Batch Converter Issues

**LtData** · May 17, 2008, 06:00 AM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

1, 2. Version of dMC?
4. Do you have the album art embeded in the files or just in the folder? The export option only works if the album art is embedded.

**Spoon** · May 17, 2008, 08:17 AM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

C:\music\wav\Händel, Georg Frideric (1685-1759)\Händel - Water Music, The Musick for the Royal Fireworks, The Alchymist (CD 1 of 2)

Gets written as:

C:\music\test\HÃ¤ndel - Water Music, The Musick for the Royal Fireworks, The Alchymist (CD 1 of 2)\01 Water Music - Horn Suite in F major - I. Overture- Largo -- Allegro

As these are from naming, they are in the ID Tags, these are probabbly not stored as correct unicode (they look like they are utf 8, which is no valid for wave files). Just seen point 3:

Contains: ID Tag[list]

Wave List tags cannot be UTF8, which ever program created them is breaking the standard.

You need to import the folder.jpg, and export at the same time.

5. Don't worry

**apb** · May 17, 2008, 12:12 PM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

>>> 1, 2. Version of dMC?

dbPowerAmp R12.4 not sure if dMC has a separate version number or how to get it if it does.

>>> As these are from naming, they are in the ID Tags, these are
>>> probably not stored as correct unicode (they look like they are utf 8,
>>> which is no valid for wave files). Just seen point 3:

MediaMonkey claims to use the encoding for tags: "ASCII + UTF-16 (when needed)" which sounds like bad way of saying UTF-8. An independent application, Squeeze Center, can read through all ~5k WAV files and gets all the special characters correct so I have a fairly strong belief that MediaMonkey is probably doing the right thing or at least doing something not too unexpected. A large percentage of my music library has special characters in them, not being able to deal gracefully with them would be bad 8-(.

>>> You need to import the folder.jpg, and export at the same time.

Thanks, this seemed to fix the issue!

**apb** · May 17, 2008, 01:57 PM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

>>> Wave List tags cannot be UTF8, which ever program created
>>> them is breaking the standard.

That may be, but other programs like Squeeze Center are able to read and deal with these files just fine. Maybe there could be an option like "expect utf 8 in wav tags" in the batch converter that people could use who use MediaMonkey (which is very popular) or other such tools that use this encoding.

Is there maybe some tool or conversion that will fix utf8 tags in wav files and convert them to utf16 automatically? I have a huge number of hours invested in tagging these files already and I have a very large number of files. Fixing them by hand is not an option.

**Spoon** · May 17, 2008, 03:50 PM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

>"expect utf 8 in wav tags"

Except switching this on would also cause certain non-utf 8 tag to decode incorrectly...

We also support the 'id3 ' chunk wave tagging standard (same as Tag & Rename), not sure if MM supports this, anyhow it is in R13 (currently in beta).

Put it this way, you cannot have unicode anything with wave list, you can with an id3 chunk.

**apb** · May 17, 2008, 04:05 PM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

Originally posted by Spoon

>"expect utf 8 in wav tags"

Except switching this on would also cause certain non-utf 8 tag to decode incorrectly...

We also support the 'id3 ' chunk wave tagging standard (same as Tag & Rename), not sure if MM supports this, anyhow it is in R13 (currently in beta).

Put it this way, you cannot have unicode anything with wave list, you can with an id3 chunk.

Hmm, somehow MediaMonkey and Squeeze Center both manage to deal with these files and preserve the unicode and other tags in the wave file just fine. I wonder how they do it? Maybe it isn't 100% according to spec (I'll trust you on this one since I've never read the spec), but dealing with reality is that major applications are generating files with fields formatted like this and are dealing with them just fine. I'm not trying to sound mean, I really love what I've seen of dbPowerAmp so far I think you've done a great job, I'm just a bit frustrate because I've invested so much time in generating the tags that it's easy to get annoyed when they aren't dealt with properly by other applications (even when it's warranted that they don't deal with the tags).

