Vorbis Comment (FLAC) remapping questions

**Edu Camargo** · July 11, 2010, 10:18 PM

Re: Vorbis Comment (FLAC) remapping questions

Originally posted by atlantic

Hi,

This topic seems to have been a frequent one here. I think I still have some relevant additional questions.

In dMC Configuration (CODECS - ADVANCED OPTIONS - FLAC ID TAGGING - VORBIS COMMENT MAPPING XX) seven vorbis comment field names are remapped by default as accordingly (please correct me if the below is incorrect, I'm afraid I'm not willing to re-install dMC only to check out these settings' default setups):

* LABEL to ORGANIZATION
* CONDUCTOR to PERFORMER
* COMMENT to DESCRIPTION
* YEAR to DATE
* TRACK to TRACKNUMBER
* DISC to DISCNUMBER
* ALBUM ARTIST to ALBUMARTIST

I have understood that this is because of the vorbis comment standards for developers (http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=12591). Is it so? Are the default settings in dMC Configuration, which remap the said values, because of the guidelines set by vorbis comment standards?

Another question: Based on your experiences, which vorbis comment field names (out of these seven in question) are the most compatible ones in different media players? For example, is <YEAR> more likely to be recognized by a media player than <DATE>?

Or is this in the end really a non-issue? Are the major media players able to recognize either of the field names in question?

I know the last questions are difficult ones because of the diversity of media players, but if you can share some light on your experiences I would appreciate it.

Hi Atlantic,

In fact, many of the pre-configured field mappings for Vorbis Comments in dBpoweramp, are based not only in the xiph's specifications themselves, but also on hardware/software vendors that set their own standards. Looking at the Xiph's own specs, 'Organization', 'Date', 'Description', 'Tracknumber', and 'Performer', are already set, but in the case of the performer field, it is not restricted only to the conductor. As the Xiph suggests, in a classical music this field would be used for the conductor, orchestra and soloists, and in an audiobook it would be the actor who did the reading, however in popular music it can be omited.

But many involved in wiki documentations about the metadata format suggest that Performer should be used much like the ID3V2.3's IPLS (involved persons list), e.g. the person's name and his/her role in a song, like this:
PERFORMER: Matt Rowe (Keyboards).

Another suggestion is that both conductor and orchestra have their own fields set. Conductor is more likely to work, because one of the major network music players, Squeezebox, can read this format during a music scan; this is not the case with 'orchestra' which forces us to put the orchestra in the artist field. But of course, not all players support conductor and performer fields, which makes the process of organizing classical music, in particular, a whole mess.

Regarding the Date, Organization, TrackNumber, and DiscNumber, many players that support these informations will look at the default mappings in flac files, and will act accordingly. Of course, the date can mean simply the album's year of release, or you can put the date following the format yyyy-mm-dd, which seems to be an ISO format, and it's good for organizing albums chronologically; so when an artist has two albums released in the same year everything is in place.

ALBUMARTIST is a common vorbis comment for album artist mapping. A few players like Foobar2000 and JRiver Media Center suggest the use of Album artist with a space, but ALBUMARTIST are more likely to work in many players and most platforms, and still is even recommended by the SlimDevices developers, see the thread below:

Just a moment...

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=61535

Peace,

Edu.