OCR ID3 tagging improvements - DONE! [Archive]

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Liontamer

01-09-2009, 07:04 PM

We're in the home stretch of this project and a re-release of the single mix torrents. :-)

Hey y'all. I was interested in updating the tags of OC ReMixes and wanted to know what fields should be added to the picture.

Album art is a given. What dimensions are the most appropriate for standard stuff like iTunes?

Album artist/band is also important, along with Publisher.

Aside from those, am I missing anything major that comes up as blank in major music applications?

Rama, where you at?

----------------------------------------------------

IN PROGRESS:

Lyrics unavailable for some ReMixes (HELP US OUT HERE (http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=29498))
Higher bitrate encodings (but NO CHANGES OR REVISIONS)
New bitrate/encoding requirement at either 192kbps or VBR1 (ReMixers, post your high quality WAV, FLAC or 192kbps or VBR1 MP3 encodings here (http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=40200) OR host them and send links to larryoji@ocremix.org)
THINGS WE ARE NOT CHANGING:

ReMixer name(s) as Artist
"http://ocremix.org" as Album Title
"Game" as Genre
Official album art design

DONE:

MP3 validation (e.g. MPEG frame consistency, length of stored VBR header) for player compatibility
Added missing VBR headers
Removed all non-standard ID3v2.3 tags and all non-ID3v2.3 tags (e.g. ID3v1, APE)
Standardized filenames and ID3v2.3 tags (e.g. proper game titles, correct capitalization/spacing of mix titles, single quotes around mix title)
Quality control & corrections of all existing fields (e.g. ReMixer name changes, missing/corrected composers/platforms/years)
Added Track # (ReMix ID #), Publisher (OverClocked ReMix), Album Artist (OverClocked ReMix) and Album Artist URL ("http://ocremix.org") fields
Added Compilation flag for grouping of single mixes as one album
Added game to Grouping/Content Group field for sorting by game title
Added ReMix titles (w/o game name prefix & 'OC ReMix' suffix) to Subtitle field
Standardized URL field (OCR Artist profile URL)
Added artist submission and website comments to Comments field (when available)
Embedded confirmed lyrics in Comments and Unsynced Lyrics fields
Removed extra silence from tracks

Doulifée

01-09-2009, 07:11 PM

i have this one in my windows ocr folder. Don't remember who did it.

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/9991/cdcoverxl1.jpg

HalcyonSpirit

01-09-2009, 07:28 PM

I think I remember one of the biggest complaints people have had in the past is that, when put into iTunes, all the songs come up as separate albums based on the artist, despite all the songs being part of the same album. It results in a plethora of "http://www.ocremix.org" albums showing up. So I suggest that this problem be fixed.

Liontamer

01-09-2009, 07:42 PM

Ramaniscence

01-09-2009, 08:30 PM

Hey y'all. I was interested in updating the tags of OC ReMixes and wanted to know what fields should be added to the picture.

Album art is a given. What dimensions are the most appropriate for standard stuff like iTunes?

Album artist/band is also important, along with Publisher.

Aside from those, am I missing anything major that comes up as blank in major music applications?

Rama, where you at?

Lyrics, where necessary/possible. That's one of the things I try to do with all the R:TS mixes, and since there's not too many songs that actally HAVE lyrics, it should be pretty easy to add. Lots of media players'll pop something up, or have a little display thing for lyrics, so it's cool to have.

Album art doesn't need to be any bigger than 300x300. I don't know if that's the "standard" so to speak, but that's what I see most often.

That's just the first thing that comes to mind, though. I'll look and see if there's anything else I'm missing.

Liontamer

01-09-2009, 08:31 PM

Lyrics, where necessary/possible. That's one of the things I try to do with all the R:TS mixes, and since there's not too many songs that actally HAVE lyrics, it should be pretty easy to add. Lots of media players'll pop something up, or have a little display thing for lyrics, so it's cool to have.

Album art doesn't need to be any bigger than 300x300. I don't know if that's the "standard" so to speak, but that's what I see most often.

That's just the first thing that comes to mind, though. I'll look and see if there's anything else I'm missing.

Thanks, man. Good catch on lyrics! Just double check on the art sizes you're seeing. I'm sure the display size in programs is smaller than 300x300, but if there's any program that shows off something larger, I'd rather we didn't have art that was too small and might look pixelated.

JaDE ARaN HaRuNo

01-09-2009, 08:35 PM

01-09-2009, 08:56 PM

300x300 is the sized used for the itunes 'flip book' view-

http://oceansend.com/5502/ocr/flip.jpg

Liontamer

01-09-2009, 09:00 PM

Hey Larry... I think any photo size for iTunes will work and display on all iPods. Each game has a standard photo displayed when reading reviews on OCR... I usually right click on those, save on my hard drive, and select that photo for the specific track. It was a lot of work, but it looks nice on my iPod. :)

Custom art per game could be cool, but too much worky! I lazy.

300x300 is the sized used for the itunes 'flip book' view-

http://oceansend.com/5502/ocr/flip.jpg

So when you extract the art from pro iTunes releases, is it also 300x300, or is it larger and just scaled down for the flipbook view?

Ramaniscence

01-09-2009, 09:17 PM

Custom art per game could be cool, but too much worky! I lazy.

So when you extract the art from pro iTunes releases, is it also 300x300, or is it larger and just scaled down for the flipbook view?

iTunes pretty much scales infinitely. Most media players do. I don't know of many instances where you'll find something display BY DEFAULT more than 300x300

BUT

When iTunes pulls album art from the iTunes store, they're 600x600. I checked for multiple songs from multiple CDs, both less known and more well known.

So 600x600 is my final answer.

Liontamer

01-09-2009, 09:47 PM

So 600x600 is my final answer.

Awesome. This is definitely helpful!

Is there anything else mission critical that you guys feel OCR tags lack?

Zephyr

01-09-2009, 10:13 PM

It would be cool to somehow integrate a system of sorting by game, but I'm not sure which field you could use.

Rozovian

01-09-2009, 10:15 PM

Moguta

01-09-2009, 10:28 PM

One thing that I'm surprised has never been done, especially considering how all of OCR is tagged as one album:
How about putting the remix ID number as the track number, so we can sort the remixes in the order they were posted on the site?

This might be a compeltely idiotic idea, but...

Could the Album tag refer to the game and http://www.ocremix.org be put somewhere else (like publisher/label/whatever)? It'd make sorting easier.

Also, some game names aren't used consistantly, SD3 and Seiken Densetsu 3 are both used (the only example I recall). Might as well fix that and NamesWithoutSpaces too if you're updating the tags.
I believe Dave has stated before that OCR's URL will not be moved out of the album field. Discovering an MP3 with a website listed as its album (how often do you seen that?) is going to drive a lot more people to discover this place than a URL buried deep within the ID3 details.

Although I understand your sentiments. Personally, all the OC ReMixes I download have their album changed to "Game Name OC ReMix", "OC ReMix" is stripped out of the title (since I put it in the album), and "http://www.ocremix.org" goes into the publisher field.

Liontamer

01-09-2009, 10:58 PM

This might be a compeltely idiotic idea, but...

Could the Album tag refer to the game and http://www.ocremix.org be put somewhere else (like publisher/label/whatever)? It'd make sorting easier.

It would be cool to somehow integrate a system of sorting by game, but I'm not sure which field you could use.

Definitely NOT changing the album tag. :lol: That's how people find the site. If you want to sort by game, the filenames and titles allow that already.

Also, some game names aren't used consistantly, SD3 and Seiken Densetsu 3 are both used (the only example I recall). Might as well fix that and NamesWithoutSpaces too if you're updating the tags.

Already done. This is me we're talking about.

One thing that I'm surprised has never been done, especially considering how all of OCR is tagged as one album:
How about putting the remix ID number as the track number, so we can sort the remixes in the order they were posted on the site?

Dave uses Helium to tag the mixes and I know he adds the OCR mix # in every mix somewhere. That said, I dunno where that is in ID3v2 tags or how to easily see that stuff. We could do that in the Track # tags instead.

Moguta

01-09-2009, 11:47 PM

Dave uses Helium to tag the mixes and I know he adds the OCR mix # in every mix somewhere. That said, I dunno where that is in ID3v2 tags or how to easily see that stuff. We could do that in the Track # tags instead.
Cool, thanks. Curious to see if I could find the embedded numbers, I just used Winamp, Foobar2000, and a free tagger program... and none of them saw any ID3 field containing the mix number. It isn't easy to find, that's for certain. o.o

Doulifée

01-09-2009, 11:57 PM

Cool, thanks. Curious to see if I could find the embedded numbers, I just used Winamp, Foobar2000, and a free tagger program... and none of them saw any ID3 field containing the mix number. It isn't easy to find, that's for certain. o.o

i concur. my mixes are stored by folder from the torrent. 01 > 1000 etc

and i don't see any mixid anywhere. i'm forced to check the path of the file to see where they are.

anosou

01-10-2009, 12:10 AM

This might be a compeltely idiotic idea, but...

Could the Album tag refer to the game and http://www.ocremix.org be put somewhere else (like publisher/label/whatever)? It'd make sorting easier.

Also, some game names aren't used consistantly, SD3 and Seiken Densetsu 3 are both used (the only example I recall). Might as well fix that and NamesWithoutSpaces too if you're updating the tags.

Don't remove the album tag, the album is OCR and not the game. Will cause a LOT of confusion otherwise imo, people sharing it like a soundtrack song or such.

Fixing the NamesWithoutSpaces and FFVI/FF6 issues too might be a good idea. Use roman numerals.

RE: the separate albums in itunes I usually check "part of collection" in itunes and they all group together. If the Album Artist field will fix this, then good, "part of collection" works good enough for me anyway. Album Artist field would require putting every single remixer down OR ocremix.org and both seems.. meh.

