What is the best way to add song metadata (artist, album, title, etc.) to flac files? I want to be able to define an arbitrary number of FIELD=value pairs. Earlier I heard someone mention using id3 tags. I tried this with the command-line "id3v2", and while it seemed to work I noticed that the resulting file no longer began with "fLaC", which violates the format specification. Is this a problem? The command-line decoder would still decode it without complaning. Would a better solution be to allocate an APPLICATION metadata block id for comments? If so, what format would be best for storing this kind of information? A series of null-terminated strings seems the simplest, say: ARTIST=Some Artist\000ALBUM=Some Album\000 Comments? (no pun intended :-) Joshua -- Joshua Haberman <joshua@haberman.com>
* Josh Coalson (xflac@yahoo.com) wrote:> --- Joshua Haberman <jhaberman@ups.edu> wrote: > > Would a better solution be to allocate an APPLICATION metadata block > > id > > for comments? If so, what format would be best for storing this kind > > of > > information? A series of null-terminated strings seems the simplest, > > say: > > > > ARTIST=Some Artist\000ALBUM=Some Album\000 > > I'm leaning towards having a metadata block that is compatible > with the vorbis comment spec. would this be amenable?I like this idea. My primary goal is to be able to translate directly from flac to mp3 or vorbis while preserving all metadata. If the flac metadata was vorbis-compatible, the conversion from flac to vorbis would be trivial. And since ID3 seems to be a superset of of the vorbis comment capabilities, conversion from flac to ID3 would only require a mapping of the schemas that both use (e.g. TRACKNUMBER->TRCK, TITLE->TIT2, etc.)> I should probably just reserve the ID for it now, so that it's possible > for people to roll their own until the next release, which will have > better metadata editing facilities.I'm guessing you would probably prefer to write the libFLAC code, but I would be happy to test it and perhaps write some of the supporting code (like expanding metaflac to support song metadata). Joshua -- Joshua Haberman <joshua@haberman.com>
--- Joshua Haberman <jhaberman@ups.edu> wrote:> What is the best way to add song metadata (artist, album, title, > etc.) to > flac files? I want to be able to define an arbitrary number of > FIELD=value pairs. > > Earlier I heard someone mention using id3 tags. I tried this with > the > command-line "id3v2", and while it seemed to work I noticed that the > resulting file no longer began with "fLaC", which violates the format > specification. Is this a problem? The command-line decoder would > still > decode it without complaning.yeah, I'm starting to regret supporting id3v2. the decoder will skip it but it's not guaranteed to work with anything that uses FLAC.> Would a better solution be to allocate an APPLICATION metadata block > id > for comments? If so, what format would be best for storing this kind > of > information? A series of null-terminated strings seems the simplest, > say: > > ARTIST=Some Artist\000ALBUM=Some Album\000I'm leaning towards having a metadata block that is compatible with the vorbis comment spec. would this be amenable? I should probably just reserve the ID for it now, so that it's possible for people to roll their own until the next release, which will have better metadata editing facilities. Josh __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards® http://movies.yahoo.com/