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View Full Version : No metadata on some CDs within same box set.



FMNY
05-20-2018, 02:07 AM
I'm ripping a 9 CD box set from Sony called "Ania Dorfmann: Complete RCA Album Collection." Meta data came up fine for the first four CDs, but then discs 5-8 come up blank. Then CD 9 again has metadata. Those CDs coming up empty have a lot of tracks so that's a ton of meta data to enter manually. It strikes me as very unlikely GD3 has metadata for CDs 1-4 and 9 but not CDs 5-8. Is there something wrong with the way the CD ripper is looking up some classical CDs?

Spoon
05-20-2018, 04:28 AM
It is how box sets are created, they take other smaller box sets or single discs and add them together to create a new box set, so it is not unheard of for metadata to be missing.

FMNY
05-20-2018, 08:26 AM
It is how box sets are created, they take other smaller box sets or single discs and add them together to create a new box set, so it is not unheard of for metadata to be missing.

This is an original jacket collection, which means each CD matches the contents of a corresponding LP release from the 1950s. So in this case, every CD is a brand new creation for this set. There were no previous CD releases by this artist that matched LP releases. Therefore it doesn't make sense to have four CDs from the set missing from GD3.

One bit of additional info is that I ripped the first four CDs while using Release 15. I upgraded to release 16 yesterday and it's with release 16 that I'm having this issue where 4 of the 5 remaining discs don't have metadata. Is there anything different in the way release 15 and release 16 look up meatadata from the databases? Lastly, all the CDs are in accurate rip so it's not something so obscure that it would be missing from GD3.

Spoon
05-20-2018, 09:03 AM
R15 used AMG, which has now been switched off.

FMNY
05-20-2018, 09:30 AM
R15 used AMG, which has now been switched off.

From my experience, R15 had been unable to retrieve info from AMG for months. In fact I unchecked AMG because it was causing the metadata to take ages to retrieve since it no longer had access to AMG but would spend time a long time trying. After turning AMG off it would retrieve metadata quickly. So it couldn't be because of AMG.

FMNY
05-20-2018, 11:17 AM
I uninstalled R16 and went back to R15. AMG is unchecked and it still pulled up meta data for these CDs that R16 would not. However, it appears to be getting the data from the CD itself as none of the meta data services columns are filled. Only the far left column has data. So maybe there is something I need to change in settings in R16 so it will pull the data from the CD or is R16 not reading meta data off the CDs the same way R15 did?

mville
05-20-2018, 11:31 AM
Currently in the R15 software, do you have CD-Text selected in Active Providers?

Spoon
05-20-2018, 01:49 PM
It might be getting it from the cache, press the metadata button to retrieve fresh.

FMNY
05-20-2018, 04:17 PM
I pressed the metadata button and retrieved the data fresh. It pulled up the same meta data directly from the CD.

Do I need to do something different in R16 to get the meta data off the CD itself? I assumed that would be turned on by default. These CDs I'm talking about have a lot of tracks. CD 6 has 38 tracks, CD 7 has 25 tracks, CD 8 has 24 tracks. That's a lot of manual entry if I can't get it off the CD. Should I go back to R16 now and we see what I need to do so it gets the meta data off the CD directly when there's no other source?

FMNY
05-20-2018, 08:20 PM
I reinstalled R16 and again got no meta data, however, by manually telling DBPoweramp to retrieve data from CD-text I got my meta data back. So then I saw that the CD-text meta data source was unchecked, apparently by default, whereas in R15 it is checked by default. So this whole issue was caused by that. If R16 had CD-text retrieval turned on by default like R15 does there would not have been this issue.

Jailhouse
05-20-2018, 10:56 PM
I'm glad you solved the issue. I just want to point out that metadata is not contained on the CD itself, hence the various metadata providers.

FMNY
05-21-2018, 01:24 AM
I'm glad you solved the issue. I just want to point out that metadata is not contained on the CD itself, hence the various metadata providers.

Sorry, that is totally wrong information. Some CDs do have metadata on the CD, and that's the exactly the situation for the CDs I had the problem with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-Text

Jailhouse
05-21-2018, 01:28 PM
Sorry, that is totally wrong information. Some CDs do have metadata on the CD

Don't be sorry--I just learned a thing! Although I might argue that my statement isn't totally wrong, since it applies to many CDs. :)

I had never heard of CD-Text before. Thanks for the link.

schmidj
05-23-2018, 03:01 AM
Yes, CD text has been around for years, I believe originally a Sony thing. Not too commonly used, and even less supported by players, both stand-alone and computer apps.

You do have to watch out, as some small studios, particularly that release self-burned CDRs, tend to put things not intended for the end user in there, like "Take 4" or "Track 5" or other useless data. I see that too often on the Caribbean CDs I purchase.

Nonetheless, it can be very useful for lesser known stuff that never got entered on the major data providers.

I very much miss AMG, as that had data for most of the Caribbean CDs that none of the other providers have. My "hit rate" on metadata now with the remaining providers is under 20 % compared with between 70 to 80 % with AMG. I do wish that Spoon would provide API handles to allow ripper users to write their own routines to recover metadata from other sources they might personally subscribe to or have on file. In my case, I still have a couple thousand Caribbean CDs that I had previously ripped to M4A with Winamp which have moderately accurate metadata (which I kindly provided free of charge to Gracenote, but cannot access to retrieve and reuse...). In reripping these to FLAC, I either have to reenter the metadata from scratch or use an awkward workaround putting in a title and artist so mp3tag can find the newly reripped files, opening them and the old m4a files, and cutting and pasting the metadata. Both methods are very slow and prone to error. Just being able to retrieve the data from the old m4a files and using that as a metadata source when reripping the CDs in dBpoweramp would save me an enormous amount of time.