RE: mix id, would be awesome. I always try to sort by year to see the "evolution" of OCRemixes and mix id (perhaps track number? that's the best way to organize it in my opinion but it might mess stuff up if your media player doesn't sort by different things easily) would help this a lot.

K.B.

01-10-2009, 12:22 AM

Custom art per game could be cool, but too much worky! I lazy.
You could recruit! http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19642. No difference to me since I'm still Zen Xtra-ing (green and black screen), but if that tiles project doesn't fall through it sounds like you might have folks interested in associating the pics with the remixes.

anosou

01-10-2009, 12:34 AM

chumble spuzz

01-10-2009, 12:52 AM

Fixing the NamesWithoutSpaces and FFVI/FF6 issues too might be a good idea. Use roman numerals.

Actually, I think using a more computer-friendly convention might be better in this case. It might look weird to see "FF01" but at least it'll sort properly, i.e.10 coming after 9, instead of before 1. (Or alternately, IX coming after V, VI, etc., instead of before.)

anosou

01-10-2009, 01:00 AM

Actually, I think using a more computer-friendly convention might be better in this case. It might look weird to see "FF01" but at least it'll sort properly, i.e.10 coming after 9, instead of before 1. (Or alternately, IX coming after V, VI, etc., instead of before.)

The mission of OCR has always been to raise awareness of game music and tribute the original game and music. Using the games original title accomplishes that. We also don't want a fanboy-riot :tomatoface:

I see no reason of altering the games original title. If it uses roman numerals it should and vice versa.

Liontamer

01-10-2009, 01:08 AM

You could recruit! http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19642. No difference to me since I'm still Zen Xtra-ing (green and black screen), but if that tiles project doesn't fall through it sounds like you might have folks interested in associating the pics with the remixes.

That could be very cool, just not something that could be done quickly. Maybe around OCR02000 if they idea takes off.

Actually, I think using a more computer-friendly convention might be better in this case. It might look weird to see "FF01" but at least it'll sort properly, i.e.10 coming after 9, instead of before 1. (Or alternately, IX coming after V, VI, etc., instead of before.)

Nowadays, I've seen OSes & programs smart enough to understand that filenames with Final_Fantasy_9 come before Final_Fantasy_10, so I think it's OK, but I'll keep an eye on that. As far as the actual tags, don't worry Mattias, Roman numerals where appropriate.

SirChadlyOC

01-10-2009, 03:09 AM

One more name tag to check is "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" vs "TMNT." That is a bitch to find the right remix on my Zen Micro while driving! :<

Liontamer

01-10-2009, 03:23 AM

One more name tag to check is "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" vs "TMNT." That is a bitch to find the right remix on my Zen Micro while driving! :<

Already got that stuff, but thanks. Just for the record, I don't need any help on file renaming or proper game names, just ID3 tag fields we're not using that we should be.

José the Bronx Rican

01-10-2009, 09:05 AM

I've been meaning to ask - since my only experience is with a Creative Zen - just what systems these different players use to sort and playlist tracks. It's important for me to know before I move on with tagging my own stuff, which WILL happen no matter what, because every brand plays with the tags their own way. For example, album art size must be 200x200 before Zen recognizes it. Also, Zen doesn't sort by "year," although I'm sure others do. On that note, here's my suggestion: fix the songs with missing "year" tags. I'm not sure if the year given is necessarily the year the song was posted, but it makes sense to do that.

Native Jovian

01-11-2009, 03:04 AM

Nowadays, I've seen OSes & programs smart enough to understand that filenames with Final_Fantasy_9 come before Final_Fantasy_10, so I think it's OK, but I'll keep an eye on that. As far as the actual tags, don't worry Mattias, Roman numerals where appropriate.
As far as this issue, I'd suggest using digits in the filename but Roman numerals in the ID3 tag. A quick check shows that Windows XP is in fact smart enough to know that 1 < 2-9 < 10+, but the original Final Fantasy isn't tagged as "Final Fantasy 1" so it gets all messed up. It classes numbers as higher than letters alphabetically, so FF1 is AFTER all the other Final Fantasy games. Also, Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest get all mixed in with the Final Fantasy 1 games because it sorts all those mixes in with the FF1 songs at "T" and "M" respectively. That leads to another question. While filenames are smart enough to order themselves like that, are MP3 players? Maybe we'd be better off sticking with digits the whole way through to make those sorts of sorting issues nonexistent in any medium.

Another random issue I noticed! There are two Chrono Trigger mixes (KnightsComeMarchingHome and Downwind) that get messed up in order because, unlike any other remix that I'm aware of, they're listed as coming from multiple games. Knights is listed as "Chrono Trigger & FF9", while Downwind is "Chrono Trigger & Xenogears". There are other mixes from multiple unrelated games and they've never done this, so it should probably be standardized to listing the filename only under the "main" game.

OCR mix ID could easily go under track number.... however, this would mean that playing album "http://www.ocremix.org" would automatically sort by mix ID rather than by title, so that's something we'd probably want to avoid unless there was another easy way to sort by game, and I'm not aware of one. Perhaps put it under Disc? My iPod doesn't sort by disc number (something that has annoyed me intensely, actually), just track number within a particular album... Not an ideal solution, but the only one I can think of at the moment.

Either Album Artist/Band or Publisher seems to be a logical place to list the game the mix comes from, but I don't think that there's an option to sort by those fields in most MP3 players, so it'd be a bit pointless as far as that goes. Methinks the best solution for that is to just keep things as-is and have the game be the first part of the title.

Moguta

01-11-2009, 03:55 AM

As far as this issue, I'd suggest using digits in the filename but Roman numerals in the ID3 tag. A quick check shows that Windows XP is in fact smart enough to know that 1 < 2-9 < 10+, but the original Final Fantasy isn't tagged as "Final Fantasy 1" so it gets all messed up. It classes numbers as higher than letters alphabetically, so FF1 is AFTER all the other Final Fantasy games. Also, Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest get all mixed in with the Final Fantasy 1 games because it sorts all those mixes in with the FF1 songs at "T" and "M" respectively. That leads to another question. While filenames are smart enough to order themselves like that, are MP3 players? Maybe we'd be better off sticking with digits the whole way through to make those sorts of sorting issues nonexistent in any medium.
Yeah. While I don't feel too strongly about this really, roman numerals seem to be overly aesthetic. For example, you'll get FF IX coming before FF V. And many things sort by tags (media player's media libraries, iPods). And the original FF songs get thrown everywhere, between & around the numbered games depending on the title. I guess that last issue could be solved by seperating the game name from the track title by a ": " or " - ", but then I've noticed older tracks seem to treat the game name as part of the remix title. :-p Not sure there's any perfect solution here.

OCR mix ID could easily go under track number.... however, this would mean that playing album "http://www.ocremix.org" would automatically sort by mix ID rather than by title, so that's something we'd probably want to avoid unless there was another easy way to sort by game, and I'm not aware of one. Perhaps put it under Disc? My iPod doesn't sort by disc number (something that has annoyed me intensely, actually), just track number within a particular album... Not an ideal solution, but the only one I can think of at the moment.
Arg, are you serious? Can you not manually make the iPod sort by title name inside an album? If not, it seems it would be extremely cumbersome to find a specific OCR song on your iPod. Maybe there is no place in the ID3 tags for the mix ID after all. *facepalm*

Concerning album art, there was a recent topic (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20097&highlight=deviantart) that seems a pretty good candidate. That is, unless Dave has a graphical idea of his own.

Larry, as far as additional ID3 fields that OCR should use, I think we've got 'em all covered so far. That's why you're not seeing any more posts on that issue.

SoulinEther

01-11-2009, 04:15 AM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but right now, track number is used to identify which game of a series the remix is from? Like Castlevania 3 remixes would get a 3 in the track number? Or was that just my media player's fabrication and it's trying to trick me?

Isn't that kind of a waste? There should be something else being put there. And if not, what is being used there really?

Edit: my media player is a deceitful bastard. So... can't something be put there? I want to suggest remix #, but... I think that would be annoying for people whose media players / mp3 players automatically sort an album by track numbers - I personally find it handy that I can find songs from particular games easily because the songs are sorted in alphabetical order by title.. dunno.

Liontamer

01-11-2009, 04:28 AM

fix the songs with missing "year" tags

I dunno where the issue came from, but I believe it's all set. I already knew about it though, but thanks anyway for pointing it out.

As far as this issue, I'd suggest using digits in the filename but Roman numerals in the ID3 tag.

That's already the new standard, and I've carried that over to the older stuff.

the original Final Fantasy isn't tagged as "Final Fantasy 1" so it gets all messed up. It classes numbers as higher than letters alphabetically, so FF1 is AFTER all the other Final Fantasy games. Also, Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest get all mixed in with the Final Fantasy 1 games because it sorts all those mixes in with the FF1 songs at "T" and "M" respectively.

Nah, it's fine. There'll never be a 100% accurate system re: filename/tag sorting. We're OK with what's in place now.

Knights is listed as "Chrono Trigger & FF9", while Downwind is "Chrono Trigger & Xenogears".
Way, way ahead of you.

OCR mix ID could easily go under track number.... however, this would mean that playing album "http://www.ocremix.org" would automatically sort by mix ID rather than by title, so that's something we'd probably want to avoid unless there was another easy way to sort by game, and I'm not aware of one. Perhaps put it under Disc? My iPod doesn't sort by disc number (something that has annoyed me intensely, actually), just track number within a particular album... Not an ideal solution, but the only one I can think of at the moment.

Isn't it just as simple as sorting by filename or track title? If not, we may need to reconsider the idea. Someone run a test.

Either Album Artist/Band or Publisher seems to be a logical place to list the game the mix comes from, but I don't think that there's an option to sort by those fields in most MP3 players, so it'd be a bit pointless as far as that goes. Methinks the best solution for that is to just keep things as-is and have the game be the first part of the title.

