APE Metadata tags & Conversion

**Spoon** · February 03, 2004, 11:33 AM

Re: APE Metadata tags & Conversion

Yes it will do that.

**Bryan** · February 03, 2004, 12:25 PM

Re: APE Metadata tags & Conversion

Spoon, Thanks for the response.

It doesn't appear to be working however.. I'm not even getting basic tag info (title, artist, album, year... ). I've tried both ON and OFF for "Preserve ID Tags" .. The APE files I'm using are tagged with Media Center and have most fields populated with data. Nothing is coming across from the APE tag to the FLAC tags..

Here's the metaflac output for one of the FLAC files converted from APE using DBPoweramp:

C:\Program Files\FLAC>metaflac --list test3.flac
METADATA block #0
type: 0 (STREAMINFO)
is last: false
length: 34
minumum blocksize: 4608 samples
maximum blocksize: 4608 samples
minimum framesize: 1324 bytes
maximum framesize: 15736 bytes
sample_rate: 44100 Hz
channels: 2
bits-per-sample: 16
total samples: 10733940
MD5 signature: ede769709ae30d7355143b7771caabf9
METADATA block #1
type: 1 (PADDING)
is last: false
length: 32768
METADATA block #2
type: 4 (VORBIS_COMMENT)
is last: true
length: 40
vendor string: reference libFLAC 1.1.0 20030126
comments: 0

Bryan

**Spoon** · February 04, 2004, 11:24 AM

Re: APE Metadata tags & Conversion

Hold the mouse over the ape file, does the tag show? hold it also over the flac file, does it show? (in the yellow info popup).

**Bryan** · February 04, 2004, 02:25 PM

Re: APE Metadata tags & Conversion

Thanks, I'm familiar with the popup info.. The files, as tagged by JRiver's Media Center, do not show tags with the popup window. The popup window shows file information but not tag data. I believe the tag popup only supports ID3 tags.. APE 2.0 doesn't appear be supported completely by this popup window. I wish that would work.

I picked a song in Media Center that was fully tagged. Checked in Monkey's Audio 3.97 and it shows no tag.. It is recommended to tag APE files with APE20 tags and not ID3. The Monkey's Audio app is limited to viewing ID3 tags only. None of my APEs have ID3 tags.

Here is the tag as defined by Media Center:
==================================
Monkey's Audio 3.97 (normal)
Format: 44.1 khz, 16 bit, 2 ch
Length: 3:39
Compression: 64.49% (23.8 MB / 36.9 MB)
Tag: APE Tag 2.00 (45579 bytes)
Track: 7
Year: 1985
Genre: Pop
Peak Level: 0.99997
Artist: Howard Jones
Tool Version: 9.1.316
Media Jukebox: BPM: 99
Title: Life In One Day
Tool Name: Media Center
Media Jukebox: Rating: 3
Media Jukebox: Intensity: 3
Replay Gain (radio): -9.58294
Album: The Best Of Howard Jones
Media Jukebox: Custom 1: New Wave
Comment: Extracted By Exact Audio Cop
Media Jukebox: Custom 3: Pop/Rock, New Wave, Synth Pop
Media Jukebox: Custom 2: Earnest, Stylish, Quirky, Restrained, Amiable/Good-Natured, Refined/Mannered, Playful, Reverent, Reflective, Searching
Notes: <too large to display>
Lyrics: <too large to display>
Cover Art (front): <too large to display>

Here is the same tag data as seen by TAG.exe (included with FLAC)
==================================================
C:\Program Files\FLAC\HJ.ape
Format: Monkey's Audio 3.97
Details: 44100 Hz Stereo, 910 kbps, playtime 03:39
Tag: APE v2.0
Title: Life In One Day
Artist: Howard Jones
Album: The Best Of Howard Jones
Year: 1985
Track: 7
Genre: Pop
Comment: Extracted By Exact Audio Cop
Peak Level=0.99997
Tool Version=9.1.316
Media Jukebox: BPM=99
Tool Name=Media Center
Media Jukebox: Rating=3
Media Jukebox: Intensity=3
Replay Gain (radio)=-9.58294
Media Jukebox: Custom 1=New Wave
Media Jukebox: Custom 3=Pop/Rock, New Wave, Synth Pop
Media Jukebox: Custom 2=Earnest, Stylish, Quirky, Restrained, Amiable/Good-Natur
ed, Refined/Mannered, Playful, Reverent, Reflective, Searching
Notes= (removed to reduce post size)
Lyrics=(removed to reduce post size)

Cover Art (front)=(binary)

=============================================

So as you can see, the file is fully tagged with an APE 2.0 tag. Every program I've encountered that supports APE 2.0 tags shows this same information.

It is *THIS* tag data that I would like to be transferred when I convert the file. I couldn't care less about ID3 tags.

Is this possible? If not please consider the feature requests below:

1) APE v2.0 tag support in the popup
2) Conversion of the APE 2.0 tag to other formats

3) I would pay for a program that could convert file tags from one format to the other based on the client that's going to be playing them. For instance, Music Match, Media Center, and Microsoft WMP, all support extended tags using metadata but apparently they create the tags differently making them incompatible with other players. It would be a great help to the user communities of all these players to have a program that could transfer the tags from one format to another. For example I would like to switch from MusicMatch to WMP, I could specify this in the conversion app and it would know the proper format to add the tags to the resultant files so they would work in the target player. Sounds like a lot of work but shouldn't be that difficult to do. Maybe you could do a DBPowerAmp *Pro* that would do this...

There would be a large group of people interested in such an app.

Bryan

Thanks
Bryan

**Spoon** · February 05, 2004, 11:20 AM

Re: APE Metadata tags & Conversion

In that case you need the new Ape version (in the beta section) it will read ape 2 tags.

**Bryan** · February 05, 2004, 01:49 PM

Re: APE Metadata tags & Conversion

Got it.. Thanks..

It appears to work fine. Conversion using DBPowerAmp also preserves the tag (according to the popup window). Media Center is having some trouble reading the tags though. That could be a problem with the FLAC input plugin being used with MC. It's not complete at the moment.. Some of the weird things happening within MC is that the date is interpreted as 1905 (always), and the rating, and 3 media jukebox custom fields are blank.

Thanks for your help and as soon as the FLAC plugin becomes a more established plugin or is offically released I'll give this some more testing.

Bryan