File naming Help required + Artist field truncated after ';' when used in file naming

[wmoonshine]

Question: Is there an “industry” standard for file naming and tagging and a website that explains this in detail so I don’t have to post silly questions to the forum?

Here’s an example: I just ripped a track from a CD with the following conditions:

• File Naming String used = [tag]composer[] – [title] ([artist]; [year], DDD) ([length])
• Artist = Choir of King's College, Cambridge, Christopher Robinson, cond; Christopher Whitton, organ

In the resulting filename, the artist string was truncated after the ';'. I normally follow the artist’s name by a comma and the instrument played, then follow that by a semicolon and the next artist, etc.

While searching the forum I found a 2007-06-07 reply by SPOON to a post by Kdeemer titled “DMC Truncates Artist Field after ';'” which stated:

We are storing correctly as per vorbis comments (flac tags are voribs comments), for multi artists you store as:

ARTIST=artist1

ARTIST=artist2

it is incorrect to store as artist 1; artist 2



What does this mean? Is there more than one [artist] element?

[LtData]

Re: File naming Help required + Artist field truncated after ';' when used in file na

What Spoon means is that if you put a semi-colon in the artist string, it makes multiple "Artist" tags for the file. Look at these tags and that should be what it looks like.

Could you give us an example of what the filename looks like after you rip and what it is supposed to look like?

As for standards in naming, there is not a consensus, though a general "track - title" or "track - artist - title" is normally used. Each user does this naming their own way, though; some user subfolders for each artist and album, some put everything in one directory.

[Spoon]

Re: File naming Help required + Artist field truncated after ';' when used in file na

For file naming we store the first artist only, or the first of any multi-item (such as genre, etc).

Perhaps we should be storing multi-items? in the filename.

[LtData]

Re: File naming Help required + Artist field truncated after ';' when used in file na

Or mabye something like [artist] that is the first artist only and [all-artists] that has all artists?

[wmoonshine]

Re: File naming Help required + Artist field truncated after ';' when used in file naming

I think my original question was not clearly expressed. What I wanted to know is if there is an “industry” standard for filename tags and how they are used, such as [title], [IFEQUALS]tag,equals,string[], etc. The use (such as nesting) of these conditionals seems to be very similar to the IF conditional used in Excel formulae.

Here’s an example of a track I just ripped an hour ago:

Artist = Luciano Pavarotti, tenor; National Philharmonic Orch
Title = Mille Cherubini in Coro
Year = 1976
Composer = Franz Schubert
Length = 4:05
File Naming String used = [tag]composer[] – [title] ([artist]; [year]) ([length])

The resulting filename I used to expect was:

“Franz Schubert – Mille Cherubini in Coro (Luciano Pavarotti, tenor; National Philharmonic Orch; 1976) (4.05).ape”

However, I have found a workaround by replacing the semicolon with a space and plus sign ( +) as follows:

Artist = Luciano Pavarotti, tenor + National Philharmonic Orch

Works just as good, but it requires one extra character. One always has to worry about the number of characters that end up in a Windows XP filename, given max filespec length is 256 characters.

Some may be wondering why I put all this info into my filenames.

• Firstly, I store all my music according to Genre. A folder such as “\Classical\Piano\Concerto” may contain several hundred tracks and several different versions of the same piece, such as Chopin’s Grande Polonaise Brillante for Piano & Orchestra, played by different artists and of various quality.
• I use Windows Explorer (WE) extensively. I have two choices: I can put the [artist], [year] and [length] into the filenames, or I can have WE display these items as separate columns in the file pane using the custom dBpoweramp WE Details (select View / Choose Details). The trouble with the latter option is WE has to read the tag info from each file. When you have several hundred files in a folder, every time you click on that folder in WE, you have to wait while WE reads the contents from each of the several hundred files in order to generate the file listing. I don’t like to wait.
• Multiple artists is mainly a concern with classical music – I don’t normally include more than one artist in other genres.

While were on the subject, it would be nice if dBpoweramp had a dedicated tag for “composer” such as [composer] – it would be easier to enter and read than [tag]composer[]. With classical music, I start each filename with [composer], whereas in other genres, filenames begin with [artist]. When I want to play a piece by Beethoven, I don't look for a filename that begins with "National Philharmonic Orch", rather it's more intuitive to look for "Beethoven".