Updated comments are not actually updated in Explorer

[igor.arnautovic123]

Greetings. I changed comments of the songs in the sidebar, but they are not updated in Windows Explorer.

[ohrenkino]

The explorer reads comment fields that have the same language token as the Windows environment.
See Options>Tags>Advanced and change it, if necessary.
eng is the language token that iTunes uses by default.

See e.g. here:

[X] Setting comment field

Hello everybody, I was trying to edit some mp3 tags, when I noticed that the comment field isn't updated in windows explorer, although there were no errors in MP3Tag. Every other field went fine... I tried tag names such as %comment% and %description%, but no luck... Right-clicking the song in MP3Tag does show the comment, but in Windows Explorer, this information seems not to be there in any field...

[igor.arnautovic123]

The problem is that Windows Explorer shows COMMENT ID3V1 COMMENT instead of COMMENT, even though COMMENT is changed.

[ohrenkino]

Explorer will show only 1 field of a type. So if there are several fields of the type COMMENT, then Explorer will show only one of them. This could be the old one.
It would be easiest to make sure that only 1 field of the type COMMENT is present.

[Sergius]

Hello @ohrenkino, I agree with you—there should only be one COMMENT tag. I’m surprised because the COMMENT ID3v1 COMMENT tag (which has a 28-character limit) reads "Purchased at Beatport," while the COMMENT tag (the correct one) simply reads "beatport.com." It’s the first time I’ve seen this...

Looking at the screenshot, I realize these two tags contain different data. I suspect there might be a conflict, as both tags would end up being written into a single COMMENT tag in Mp3tag (which I believe is the standard). This could cause a conflict when saving the file in the original program—am I mistaken in my assessment?

[ohrenkino]

The comment field is somewhat special as it has a language token plus another specifier that allows further differentiation, e.g. there are fields like
COMMENT ITUNNORM or COMMENT ITUNPGAP and so there could also be a field COMMENT ID3V1 COMMENT.
MP3tag keeps these differentiated fields, see here:

[X] Blank comment should also delete ID3V1 COMMENT field

Hi, I just realized that the "< blank >" action in the "Comment" field does not remove "COMMENT ID3V1 COMMENT" fields as visible in the "Extended Tags" dialog for my MP3s. Due to its strange name, I'm not sure if this field is standard, but I would expect "Blank Comment" to blank any comment there is. So depending on that you may consider this a feature request instead of a bug report. Thanks.

So any other application that can deal with multi-value fields should be satisfied to find several COMMENT fields. Explorer cannot.

[Sergius]

@ohrenkino

[X] Blank comment should also delete ID3V1 COMMENT field

Thanks @ohrenkino for the link above showing how Florian programmed these two tags separately—which I imagine prevents save errors. That was what was confusing me: in my BSI program, they are mapped to the COMMENT tag, causing a conflict. I also better understand your explanation regarding Explorer; it can't handle these two tags, whereas other programs handle them just fine...

Thanks again for the explanation; I have a better grasp of the concept behind these two tags now...

However, if igor.arnautovic123 wants to save both tags using Windows Explorer, you could provide an Action formula that combines the data from both tags into a single COMMENT tag; that would solve his problem...

[ohrenkino]

@Sergius

you could provide an Action formula that combines the data from both tags into a single COMMENT tag; that would solve his problem

There is a section in the FAQs how to copy one field contents to another:

Actions and batch-operations

How to copy one field value to another field? Example how to copy the content of the ARTIST field to the ALBUMARTIST field: Create a new action in an existing action group or make a new action group. Action type: Format value Field: ALBUMARTIST Format string: %artist% Note: If you want to copy all possible values of a field (in case you have multiple artist fields), the internal scripting function $meta_sep can be used in the format string, e.g., $meta_sep(artist,\\\\)