MP3 Tags

[bobkuwait]

I use GW 5.2 to convert Vinyl to CD. It works marvelously for me but When I convert those CDs to MP3s for my portable device everything comes up as "Unknown". I know this is an issue with the MP3 "Tags". Is there a plug in or any other way to use GW software to fix the "Tag" problem?

[DewDude420]

Goldwave's tagging feature is mostly there for compatibity reasons. It is not something you'd want to rely on to tag your albums.

You may find that MP3Tag (www.mp3tag.de) is more suited for the task of tagging and managing tags for complete albums and large collections. It not only has features to pull information from FreeDB but also features things like Filename to ID3 and ID3 to filename.

[GoldWave Inc.]

You'd have to use the File | Information command in GoldWave to manually enter the details for each MP3.

Chris

[Kilmatead]

...It is not something you'd want to rely on to tag your albums.

Indeed, particularly as (with pre-tagged/regrettably-post-edited MP3's) GW has a bad habit of discarding any embedded image data. I can understand not being able to add it (after all, GW never claims to be a tagging tool), but one would think it can't be that hard to at least retain the metadata cell (it is, after all, part of ID3v2).

Maybe at least a suggested warning that "some data may be discarded" as a reminder...

[DewDude420]

Goldwave tends to completely replace the ID3 tags, which is why embedded album art disappears.

[Kilmatead]

...at least the non-budget airlines tend to apologise when one's luggage is "accidentally misplaced" to a landfill in Zimbabwe...

[GoldWave Inc.]

If you've ever read the full ID3 tag specification, you may understand why GoldWave only supports a subset of it. Most users don't need 99% of the information. It is only recently that anyone has even commented on the lack of image support in GoldWave, which is an indication of how rarely that frame is used. That may change in the future.

The manual states that GoldWave supports "text information" and the File | Information section has a warning that additional information is not preserved.

Chris

[Kilmatead]

The manual states that GoldWave supports "text information" and the File | Information section has a warning that additional information is not preserved.

Fair enough, but what's an extra malloc() or two between friends? It's not that I didn't know about it (cerebrally, at least), it's just I tend to forget when putting something back into the library, only to discover my mistake a few months down the line by accident. I get flummoxed easily .

The only reason I mention it, is because a few years ago Sound Forge did retain images... or at least it was supposed to. That particular routine had a bug in it which Sony didn't deem worthy of fixing through multiple iterations. They seem to have the obscure opinion that "if you use MP3 you're not the type of user we're catering for"... or at least that was the impression I got.

I'm not asking for anything (except perhaps a small on-screen warning with Save-As, and possibly next week's lotto numbers)... maybe supporting the whole of the ID3 spec is impractical (and superfluous) - never mind that it's a standard in flux anyway - but for those migrating from other software, it can be a bit of a head-scratcher to have information (no matter how trivial) simply discarded.

Life goes on, recessions continue... and thankfully Sony are in the bin...

[GoldWave Inc.]

I almost added image support in v5.50 until I read the specification and noticed that there could be many images in the file and URLs referring to images. The specification is a little vague about the image format too, only stating it "should be" PNG or JPEG, which means it "could be" anything.

I'll take another look at preserving the "APIC" frame blindly. That way users get to keep their images and I get to keep my sanity.

Chris

[JackH]

It is only recently that anyone has even commented on the lack of image support in GoldWave, which is an indication of how rarely that frame is used. That may change in the future.

I think it's more of an indication of the increasing importance of full tag suppport, including images. Take my situation, for example... For years, I didn't care about tag support, because I was only preparing .wav files for CDs and tags were irrelevant. Now, I am preparing flac files and storing and playing everything on the computer, Suddenly, tags are important, and losing parts of them when editing a file in GoldWave becomes a problem.

I can't be the only one doing this, so I think the circumstances have changed.

[CoSm1c gAm3r]

I am very disappointed in GW cuz I was editing mp3 which has already images in them cuz I use other program to put images im audio that I ripped from my cds and when I wanted to edit them then I was in shock that all my metadata and images was gone and GW didnt even alert me that it will erase all info from my mp3 THANX for wasting my time which I spent on making those tags! I tried other audio editors to see if they are erasing metadata (WavePad, Audacity) and they didnt erase nothing!

[DougDbug]

FYI - Technically speaking, GoldWave isn't "erasing" anything! GoldWave won't change your audio file at all unless you overwrite it by saving to the original file... with any audio/video editing software, It's always best to keep the original file intact and save/render to a different file or folder. All* audio editors have to decode (decompress) the MP3 data before editing. After editing, the MP3 file has to be re-created from scratch. It's just that all of the metadata isn't getting saved & re-written by GoldWave.

I was editing mp3 which has already images in them cuz I use other program to put images im audio that I ripped from my cds and when I wanted to edit them...

It's best if you can edit before compressing to MP3. MP3 is lossy compression, and since editing requires decoding, you are going through a 2nd lossy compression step when you re-save. Plus, the decoding & re-encoding takes extra time...


* There are some special purpose MP3 editors that can do simple things like cut, splice, and change volume without decoding. But, most audio processing simply can't be done without accessing the raw PCM data. If you're doing this kind of "simple editing", you might look into MP3DirectCut or MP3Surgeon.

[GoldWave Inc.]

Recent versions of GoldWave preserve cover art and other metadata in existing MP3 files. Perhaps CoSm1c gAm3r is using an old version.

It's never a good idea to rip audio from a CD and save it in MP3 format when you want to edit it later. Always save in a lossless format, then save as MP3 as the final step to minimize loss of quality.

Chris