Yep. And there's definitely not even the tiniest bit of reconsideration about the filename or track title styles. Those styles help popularize the mixes the same way the URL as the album popularizes the site. We'd be stupid to change them; they're the way they are for a good reason.

Concerning album art, there was a recent topic (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20097&highlight=deviantart) that seems a pretty good candidate. That is, unless Dave has a graphical idea of his own.

Yeah, I figure it's Dave's call.

Native Jovian

01-11-2009, 05:53 AM

Nah, it's fine. There'll never be a 100% accurate system re: filename/tag sorting. We're OK with what's in place now.
Well, all you need to do to fix all that is change everything to "Final Fantasy 1" instead of plain "Final Fantasy" and all that goes away. FF1 gets sent to the front of the list, and Tactics/Mystic Quest sent to their own sections. It's simple, it's easy, and it makes everything much neater. I think it's worth doing.

Isn't it just as simple as sorting by filename or track title? If not, we may need to reconsider the idea. Someone run a test.
I dunno about anyone else's iPod, but mine automatically sorts all albums by track numbers and only defaults to sorting alphabetically by title if there are no track numbers (or all track numbers are equal). So no, no way that I know of to sort album http://www.ocremix.org by title if there are track numbers there.

Liontamer

01-11-2009, 06:10 AM

Well, all you need to do to fix all that is change everything to "Final Fantasy 1" instead of plain "Final Fantasy" and all that goes away. FF1 gets sent to the front of the list, and Tactics/Mystic Quest sent to their own sections. It's simple, it's easy, and it makes everything much neater. I think it's worth doing.

The reason it's not for me is because if we did that for some games, in order to properly and uniformly do that, we'd have add 1s for all the games with sequels. It's a beyotch. If djp were down with that change, sure, but otherwise, I'd rather not.

chanq

01-11-2009, 01:08 PM

I know I've already posted a thread about this, but yet again here's my suggestion for OCR album art:

http://fc64.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/356/c/a/OverClocked_Remix_Album_Art_by_chanq.png (http://chanq.deviantart.com/art/OverClocked-Remix-Album-Art-104983716)

I use it for all my OC ReMixes and it works perfectly in both iTunes and on my iPod. 400x400 pixels.

anosou

01-11-2009, 04:38 PM

The reason it's not for me is because if we did that for some games, in order to properly and uniformly do that, we'd have add 1s for all the games with sequels. It's a beyotch. If djp were down with that change, sure, but otherwise, I'd rather not.

Most of all I think it would be quite awkward to "rename" some games so they would fit better on someone's iPod. If it's an issue anyone can redo the tags slightly on their own.

The thing I'm stressing here is that we shouldn't alter the games original name (in this case American release-name since OCR is an american site). In cases like FFIII later released as FFVI one SHOULD go with FFVI since that is more accurate re: the games original japanese name.

Pretty much.

Isn't it just as simple as sorting by filename or track title? If not, we may need to reconsider the idea. Someone run a test.

Yes. The only issue is that most MP3 players and apps sort albums by track number and not title (the latter would be stupid really). But then again I PREFER ocremixes sorted by Remix ID instead of game. It brings more awareness to every remix regardless of game and if someone wants Zelda they can easily 1. sort by title, 2. search for zelda or 3. set up a playlist.

I vote strongly FOR Remix ID as Track Number.

SoulinEther

01-11-2009, 09:18 PM

I PREFER ocremixes sorted by Remix ID instead of game. It brings more awareness to every remix regardless of game and if someone wants Zelda they can easily 1. sort by title, 2. search for zelda or 3. set up a playlist.

Now that I think about it, I'm fairly certain I could set up a playlist with the tracks sorted alphabetically by title name - and it wouldn't be hard to do at all.

So... now I'm for this as well (remix id as track number)

anosou

01-11-2009, 09:32 PM

Now that I think about it, I'm fairly certain I could set up a playlist with the tracks sorted alphabetically by title name - and it wouldn't be hard to do at all.

So... now I'm for this as well (remix id as track number)

Welcome to the light side young one

The Pezman

01-11-2009, 10:10 PM

Ooooooh...
The ID3v2 Chapter Addendum was published in December 2005 but is not widely supported as yet. It allows users to jump easily to specific locations or chapters within an audio file and can provide a synchronized slide show of images and titles during playback. Typical applications include Enhanced podcasts and it can be used in ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4 tags.
Nothing to use as a standard, but this could allow for some interesting audiovisual collages people could put together and perhaps host here as well.

Rozovian

01-12-2009, 12:19 AM

Liontamer

01-12-2009, 04:24 AM

What about name changes? Just remembered that DJ Crono changed his remixer name to Jovette Rivera, dunno if there are any others. Should the old remixes have the artist tag changed to match the remixer's current remixer name?

Oh and the name tag of one of Destiny's sd3 remixes begins with a space.

Appreciated, but I've already gone through all those issues. I don't need any help with current ReMixer names and the program I'm using caught other issues like spaces. But I do appreciate the lookout.

If I miss something like that, feel free to gloat.

Olarin

01-12-2009, 02:58 PM

The Author

01-12-2009, 03:10 PM

Liontamer

01-12-2009, 06:02 PM

With respect to track numbers being the remix ID number:

I've already been doing this manually in iTunes for my own collection, but I ran into a problem - I could only input a maximum of three digits for the track number. Is this a limitation of ID3 tags or merely iTunes being stupid? I worked around this by making remixes below 1000 disc number 1, and remixes above 1000 disc number 2. That's still not a perfect solution though as it leaves the question of what to do with mix #1000 (can't have a track number of 0, as far as I know).

Bah, kick u iTunes. Can't anyone else verify that issue?

With respect to album artist:

Isn't the usual practice in a case like this to just make it "Various Artists" or simply "Various"? (That's what I've been using)

It'll be OverClocked ReMix. We ain't no generic "various artists".

In Itunes you have to change the songs to a "compilation" in the song properties... dunno if that can be done in the tags.

Using the Album artist/Band field should fix that.

Doulifée

01-12-2009, 08:31 PM

Bah, kick u iTunes. Can't anyone else verify that issue?

work with 6 digits with a regular editor.

The Author

01-12-2009, 08:33 PM

Although, maybe there should be an album number, like one for each year...

Liontamer

01-12-2009, 09:01 PM

Although, maybe there should be an album number, like one for each year...

You'd then have to redo the track #s, which is pointless busywork.

work with 6 digits with a regular editor.

If anyone one else could verify that just to be doubly sure, that'd be great. OCR IDs are 5 digits, so I'd be happy if there wasn't an issue with that.

Olarin

01-12-2009, 11:02 PM

Mini-Me

01-28-2009, 10:16 PM

I've just thought of a suggestion...it's kind of the opposite of adding information to unused fields, but this seems like a good chance to bring it up:
Some ReMixes have APE tags embedded in them in addition to ID3 tags, and the title, artist, album, etc. are generally written incorrectly in the APE tags. Unfortunately, certain players (e.g. Rhythmbox under Linux) strangely give priority to these tags at the expense of the ID3 tags. Until I finally realized what was going on, I kept trying to change the ID3 tags to no effect, and the same wrong title/artist/album etc. from the APE tags kept being displayed in Rhythmbox. To give a few examples (by no means an exhaustive list), http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01139/, http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01238/, and http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00191/ (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/../remix/OCR00191/) exhibit this problem. Actually, the last one has some other kind of superfluous tag (AAC? Some old Quicktime tagging? It's Apple something.) rather than APE, but in any case, it causes the same problem. Whatever it is, it's especially hard to get rid of, too. ;)

I'm not sure what MP3 tagging program you're using to do your editing, but certain ones (like Mp3tag in Windows) have options to strip out APE tags, etc....it would probably be helpful to some Linux users if you enabled those options. It won't fix every file (like in the Broken Mirror Reflections file), but it'll help.

Liontamer

01-30-2009, 01:03 AM

Okay, just to test, I opened up a file in winamp, set its track number to a five digit number with a leading zero (01752), and brought it back into iTunes. It displayed correctly, although without the leading zero (1752) (but it didn't actually remove the leading zero, it just wouldn't display it). So it can read extra digits, it just won't let you make them. Incredibly stupid, but not an actual problem as far as this goes.

Well, that may mean doing track # is still a viable option. I'll have to look into it more, especially how it would sort with different digits (e.g. 00001, 00010, 00100, 01000). Thanks for checking that!

Incidentally, as you might guess from the ID #, I was testing with my own ReMix, and I happened to notice that the "Encoded By" field contains the email address from which I submitted the mix. Not a problem for me personally, but is this necessary/desirable? I certainly wasn't aware of this practice when I submitted, and it might be an unpleasant shock to those who prefer to keep their email address a closely guarded secret.

I generally add some sort of data in that field, but I never add contact/site/name in that field if I know an artist wants it hidden. If they provide that information in a sub letter, it's safe to say they're OK with the info out there, but I appreciate the sentiment.

I've just thought of a suggestion...it's kind of the opposite of adding information to unused fields, but this seems like a good chance to bring it up:
Some ReMixes have APE tags embedded in them in addition to ID3 tags, and the title, artist, album, etc. are generally written incorrectly in the APE tags. Unfortunately, certain players (e.g. Rhythmbox under Linux) strangely give priority to these tags at the expense of the ID3 tags. Until I finally realized what was going on, I kept trying to change the ID3 tags to no effect, and the same wrong title/artist/album etc. from the APE tags kept being displayed in Rhythmbox. To give a few examples (by no means an exhaustive list), http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01139/, http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01238/, and http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00191/ (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/../remix/OCR00191/) exhibit this problem. Actually, the last one has some other kind of superfluous tag (AAC? Some old Quicktime tagging? It's Apple something.) rather than APE, but in any case, it causes the same problem. Whatever it is, it's especially hard to get rid of, too. ;)

I'm not sure what MP3 tagging program you're using to do your editing, but certain ones (like Mp3tag in Windows) have options to strip out APE tags, etc....it would probably be helpful to some Linux users if you enabled those options. It won't fix every file (like in the Broken Mirror Reflections file), but it'll help.