Any news on why it's not understanding the composer, conductor and album artist tags? Not understanding the "album artist" tag is probably the biggest issue (after unicode) since my library file structure is based on it.

**Spoon** · May 17, 2008, 05:48 PM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

Unknown LIST sub chunk 'IMUS' Dropping it. [clRIFFLISTChunk::InitFrom]
Unknown LIST sub chunk 'IAAR' Dropping it. [clRIFFLISTChunk::InitFrom]
Unknown LIST sub chunk 'IRVA' Dropping it. [clRIFFLISTChunk::InitFrom

These are the 3 tags you mention, these programs have made up these values, again not to the spec.

It is possible to write utf-8 to an ID3v1 tag (for mp3), thus making it unicode, but it is not the standard and does not make it right, it would cause problems for other programs...

Wave 'id3 ' chunks are they way you have unicode tags in wave files.

**apb** · May 17, 2008, 08:41 PM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

Ok, I've figured out a solution to my problem. I can convert all the MM wav files (non-compliant) to FLAC (compliant) from inside of MM. I want the FLAC files anyways so this isn't too bad (except transcoding doesn't take advantage of the multiple cores so it's pretty slow). Then I can use dbPowerAmp to convert the compliant FLAC files into ALAC, then all the tags and artwork are copied over perfectly!

PS I can perfectly well understand not wanting to generate non-compliant WAV files...then you get the blame whenever someone else's application breaks from the files that you create. However, being able to read common variations of non-compliant WAV files seems like a very good thing and would help to make your customers happier 8-).

**PekeMM** · April 02, 2009, 01:29 PM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

As part of MM dev team I wanted to clear things up little.

RIFF TAGS MM CURRENTLY WRITES
----------------------------------

1. INAM - Name/Title | 1. (FF_Title)
2. IART - Artist | 2. (FF_Artist)
3. IPRD - Product | 3. (FF_Album)
4. IGNR - Genre | 4. (FF_Genre)
5. ICMT - Comments | 5. (FF_Comment)
6. ICMS - Commissioned | 6. (FF_Publisher)
7. ICOP - Copyright | 7. (FF_CopyRight)
8. ISRC - Source | 8. (FF_ISRC)
9. ISFT - Software | 9. (FF_Encoder)
10. IMUS - Music by | 10. (FF_Composer)
11. IWRI - Written by | 11. (FF_Lyricist)
12. ITCH - Technician | 12. (FF_Conductor)
13. IAAR - Album artist | 13. (FF_Band)
14. ISBJ - Subject | 14. (FF_Subtitle)
15. itrk - Track Number | 15. (FF_TrackNumber)
16. ICRD - Creation Date | 16. (FF_Year)
17. IRTD - Rating | 17. (FF_Rating)
18. ITGL - Track Gain Level | 18. (FF_RGtrackgain)
19. IRVA - Track Peak level | 23. (FF_RGtrackpeak) Relative volume adjustment

Also using Simply INI setting it can be switched back to standard ASCII
[WAVTagging]
ReadWriteUTF8=0

Note that most of above Metadata settings are based on RIFF INFO CHUNK spec for both Audio and Video Formats.

**PekeMM** · April 02, 2009, 02:48 PM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

This can be clearly seen in GSpot v2.21 http://www.headbands.com/gspot/download.html

**Spoon** · April 07, 2009, 01:07 PM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

Do you know of any other programs which use these fields? (IMUS, etc)

**PekeMM** · December 21, 2009, 11:26 PM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

Last Time I checked Sony SoundForge Used it.

**Spoon** · December 22, 2009, 10:25 AM

Re: Batch Converter Issues

>18. ITGL - Track Gain Level | 18. (FF_RGtrackgain)

Soundforge almost certainly will not use the above, and I think the others are a single standard also (last time I checked in soundforge). If you tag a file in soundforge with all the fields, any which are in soundforge and mm I can add.