolidated into one step ...

Action "Format value" Field: CATEGORIES Formatstring: $replace($meta_sep(COMMENT,'~'),'Categories – ',,'~','\\\\')

DD.20150321.1216.CET

4

Thx for the reply guys.

@DetlevD

In a previous version of MP3Tag, whenever i would perform a REGEX on multiple files, the values with "\\" in them would automatically be split over multiple tags. Which, i guess, is the intended behaviour.

In the current version of MP3Tag v2.69 however, the '\\' doesn't seem to split the values over multiple tags. To force "\\" conversion to multiple values, i have to CTRL+S the files individually.
So after REGEX i'm left with what is seen on Extended Tags screenshot.
As you can see its not a visual representation but rather literal one.

Now, if i apply the tags above with your action, the results has some undesired effects:
Action "Format value"
Field: CATEGORIES
Formatstring: $replace($meta_sep(COMMENT,'~'),'Categories – ',,'~','\\')

White = need attention, it gets CATEGORIES as fieldname
Purple = split values
Grey = original tags

Obviously the desired format would be:

ARTIST LOCATION = American CATEGORIES = Genius CATEGORIES = Trumpet TRACK DECADE = 2010s

Maybe an even better approach? This way B would always the end up with the correct fieldname.

1. Is there a way to target fieldname A 2. Split B and C from the values 3. and then assign B as new fieldname, with C as value

Sorry for being a pain. Still learning here.

5

Yes, so far it was, even in Mp3tag v2.69 as I can tell.

Obviously you are a friend of special characters.
Well I have already detected, that you have used in your examples the en-dash '–' instead of the standard hyphen '-'.
But that you are so angry, and cheat us with the backslash too, I had not expected.

Your 'backslash' seems to be some other character from the Unicode character set, which looks like a backslash, ... for example ...
'\ Set minus (U+2216)'
'╲ Box drawings light diagonal upper left to lower right (U+2572)'.
See also ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backslash
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backslash

Before going deeper into your problem, you have to comprehensible describe and clarify how to create the situation as shown by your picture with the muti-value COMMENT tag-field.

On my side, when using the standard double backslash '\\', then Mp3tag works as expected and creates a multi-value tag-field in the moment when writing the tag to the file.

DD.20150322.0747.CET

6

To make long story short ... I made example actions for you ...

From ...
COMMENT = Artist Location - American
COMMENT = Track Decade - 2010s
COMMENT = Categories - Genius~Trumpet

To ...
ARTIST_LOCATION = American
CATEGORIES = Genius
CATEGORIES = Trumpet
TRACK_DECADE = 2010s

Begin Action Group Test2015#20150322.PeaterParker.Step1

Action #1
Actiontype 5: Format value
Field ______: COMMENT
Formatstring: Artist Location - American\\Track Decade - 2010s\\Categories - Genius~Trumpet

End Action Group Test2015#20150322.PeaterParker.Step1 (1 Action)

 Begin Action Group Test2015#20150322.PeaterParker.Step2

Action #1
Actiontype 5: Format value
Field ______: TEMP_COMMENT
Formatstring: $meta_sep(COMMENT,';')

Action #2
Actiontype 5: Format value
Field ______: ARTIST_LOCATION
Formatstring: $replace($regexp($regexp(%TEMP_COMMENT%,'Artist Location - ([^;]+)','$1\\'),'(Track Decade|Categories) - ([^;]+)',),';','\\')

Action #3
Actiontype 5: Format value
Field ______: TRACK_DECADE
Formatstring: $replace($regexp($regexp(%TEMP_COMMENT%,'Track Decade - ([^;]+)','$1\\'),'(Artist Location|Categories) - ([^;]+)',),';','\\')

Action #4
Actiontype 5: Format value
Field ______: CATEGORIES
Formatstring: $replace($regexp($regexp(%TEMP_COMMENT%,'Categories - ([^;]+)','$1\\'),'(Track Decade|Artist Location) - ([^;]+)',),';','\\')

Action #5
Actiontype 16: Split fields by separator
Field ___: CATEGORIES
Separator: ~

Action #6
Actiontype 9: Remove fields
Fields to remove (semicolon separated): TEMP_COMMENT;COMMENT

End Action Group Test2015#20150322.PeaterParker.Step2 (6 Actions)

Test2015_20150322.PeaterParker.Step1.mta (112 Bytes)Test2015_20150322.PeaterParker.Step2.mta (627 Bytes)
DD.20150322.0922.CET

Test2015_20150322.PeaterParker.Step1.mta (112 Bytes)

Test2015_20150322.PeaterParker.Step2.mta (627 Bytes)