Good catch! I removed APE tags from the few mixes with them, and I also caught several with ID3v1 tags as well and removed those. Winamp 5 can remove those types of tags. If you have any other info on 'Broken Mirror Reflection' and what may be the tagging case there, let me know.

Mini-Me

01-31-2009, 02:51 AM

Good catch! I removed APE tags from the few mixes with them, and I also caught several with ID3v1 tags as well and removed those. Winamp 5 can remove those types of tags. If you have any other info on 'Broken Mirror Reflection' and what may be the tagging case there, let me know.

Alrighty, here's what I've been able to figure out so far:
Three of Alexander Prievert's ReMixes have these persistent "mystery tags:"
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest 'Bloody Tears Inspired' OC ReMix (http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00118/)
Shadow of the Beast 'Journey' OC ReMix (http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00124/)
Xenogears 'Broken Mirror Reflection' OC ReMix (http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00191/)

It's possible some of his other files have them too, but if so, they haven't shown any symptoms. After using EasyTAG to strip out all "ordinary" tags, the files appear to be clean of all tags in every Linux-based tag editor I've tried. (EasyTAG, MusicBrainz Picard, Audio Tag Tool, Ex Falso, and Kid3...in other words, a bunch). The "mystery tags" are still there, but none of these programs have caught on to them...however, certain music players are somehow able to pick them up.*

Anyway, using a hex editor, I was quickly able to see that the tags are related to Apple, and after searching for some strings, it appears they're old Quicktime tags...as in, the kind of tags that were intended for Quicktime movies. Unfortunately, I have no idea what program to use to gracefully remove them. I mean, I can use the hex editor itself to roughly get rid of them in a quick and dirty way, and it "works," but figuring out where exactly they actually start/end is another matter altogether. I've found a few references, but I haven't had the time to really go through them (http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/qttutorial/qtatoms.html, http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=QuickTime_container, http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/QuickTime.html (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/%7Ephil/exiftool/TagNames/QuickTime.html), etc.).

In Windows, Quicktime Player will show the offending tags, as long as you wipe away the ID3 tags first, but I can't find a way to edit/delete them using the free version. Maybe the Pro version can do it, but then again, maybe not...so until we find some program that will edit/delete these tags, we're stuck either ignoring them or guesstimating with a hex editor. 8O

*To recap and add a bit more information in case you're interested:
Rhythmbox is the default music player in Ubuntu, and it's based on the GStreamer pipeline. Apparently, it displays whichever tags are last read in by GStreamer...and in certain files, those tags are APE tags or even worse, Quicktime tags. Because of that, some of these superfluous tags appear to override any existing ID3 tags. Regardless of whether the ID3 tags are intact or if I've scrubbed them, Rhythmbox keeps displaying the Quicktime tags for the aforementioned Prievert mixes. (Do we have a "shoot myself in the head smiley here?) I'm not sure just how many other players this problem crops up in though.

Other audio players seem to exhibit a couple other behaviors:
Some are completely oblivious to the Quicktime tags and try to play them as audio data (which results in a short burst of static at the beginning of "Shadow of the Beast 'Journey'" for example). Others seem to realize that the tags exist, but they aren't able to read them, so they presumably just skip over them (resulting in no static). I've noticed that at least one player seems to notice and skip the Quicktime tags if no ID3 tags are present, but if there are any ID3 tags, it will try to play the Quicktime tags as audio data.

Mini-Me

01-31-2009, 03:58 AM

UPDATE:
Actually, this isn't too bad. I've read a bit about the Quicktime file format here (http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=QuickTime_container#Technical_Desc ription), and I've been able to remove the Quicktime tags very precisely. The first four bytes of each "atom" give the size in bytes (as a 32-bit big-endian unsigned integer), the next four give the name of the atom, and the remaining ones are the data.

After stripping out the ordinary tags, I noticed all three files were broken into four major atoms:
Size = variable, name = "moov", data is the tag data (some is human readable, some is not)
Size = 8, name = "free", no data (because the four bytes for the size and the atom name added up to 8)
Size = 8, name = "wide", no data
Size = variable (but the size of all four of these elements adds up exactly to the total filesize in bytes, assuming all other tags have been deleted), name = mdat, data = everything left in the file.The last atom, mdat, is broken into the following three sections:
A small atom: Size = 8, name = wide, data no data
Some kind of prefix to the actual mp3 data: Size = 0 (?), name = mdat
The actual mp3 data!So, long story short: After scrubbing the file of all ordinary tags, open the file up with a hex editor and search for "mdat" - there should be two and only two references to this string in the whole file. Delete everything that comes before the final mdat reference (including the mdat string itself), and it seems you're left with the raw mp3 data! I did notice that the first two bytes of the mp3 data were (in hex) "FF FB" for all three files, and the next byte was A0 for two of them. I'm not sure what the significance is there, but...from where I'm standing, the important thing is that Quicktime tags are gone and the files play without any noticeable static at the beginning (or any notes cut off or anything like that).

Of course, some files have extraneous data at the very end as well (like back-loaded ID3 or APE tags or a bunch of random references to the LAME encoder), and getting rid of the Quicktime tags won't get rid of all that, but...the Prievert files don't seem to have that problem anyway.

Dafydd

02-17-2009, 07:13 AM

If the tags change, won't the torrents have to be updated and downloaded again?

Anyway, all I'm missing is track numbers and lyrics, but these things have already been mentioned.

Liontamer

03-12-2009, 05:56 AM

Ramaniscence

03-12-2009, 06:05 AM

I do see all the OCR ID #s in the tag "set subtitle". This is using MP3tag.

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html

May need a better way there.

EDIT: Also, is there a special field to tag lyrics. I'd probably just put those in the general comments field.

Lyrics have their own tag field that SHOULD BE somewhere obvious. They'd need to be in that field to display any media players as they're supposed to.

Liontamer

03-12-2009, 06:48 AM

Lyrics have their own tag field that SHOULD BE somewhere obvious. They'd need to be in that field to display any media players as they're supposed to.

Sure, I'll use iTunes and see what the effect is.

EDIT: Ah, it writes them to the "unsynced lyrics" field. Excellent.

As far as the other issue of track #, I suppose just doing the 5-digit # sans OCR in front of it is best. iTunes definitely doesn't parse/recognize "OCR01815", so I'd have to use 01815.

Dafydd

03-12-2009, 03:17 PM

Was my question on the top of this page overlooked, or did I overlook the answer?

Liontamer

03-13-2009, 12:41 AM

Was my question on the top of this page overlooked, or did I overlook the answer?

Of course torrents would have to be redownloaded.

Rozovian

03-13-2009, 01:36 PM

Liontamer

03-13-2009, 02:43 PM

You should probably run an mp3 validation also if you haven't already. I can't import this song (http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01531/) to iTunes. I'd rather not convert (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18781) it, then try to find all the other tracks possibly missing. The easiest solution to finding all remixes with the same problem and fixing them would be if you run an mp3 validation on them all before releasing the new torrents.

Definitely appreciate the suggestion. Never heard of MP3 validation before now, so this helped. Grabbed MP3val after finding out about it here: http://www.ghacks.net/2007/11/24/validate-your-mp3-collection/

Very lightweight prog, and it creates backups of any files it fixes just in case something gets fucked up, which is a handy feature. I'm listening to files it fixed and everything sounds perfectly intact. The one issue it had was removing tags from 99 of the files it fixed. Just glancing at it, I didn't see anything in the preferences or documentation on why it did that, and that'll be a bit tedious to fix, but it's not a huge deal.

There were only 7 mixes out of everything that are currently unrepairable, but considering that 279 files had problems, this was a great find. Thanks, Ad!

Rozovian

03-13-2009, 03:37 PM

Glad I could help. Also glad I'll finally get to hear some of those songs now. :D

The weird thing is that the remix in my example works fine in Quicktime, but iTunes refuses to import it.

Any ETA on the updated torrent?

Liontamer

03-13-2009, 03:46 PM

Any ETA on the updated torrent?

Not yet. I'm still working on some stuff. Even then, who knows if it'll make it into an updated torrent yet. But I'm certainly working towards that.

EDIT: Updated the first post with details on what's been done so far.

kwimbob

03-14-2009, 02:09 AM

On Itunes, how can I get all of my OC Remix songs (I just got a lot off of the torrents), which show up as many albums - one for each author - to show up as just one album named OC Remix?

phill

03-14-2009, 04:33 AM

Just going to rip this off another website, but if you select all the songs you want to change, then choose File then Get Info and you see the Multiple Song Info window.

kwimbob

03-14-2009, 01:49 PM

Thanks! That worked! I just changed the name of the "Album Artist" so that all of the songs went to one OC Remix Album by "OC Remix", then the actual artist names are kept by the songs themselves, perfect.

Rozovian

03-14-2009, 03:02 PM

This (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?p=518138#post518138) might be of interest to you.

Liontamer

03-14-2009, 03:20 PM

This (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?p=518138#post518138) might be of interest to you.

Nah, but only because that was one of the first issues I addressed. But glad you're looking out.

Liontamer

03-14-2009, 03:21 PM

Why can't anyone capitalize the name correctly?

OC ReMix

OverClocked ReMix

:lol:

But yeah, hopefully for the next torrent I can take care of this issue, since it's something that's easily fixed up.

JH Sounds

03-14-2009, 06:55 PM

Why can't anyone capitalize the name correctly?

OC ReMix

OverClocked ReMix

:lol:

...and don't forget iTunes.

phill

03-14-2009, 09:28 PM

Those extra capitals are hard man.

Malkalypse

07-30-2009, 11:25 PM

Hey, I've been downloading music from this site for ages, but haven't really ever been able to contribute much, as I lack any kind of musical talent whatsoever. However, I noticed that as I was going through my MP3s that some of them don't have the original source song, or are missing the name of the original composer. Now, in some really old games you've only got one track, or the composer may be completely unfindable (according to the spell check, that's a not a word.)

However, the internet being what it is (i.e. a series of tubes) I have been able to track down names for some of the songs and composers that are currently blank on the site. Also, I usually download the music for games I have played through. So, I'm guessing that with the help of the artists I could find the rest. They can give me some vague reference like "it's the music that plays when you fight the giant red spaceship that looks like a spider," and I'll be like "Oh, the level 1 boss music?" and they'll be like, "Yeah! That's it!"

I'm a little obsessive-compulsive about stuff like this, so it would really help me sleep at night if I could help fill in some of these blanks!

So, if there are any artists out there who just can't say where the music they remixed came from, please tell me what you can and I will do the research.

I imagine I should also talk to djpretzel about what would be involved in actually updating that information on the site.

Currently I have the track names for the remixes from Bionic Commando and Guardian Legend (though in the latter case I would want to check with the artists and make sure we're listening to the same songs). I've also identified the source music for some tracks that have since been removed from ocremix, but I guess that doesn't really do much for anyone here. Next I am going to try and identify the tracks from Final Doom, so if anyone can help me with that I would much appreciate it :)

Liontamer

07-30-2009, 11:48 PM

I haven't seen any official tracknames for Bionic Commando or The Guardian Legend from album relases or sound tests that I could use for the database. Rather than generic stuff like "Level 1 Boss Music", I'm cool with using quasi-official song titles that are extrapolated from in-game footage or game manuals and have done that for several games already. The issue comes from games that don't name levels or locations or use tracks across several different scenarios (e.g. StarTropics).

As far as updating actual MP3 tags, I'm already working on a project for this that's basically complete. The ONLY thing I'm waiting for is José the Bronx Rican to give me official album art that djpretzel would be happy with, and for djpretzel to actually give José feedback/guidance so that José can give me official album art that djpretzel would be happy with. It's like moving a glacier. :lol: But when it's not mission critical, we get caught up with other stuff (and there's a ton that ranks higher in importance).

At the moment, our DB is pretty solid as far as populating song/composer information that we know. But if you want to post in this thread about songs or composers that are blank, I'll be glad to either add that info or debunk it. Final Doom is a bitch, since it has two different soundtracks, so any insight you can give on that is appreciated.

José the Bronx Rican

07-31-2009, 01:29 AM

Only Larry knows what I'm up to at the moment, so the art will wait for a bit. However, I've been on a mission similar to what the OP is talking about, because I've already seen too many guesses referenced as facts, especially on Youtube, and even "quasi-official" titles would be no good to me without something resembling an accepted standard. Stay tuned.

Malkalypse

07-31-2009, 04:15 PM

Here is are 2 of the pages I have found in my search:
(1st removed, we don't support them)
http://www.mirsoft.info/gmb/

(The first one has track names for Guardian Legend).

While you're updating the tags, I think it might be a good idea to include the original track names somewhere in there (I've been using the "subtitle" space for that myself). Also, for "original artist" I like to put in the name of the publisher rather than the system the game was released for. In the case of Street Fighter 2, for example, I think "Capcom" makes more sense for original artist than "Arcade". But that's just me.

As for track names, I think anything that identifies where they came from is fine. I mean, Blaster Master for example just has "Area 1, Area 2" etc.

Bionic Commando is one of those games where tracks extend across multiple locations, and there are some quasi official track names (they appear to have been retroactively named when ReArmed was put out) listed as follows:

Area 1, 3, 4 & 7: Bionic Commando Theme
Area 2, 9 & 11: Leap of Faith
Area 5, 6 & 10: Heat Wave
Area 8: Power Plant
Area 12: Rise of the Albatross

Additional tracks include:

Prologue & Epilogue
Overview Map: Okay, We'll Move
Combat: Meet the Enemy
Boss Dialogue: Intruder Alert
Neutral Zone: Amongst Allies

I still tend to think of the tracks by their original simple names, but the original NES game soundtrack is apparently now being sold with those track names by at least one site (https://www.sumthingdigital.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?albumid=3710).

Interesting to note that Junko Tamiya is credited there as Gondamin (as in the game credits). According to wikipedia she has alternately been credited as "Swimmer Tamichan, Tamie, GON, Gonzou, Strong Tami, and J. Tamiya."

Ignitus

08-11-2009, 06:19 AM

I wanted to ask if this project was still active and if there was any updates on the progress.

I was working through my own collection after getting a new mp3 player and I had a few idea's in mind, but after reading this thread I agree with most of the decisions that have been made and believe the final result would be perfect. No mater what the progress I just wanted to thank the members of the community that started this as updating over 1500 ids is a insane task.

Ignitus

Dafydd

08-11-2009, 06:26 AM

It's not an insane task, it's a task for Larry-bot! He gets so much done every day sometimes I think he has to be a machine, and we're just pathetic creatures of meat and bone, panting and sweating as we run through his corridors...

In all seriousness though, if 15 people take 100 MP3's each it's not that much work. So it should be done soon, if someone's still working on it. I read adding lyrics to songs that have them still needs to be done - but there can't be all that many songs with lyrics on the site...

Kentaree

08-11-2009, 11:57 AM

I was attempting to write a little ruby script to add lyrics etc to the files from the website, but for that to work easily I need the OCR#. Opening the mp3s in any kind of editor shows the data IS in there, in the TSST (subtitle) frame, but nothing that I've come across on linux will correctly read this tag :(

Dafydd

08-11-2009, 03:59 PM

I think DJP disapproves of having scripts accessing the database. I remember another guy tried that a while ago, and while his intentions were good, DJP thought the impact on the site bandwidth, or the risk of one, is not good for the site.

Kentaree

08-11-2009, 04:25 PM

I understand that of course, but if it was run as a once-off to get everything in order it could save a lot of time for anyone who's currently working on the tagging of songs

Ramaniscence

08-11-2009, 04:27 PM

Honestly, this this kind of thing isn't that big of a deal. I've done it with my OWN MP3 collection a few times, and I doubt Larry had much of a problem.

Keyword: Had.

The majority of the legwork is done, and waiting on a finalized album art.

Liontamer

08-11-2009, 04:29 PM

As far as tags, I need to reconfigure MP3tag on my home computer to have the same setup I used on djp's; the prog's supposed to have an settings export feature, which I used, but it doesn't work at all and make the program unable to open. Weak. So I'll have to reconfigure that.

As far as lyrics, everything where I have lyrics is already embedded in each MP3, both in the comments field and the unsynced lyrics field (which shows up in iTunes).

All I'm waiting for is officially approved album art, and I'd need to offer up a set for djp to look through via his normal tagging program to make sure the tag changes all took, and to get his final approval.

Basically, this has been my own side project, and replacing every ReMix would be a bitch and a half, and only something Dave can do AFAIK, so it'll take some time on his side. I'm shooting for sometime after mix #1900, but this isn't the most major priority, just noting.

SubNormal J3

01-17-2010, 01:10 AM

Hey everyone. I was just wondering whether or not tags and file names will be updated (i.e. Zelda 64 v. The Legend of Zelda....) sometime.

kethinov

04-06-2010, 10:50 AM

Rozovian

04-06-2010, 01:01 PM

Track number ID# and redundant OC ReMix out of the title are good idea imo.

The other ideas not so much. The artist _is_ zircon. The title _is_ Monstrous Turtles. Dunno who sorts by song name, and dunno where else to put Super Mario World. Only other reasonable place for it is the album field, but then where do you put the url so ppl actually find the site?

Changing genre is a nightmare. Where do you put stuff with orchestra, electronic drums, and electric guitar? Where do you put a piano performance on some weird synth sound? OCR has a lot of music that can't be classed as a single genre, or even in a genre at all. Game is the most accurate.

Someone from ocr staff will probably chime in with some major reason to all of this that I've forgotten, but considering there is a major overhaul of file tags in the works you might be pleasantly surprised when the new torrents are released. Maybe.

--

Liontamer or whoever, the OC ReMix part in the title is redundant. I've seen ppl upload an ocr track on youtube - including the oc remix part in title and/or video description/tags - and still have no idea about the site. And not just on ocr tracks, it's become a cool thing to put after your remix so you get more views. It doesn't work. Album url - good. ocr in title - redundant and ineffective. Dunno how often it gets ppl to the site tho, but I know it sometimes doesn't.

Kanthos

04-06-2010, 01:13 PM

I'm by no means a spokesperson for the site, but here are my own thoughts on this.

Groups all remixes by original game using the artist field.

OCRemix treats mixers as independent artists, not as artists contributing to some now-2000-song compilation. Any decent media player on a computer will let you limit the current playlist by some search criteria and will search across all fields, so other than in portable players, this is moot anyway.

Also, from a technical perspective, Final Fantasy VII is not an artist, it's a game. Nobuo Uematsu is the composer, not the artist, as he did not make the remix you're listening to. Putting the game name as the artist may lead to better sorting on MP3 players, but is technically wrong, and since it makes it harder/impossible to sort by artist, which I think OCRemix probably sees as a higher priority (and I know I do), this probably isn't the right way to go.

Moves remixer into the title so every remixer doesn't create a new artist entry in a user's library.

But they should. The remixers aren't some nameless body of people who have contributed tracks for the benefit of OCRemix. Many of them are musicians looking to (or already) composing and arranging for video game soundtracks and other outlets. Obscuring their names would do them a disservice.

Eliminates redundant "OC ReMix" in the title. It's already in the album, so it isn't necessary here.

Agreed, I think this is a pain.

Don't set genre to "game". Set genre to a comma separated list of genres the song could fit into, such as "Jazz, Swing, Instrumental" or "Opera, Orchestra, Symphony". Whatever fits the song. Maybe even let users tag them on the site and let the most popular ones be the consensus.

OCRemix is openly against setting genres (http://ocremix.org/info/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Why_aren.27t_the_ReMixe s_categorized_by_genre.2C_i.e._techno.2C_jazz.2C_o rchestral.2C_etc..3F). Granted, many listeners look for particular genres above others, but that's a personal choice.

This also wouldn't help you on portable MP3 players where you'd end up fragmenting your genres, because of the use of multiple genres in the one field, to the point where you couldn't really listen to, say, your Classical music collection plus all the remixes you have that could be considered Classical (an iPod, for example, will treat "Classical, Orchestral, Symphonic" as a different genre from Classical unless you make a smart playlist within iTunes first, which is clearly something no one wants to do for every major genre type).

Set track number to the ID# of the song in the database.

This'd be nice; it'd let you do something like listen to all the remixes you've downloaded in chronological order.

Everything I've said so far ignores the two biggest points of all. Firstly, it will take an immense amount of time to retag all the remixes to meet any new scheme, and however it's done, it won't please everyone and many people will find the new scheme worse than the old one. Secondly, once everything is retagged, there's the matter of the insane amount of bandwidth for people to download everything. If I knew that the tagging format was going to change, I'd want to download everything again to keep it consistent. Sure, that could be done via torrents, but not everyone is bright enough to do so. Also, anyone who makes any custom modifications to the tagging would lose out - in my case, I put a number of 'tags' in the comment field and make smart playlists in iTunes based on those tags, and I wouldn't want to have to do those again.

Liontamer

04-06-2010, 01:24 PM

I love OCR but I've always been very irritated by the system used to tag songs here. The basic problem is setting the artist to the remixer and putting the game in the song title leads to some pretty chaotic organization in common music players and especially on portable devices. For example, downloading every remix on OCR for a single game, e.g. FF6, leads to the addition of dozens of new artists to your library.

The current system works like this:
Artist: zicron
Title: Super Mario World Monstrous Turtles! OC ReMix
Composer: Koji Kondo (this is good as is, original composer Koji Kondo doesn't belong in either Artist or Title)

I believe it should be set like this instead:
Artist: Super Mario World
Title: Monstrous Turtles!, remixed by zicron
Composer: Koji Kondo

Reasons this is better:
- Groups all remixes by original game using the artist field.
- Moves remixer into the title so every remixer doesn't create a new artist entry in a user's library.
- Eliminates redundant "OC ReMix" in the title. It's already in the album, so it isn't necessary here.

I've literally been manually retagging every remix I download from this site to conform to this system for years. So I decided to finally share it with everyone along with my reasoning for it.

Other, less important suggestions:
- Don't set genre to "game". Set genre to a comma separated list of genres the song could fit into, such as "Jazz, Swing, Instrumental" or "Opera, Orchestra, Symphony". Whatever fits the song. Maybe even let users tag them on the site and let the most popular ones be the consensus.
- Set track number to the ID# of the song in the database.

1. "OC ReMix" in the title is how many, many people discover this site (just as the URL as the album does). There's no way we're getting rid of it, ever. The whole point is to broadcast that it's an OC ReMix. :lol:
2. The artist is not the game, the artist is the ReMixer. With our way, you can sort by ReMixer and game. With yours, you can no longer sort by ReMixer. I'm not in favor of anything that obscures credit to ReMixers. Pushing the ReMixer credit to after the title of the song is a disservice to them, IMO.
3. Way too many of the ReMixes have no easily classifiable genre. "Game" underscores that these are game arrangements. We're gradually tagging the ReMix Review threads (and will eventually carry over to the site database) genre, mood and instrumentation and other information that doesn't shoehorn music into one genre. Tagging with multiple genres in the actual MP3 is silly; it's not designed for that.
4. I've got copies of every ReMix with improved tagging that makes the game titles & song titles & filenames consistent, and also fills in missing data including ReMixer website & contact info, track #s and embedded lyrics (when we have them). The album artist field will be filled in as "OverClocked ReMix" to allow grouping on that level. The only thing we're waiting for is official album art from djpretzel.

If you download any of the last, say, 100 ReMixes or so, that's the standard we have going forward. Keep doing your own personal system that works for you, and I appreciate the suggestions. But what we use for the most recent ReMixes works well, and the additions I've made will hopefully be applied to all of the older tracks soon.

Read this for more. It's been underway: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20433

kethinov

04-06-2010, 07:27 PM

Thanks for the replies everyone! :) But I remain unconvinced.

The artist _is_ zircon. The title _is_ Monstrous Turtles.
OCRemix treats mixers as independent artists, not as artists contributing to some now-2000-song compilation. Any decent media player on a computer will let you limit the current playlist by some search criteria and will search across all fields, so other than in portable players, this is moot anyway.

This thinking is exactly the problem. The site is favoring giving as much credit as possible to the remixer over the quality of the user experience. Having to use the search feature of iTunes just to listen to every Super Mario World remix in sequence is a terrible user experience. And most portables don't even have such a feature which absolutely necessitates a manual retag by the user, also a terrible user experience.

The remixers aren't some nameless body of people who have contributed tracks for the benefit of OCRemix. Many of them are musicians looking to (or already) composing and arranging for video game soundtracks and other outlets. Obscuring their names would do them a disservice.
I'm not in favor of anything that obscures credit to ReMixers. Pushing the ReMixer credit to after the title of the song is a disservice to them, IMO.

Greater exposure for the remixer at the expense of the user experience is not a legitimate tradeoff. Besides, I wouldn't call moving the remixer's name into the song title an obscuration. It's still a highly visible field.

Also, from a technical perspective, Final Fantasy VII is not an artist, it's a game. Nobuo Uematsu is the composer, not the artist, as he did not make the remix you're listening to. Putting the game name as the artist may lead to better sorting on MP3 players, but is technically wrong, and since it makes it harder/impossible to sort by artist, which I think OCRemix probably sees as a higher priority (and I know I do), this probably isn't the right way to go.

Semantically, the remixer is even less the artist than the game. They didn't write the song. It's a cover. A derivative work. As you said, the composer doesn't belong in the artist field either, so the best candidate for the artist is the game.

Besides, users are more likely to want to sort by game, not by remixer. I don't really care whether zicron, or djpretzel, or bLiNd did a remix. That's not a logical grouping. What game the remix comes from is a logical grouping.

That's why OCRemix releases arranged albums for specific games, not arranged albums for specific remixers.

The artist is not the game, the artist is the ReMixer. With our way, you can sort by ReMixer and game. With yours, you can no longer sort by ReMixer.

Sorry, but this is just false. Let's step through it logically, assuming a music player like iTunes.

Current system:
- To sort by game: do a search for the game.
- To sort by remixer: sort by artists.

My proposed system:
- To sort by game: sort by artists.
- To sort by remixer: do a search for the remixer.

Both scenarios still work and the more logical grouping of the game, something more users are going to want, is the easier target.

Changing genre is a nightmare. Where do you put stuff with orchestra, electronic drums, and electric guitar? Where do you put a piano performance on some weird synth sound? OCR has a lot of music that can't be classed as a single genre, or even in a genre at all. Game is the most accurate.
Way too many of the ReMixes have no easily classifiable genre.

That's why I said comma separated list. Toss everything that fits in the genre field and let the users vote to determine a consensus by popular tags.

it will take an immense amount of time to retag all the remixes to meet any new scheme

Give me access to the database, set me loose on the server side scripting, and I'll do the work myself. :)

I have a great deal of experience with this sort of programming and I'd love to contribute something useful to a site I've enjoyed for years.

Kanthos

04-06-2010, 08:00 PM

This thinking is exactly the problem. The site is favoring giving as much credit as possible to the remixer over the quality of the user experience. Having to use the search feature of iTunes just to listen to every Super Mario World remix in sequence is a terrible user experience. And most portables don't even have such a feature which absolutely necessitates a manual retag by the user, also a terrible user experience.

Have you ever seen a 'commercial' album with covers? Whose name is on the album? The original artist, or the one who made the album? Sure, the original artist will get credit somewhere for originally writing/recording the song, but they don't get credit for making someone else's version. Why would OCRemix be any different?

This isn't a question of 'user experience' (which, IMO, is just fine the way it is). It's a question of correctness. Zircon made Calamitous Judgement; Yasonori Mitsuda, OCRemix, and Chrono Trigger did not. Zircon belongs in the artist field, period. Nothing else would be fair to the remixer. It's the remixer, not djpretzel, not the original composer, who is putting in the majority of the effort to get remixes on the site. Sure, djpretzel and the judges do a lot, but without a doubt, the time put in by all remixers outweighs the time put in to judge and host the mixes.

If the user experience isn't to your liking, too bad. You're free to fix it. And incidentally, since iTunes has a simple Javascript interface, it would be a joke for you to fix up remix tagging to your liking. Make no mistake, what you're doing with custom tagging isn't fixing a broken user experience; it's customizing the user experience to your own personal tastes. OCRemix is not 'wrong' and you are not 'right'. You and OCRemix differ on your viewpoints.

Greater exposure for the remixer at the expense of the user experience is not a legitimate tradeoff. Besides, I wouldn't call moving the remixer's name into the song title an obscuration. It's still a highly visible field.

All this does is trade a 'bad user experience' for another 'bad user experience'. Your method won't let me play all zircon's tunes in a row on my iPod; OC Remixes' method won't let you play all Mario 1 tunes in a row. Again, your way is not 'right', it is different.

Semantically, the remixer is even less the artist than the game. They didn't write the song. It's a cover. A derivative work. As you said, the composer doesn't belong in the artist field either, so the best candidate for the artist is the game.

If the remixer did not make their 'derivative work', there would be no remix. If you bought a classical album, would you expect the artist to be 'Beethoven'? Of course not, the person who performs the work, even though it's their own interpretation, would be listed as the artist (and, since it's classical, one that varies from the composer's intended interpretation in small ways like dynamics and tempo). This is exactly the way the music industry works. The recording artist gets predominant credit, giving credit where it's due to the original composer/songwriter.

Besides, users are more likely to want to sort by game, not by remixer. I don't really care whether zicron, or djpretzel, or bLiNd did a remix. That's not a logical grouping. What game the remix comes from is a logical grouping.

You took a representative poll of all OC Remix listeners, did you? If you know what video game remixers like to hear and how it's organized, why are you not a published remixer or the host of your own site of video game remixes? What you really mean is that you (and perhaps some of your friends) want things one way and aren't open to other possibilities. Who wrote the remix is just as logical a grouping as what game it comes from.

That's why OCRemix releases arranged albums for specific games, not arranged albums for specific remixers.

I don't know why OCRemix hasn't published arranged albums by individual mixers, though my suspicion is that they haven't been asked to do so, or the quality of some of the mixes on the album weren't up to OCRemix's standards. You're missing one thing, though: in an OCRemix project, the tags are still in the same way. The individual mixers get credits for their track, in the same way that a group of rock bands contributing a track each to a benefit album would get credit for their own track.

Sorry, but this is just false. Let's step through it logically, assuming a music player like iTunes.

No one questioned that to get what you want is more difficult in iTunes. But your 'logic' consists of ignoring FACT (that zircon produced a mix, based on someone else's composition that first appeared in a game), and jumping back to the same argument you've made before, which is based on your OPINION (and as such, is not FACT). And good job saying that the second-most-important person on this site today is wrong. Liontamer is essential to running this place; who the hell are you?

Current system:
- To sort by game: do a search for the game.
- To sort by remixer: sort by artists.

My proposed system:
- To sort by game: sort by artists.
- To sort by remixer: do a search for the remixer.

Both scenarios still work and the more logical grouping of the game, something more users are going to want, is the easier target.

The grouping is arguably less 'logical' in your case, but in either case, is your opinion.

That's why I said comma separated list. Toss everything that fits in the genre field and let the users vote to determine a consensus by popular tags.

Ignoring the page I referenced as to why OCRemix does not want to be involved with tagging or assigning genres (good job there, champ), a comma-separated list is NOT easy to deal with in any audio player that does not support filtering by search. Which, of course, I pointed out hours ago.

Give me access to the database, set me loose on the server side scripting, and I'll do the work myself. :)

I have a great deal of experience with this sort of programming.

Uh, you have what, a grand total of 2 posts here. What kind of idiot do you think would a) trust your statement of experience and b) give you the keys to the database?

As I mentioned earlier this post, there's no reason why you can't run some javascript to periodically reformat tags in iTunes. Do this and let the people running the site run it the way they want. You're getting FREE music after all, so stop making yourself look like an ass by complaining.

Gollgagh

04-06-2010, 08:13 PM

I don't know why OCRemix hasn't published arranged albums by individual mixers

I beg (http://ocremix.org/album/14656/mega-man-remix-album-by-ilp0) to differ. (http://ocremix.org/album/4385/the-american-album)

Rozovian

04-06-2010, 08:20 PM

Two concepts:

Entitlement. Grow up.

Playlists. Learn to use them.

Kanthos

04-06-2010, 08:25 PM

I beg (http://ocremix.org/album/14656/mega-man-remix-album-by-ilp0) to differ. (http://ocremix.org/album/4385/the-american-album)

Fair enough; I missed them somehow. Time to download now :)

Liontamer

04-06-2010, 09:32 PM

Fair enough; I missed them somehow. Time to download now :)

We didn't actually publish those. But you definitely missed the boat on Joshua Morse's Sonata of the Damned (http://ocremix.org/album/16/castlevania-sonata-of-the-damned), including a recently posted mix. Where you been? :lol:

Also, no fighting. Kanthos, kethinov is offering a suggestion that he feels helps the site, so that's at least something. Y'all both want what you think is best for the site, so there's no reason to get upset. That said, it's not even a matter of tenure or lack of tenure. I just don't find that kethinov's sorting ideas benefit us. I know a lot of people use iTunes, but I ALSO know that I use Winamp, and if I want every Streets of Rage OC ReMix, I can just sort by filename or song title with 0 problem.

Also, I don't like not having ReMixer as the artist, for every conventional reason Kanthos mentioned. Putting artist in the song title field is not due credit to me, and the suggested shift implies that the artist is not as important as the game. Our role is also to spotlight and raise the profile of the musicians who submit their music here, and that's much more important to me than what game was mixed.

kethinov

04-06-2010, 09:37 PM

Kanthos, two things. First, I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I'm just trying to create a cleaner user experience for first time users. The remixers on this site do great work and I want casual users to become regular users. Calm down and quit hurling insults at me. It's not getting either of us anywhere.

Second, for now, I'm only going to focus on one key point. We can get back to the rest later if necessary.

Here goes.

Your method won't let me play all zircon's tunes in a row on my iPod; OC Remixes' method won't let you play all Mario 1 tunes in a row. Again, your way is not 'right', it is different.

The problem here is you're arguing for the vocal minority: the hardcore OCRemix community. And I'm arguing for the silent majority: the casual user of the site.

The casual user (the silent majority) comes here to find remixes of video game music. The casual user has no idea who zicron, djpretzel, or bLiNd are. That's why they'll never (initially) want to group mixes by the mixer.

When the casual user comes to the site, they go to the music section, pick their favorite game, and download a bunch of stuff from that game. Then when they load it up in their music player they're bombarded with a dozen different artists.

This is quite objectively a poor user experience for two principal reasons:

1. The id3 tag experience doesn't match the site experience at all. If the user comes here and groups mixes by game, then the id3 tags aren't grouped that way, it's inconsistent.

2. The addition of dozens or so artists when the user was only expecting to add one (for the game) is overwhelming, especially when the music is moved directly to a portable mp3 player. Try listening to every Super Mario World remix on an iPod!

This necessitates the user having to either 1. retag everything or 2. create playlists. Forcing the user to do this when you don't have to is a poor user experience.

Before we can discuss any of the rest of the issues raised here, we've got to get past this one. Because if I can't get you past this one, then there's no point talking about the rest. :)

Thanks,
Kethinov

DarkeSword

04-06-2010, 09:40 PM

Putting the game name in the artist field? Are you for real? I can't believe that anyone who claims to have any experience in databases and programming would argue for bad metadata.

Good God.

I'm closing this thread because your proposal is absolutely preposterous.

Liontamer

04-08-2010, 07:04 AM

I'll just mention that part of the reason we highlight artists is because people overlook them. If that weren't the case, kethinov, you wouldn't have called zircon "zicron" 287 times. :lol:

It's bears mentioning that services like Last.fm catalog the listening habits of our community's fans and the standard is Artist in the Artist field (obviously). Making the artist field "Super Mario World", for example, doesn't help our community's artists. There is no compelling reason to change that, and your proposal really was encouraging bad metadata for our music, no matter the goal. You need to respect our desire to properly highlight Artist credits and stop challenging that. You're weren't trying to be antagonistic, but your attitude has been presumptuous.

We're definitely not going to change the core tagging system. It demonstratively has worked for us for over 10 years. OC ReMix in the song title and http://www.ocremix.org as the album, those have helped us immensely in terms of building awareness of the community from both fans and ReMixers. We know because we've heard time and time again of fans discovering us this way.

However, I DO appreciate the impetus to look into this issue with iTunes, because until now I didn't realize it apparently can't sort music by song name. To me, that's iTunes not providing ME the proper user experience. I primarily use Winamp. Looking at iTunes tonight, I just realized that we're not using a standard field in iTunes called "Grouping" (aka "Content Group" in other tagging programs). "Grouping" is a column that CAN be enabled in iTunes, and we'll fill THAT with the game title so that you can sort by game. :-) You still can't sort by song title in iTunes, but this is definitely good enough to meet the basic need to sort by game. Thanks for bringing up your issue; it led to a very beneficial update to my tagging revisions (http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20433). And I did it by using basic tagging features already available to me, not by needlessly disrupting our vetted, established system.

Rozovian

04-08-2010, 11:38 AM

Liontamer

04-08-2010, 01:35 PM

Dunno if the windows version of iTunes is as handicapped as your post implies, but the mac version can sort by name, time, artist, any visible field and I don't see why this wouldn't have been carried over to the win versions. The only reason you can't sort remixes by song name is that the song name isn't first in the song name field.

Are you saying it's gonna be...
Name: garlic OC ReMix
Grouping: Castlevania

or

Name: Castlevania garlic OC ReMix
Grouping: Castlevania

The latter.

We are not changing the song title convention. We have never been open to changing the song title convention. We AIN'T changing the song title convention. :lol:

In iTunes for me (and I use Windows), it automatically adds the artist in front of the title.

e.g. posu yan - "Castlevania garlic OC ReMix"

Thus, I can't sort by song title alone, which would sort game by default, since the game title is in every song title. There might be something in the default preferences I'd need to change. That also may be a problem kethinov is having; I wouldn't know.

Rama's screenshot (http://www.thasauce.net/images/newsMisc/votl/votl-id3-03.jpg) of the FF7 album with his tweaks shows just the song name in the title, at it should be. Regardless, in iTunes, you should be able to sort by game now via Grouping. The update took maybe 4 minutes.

Liontamer

04-08-2010, 01:47 PM

Hey everyone. I was just wondering whether or not tags and file names will be updated (i.e. Zelda 64 v. The Legend of Zelda....) sometime.

Not right this second, but eventually, yes. I've already done all the legwork to update old files. We just need album artwork from djp and his approval to update the existing mixes with my copies that have improved, consistent tagging.

Rozovian

04-08-2010, 01:56 PM

That is weird.

I know files copied to iTunes' own library (instead of just using them from their previous location) get their file names changed to an itunes standard but the name tag remains the same. Can't find any settings in the preferences about renaming or retagging files.

Apparently a difference between mac and windows versions, unless winamp changes the tags. I could be wrong, but I recall from a mac version/port/ripoff (called macamp, very creative) the display showed "artist - name". Either that or win itunes is weird.

Arcana

04-08-2010, 05:07 PM

DragnBreth

04-08-2010, 06:37 PM

"Grouping" is a column that CAN be enabled in iTunes, and we'll fill THAT with the game title so that you can sort by game.

Oh good! Less effort on my part when adding new mixes to my iTunes. :P

I've been doing that for a while - filling in the Grouping field as the game name. It does come in handy, esspecially if you have mixes with less organized title naming schemes.

Liontamer

04-08-2010, 08:31 PM

While you're at it, would you consider labelling "track" with the number of the OC ReMix?

So it would be Track 2017, Track 2018, etc? I sometimes wished there was a way to listen to the songs in a "chronologically-posted" order. So for example if I miss out on downloading for a week I can grab a bunch and listen to them in order of posting.

Obviously I wouldn't expect you guys to change the previous entries but it would be pretty sweet for the future.

I've said numerous times, we'll be doing this. For everything. :lol: Sit tight.

That is weird.

I know files copied to iTunes' own library (instead of just using them from their previous location) get their file names changed to an itunes standard but the name tag remains the same. Can't find any settings in the preferences about renaming or retagging files.

Apparently a difference between mac and windows versions, unless winamp changes the tags. I could be wrong, but I recall from a mac version/port/ripoff (called macamp, very creative) the display showed "artist - name". Either that or win itunes is weird.

It's not important either way.

ZealPath

04-09-2010, 12:31 AM

This sort of reminds me of why i still just use winamp and file names as the primary way to sort my music. I like ID3 tags when they're done right but in the grand scheme of things (not talking about OCR here at all), they are often inconsistent and a mess, leading to a lot of manual updating.

That said, I've really become a fan of album art in ID3 tags, and am glad to hear that there will a default one added to OCR tracks soon, this is something I was going to propose but clearly it's in the works, awesome!

void.pointer

04-23-2010, 01:20 PM

So I have a Zune HD 64GB, and it shows album art, artist, album, title, etc when I play music. One thing I notice is that regular OC_Remix.mp3 have a couple of issues that I don't like:

There is no album art embedded in the MP3.
When I have thousands of these songs, I end up getting hundreds of artists added to my MP3 collection. This clutters my collection. In the past I've replaced the Artist field in all of my OC Remix files to "OCRemix", but I am curious to see what you guys think.
The Genre for OC Remix files is a URL instead of something a little more "pretty". For example, it is "http://www.ocremix.org" instead of something like "Video Game", "Game", or "Game Remix". Why is this so?
The entire OC Remix collection available publicly off of the website has inconsistencies. For example, the genre tag is different on some of them. Artist names aren't consistent (resulting them as being treated as different artists).

In the end I just want my collection to look professional and clean. As much as I love OC Remix and respect their work/community, I have to say that OC_Remix mp3 tags are really ugly and cause a lot of clutter.

Anyone have any suggestions to help me improve the tags? I'd say that album art is the most important thing for me right now. Even a generic "OC Remix" album art that I could apply to all of them would be sufficient.

Rozovian

04-23-2010, 01:31 PM

Inimitable

04-23-2010, 01:40 PM

All embedded album art does is increase file size. It's not much, but when you've got 20kb multiplied over 2000 songs, it adds up...

What happened to the good ol' folder.jpg?

DarkeSword

04-23-2010, 01:44 PM

When I have thousands of these songs, I end up getting hundreds of artists added to my MP3 collection. This clutters my collection. In the past I've replaced the Artist field in all of my OC Remix files to "OCRemix", but I am curious to see what you guys think.

We will never change this. The artist is the person who made the piece of music.

As for your other suggestions, it's all being worked on. I'm not sure why genre is a URL in any of the OC ReMixes; I don't think we've ever tagged anything like that. Weird.

Believe me, Larry's already got a lot of this done, but we've got other things in the pipeline that sort of take priority. You'll see the improvements to the tags once we find a good time to roll everything out.

Liontamer

04-23-2010, 02:47 PM

I've gone ahead and just merged 3 other threads about tagging into this one, so that people can look at the first post and be more likely to understand that this is already being worked on.

[/LIST]As for your other suggestions, it's all being worked on. I'm not sure why genre is a URL in any of the OC ReMixes; I don't think we've ever tagged anything like that. Weird.

Believe me, Larry's already got a lot of this done, but we've got other things in the pipeline that sort of take priority. You'll see the improvements to the tags once we find a good time to roll everything out.

Yep. Also, we didn't tag any genre fields with the URL; your Zune must be doing something weird. The album field is tagged with the URL, not the genre field.

All embedded album art does is increase file size. It's not much, but when you've got 20kb multiplied over 2000 songs, it adds up...

What happened to the good ol' folder.jpg?

We can handle that. We upped the filesize limit to 8MB, so adding album art isn't a big deal. Also, there's no point doing a folder approach, because most people DL individual tracks.

They'll be without album art, but I'll be sure to host a couple of tracks that people can use to test the revisions this weekend.

void.pointer

04-23-2010, 03:01 PM

Actually, this is being worked on. Liontamer is working on the inconsistencies, album art is being approved by djp, and Zune zucks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyuDAzzKnz8). ;)

There's a helpful little thing called playlists that lots of ppl use. Just fyi. :D
Let's not be a troll and start Zune vs iPod wars :P But yeah, ZuneHDs are awesome. At least Microsoft lets me sync with directories on my filesystem. Apple hates providing freedom of choice to its consumers, so I refuse to support them. iTunes is the most worthless piece of crap.

I've gone ahead and just merged 3 other threads about tagging into this one, so that people can look at the first post and be more likely to understand that this is already being worked on.

Yep. Also, we didn't tag any genre fields with the URL; your Zune must be doing something weird. The album field is tagged with the URL, not the genre field.

We can handle that. We upped the filesize limit to 8MB, so adding album art isn't a big deal. Also, there's no point doing a folder approach, because most people DL individual tracks.

They'll be without album art, but I'll be sure to host a couple of tracks that people can use to test the revisions this weekend.

It's not just my Zune, it's Foobar2000 and MP3Tag. I downloaded most of the songs from the torrents, but I also grab the MP3s directly via HTTP too.

Maybe I'm forgetting, but *something* showed up as a URL. If it wasn't genre, maybe it was the album or something. I don't remember specifically, I replaced it a long time ago.

Liontamer

04-23-2010, 03:10 PM

It's not just my Zune, it's Foobar2000 and MP3Tag. I downloaded most of the songs from the torrents, but I also grab the MP3s directly via HTTP too.

Maybe I'm forgetting, but *something* showed up as a URL. If it wasn't genre, maybe it was the album or something. I don't remember specifically, I replaced it a long time ago.

I use Mp3tag as well. It's the album, and that's 100% on purpose. That's something we're always going to keep. Check the first post to see a rundown of the fixes I've done in preparation for redoing the files.

DarkeSword

04-23-2010, 03:44 PM

Larry, I updated your list in the first post to clarify that the Artist field is something we will not change the contents of.

Liontamer

04-23-2010, 04:44 PM

Larry, I updated your list in the first post to clarify that the Artist field is something we will not change the contents of.

Oh, excellent. I shouldn't have forgotten that, thanks!

Kizyr

04-23-2010, 08:47 PM

Question: does "standardized filenames" refer to the name of the games? That is, Final Fantasy 9 will only be listed one way, so I don't have entries beginning with "FF9", "Final Fantasy 9", and "Final Fantasy IX"? (Same thing for, say, Zelda 3 or Zelda Link to the Past, Sonic 2 or Sonic the Hedgehog 2, etc.)

I don't have any suggestions beyond what's already been done (and repeated many times). Still looking forward to when all this is unleashed in the next torrent. KF

Liontamer

04-23-2010, 08:49 PM

Question: does "standardized filenames" refer to the name of the games? That is, Final Fantasy 9 will only be listed one way, so I don't have entries beginning with "FF9", "Final Fantasy 9", and "Final Fantasy IX"? (Same thing for, say, Zelda 3 or Zelda Link to the Past, Sonic 2 or Sonic the Hedgehog 2, etc.)

Yep. Proper game names for all filenames & titles. The filenames will continue using numbers instead of roman numerals.

Gollgagh

04-23-2010, 09:12 PM

oh good, that'll allow proper numerical sorting

FF II
FF III
FF IV
FF IX
FF V
FF VI
FF VII
FF VIII
FF X
FF XI
FF XII
FF

always bothers me

Liontamer

04-23-2010, 09:15 PM

oh good, that'll allow proper numerical sorting

FF II
FF III
FF IV
FF IX
FF V
FF VI
FF VII
FF VIII
FF X
FF XI
FF XII
FF

always bothers me

Well, the ID3 tag titling might bother you a little, since those will have the Roman numerals, but for me, I always sort by filename, so it's not an issue. Also, we're not adding 1's for anything in filenames (e.g. "Super_Mario_Bros_1"; it'd be a waste time putting 1 on every game that's had a sequel, and it muddies up the proper name.

Brandon Strader

04-24-2010, 11:12 PM

If they did a batch rename for every remix that set the album as "OC ReMix" or something and had it set for proper Zune or iPod usage then I'd totally redownload it all.:-P

Ramaniscence

04-25-2010, 12:10 AM

If they did a batch rename for every remix that set the album as "OC ReMix" or something and had it set for proper Zune or iPod usage then I'd totally redownload it all.:-P

I'm curious as to whether you've even read through this thread at all? The problem is not the album tags; the album tag for all the songs is already uniform. The problem is the album artist field, which is being fixed.

Brandon Strader

04-25-2010, 12:23 AM

halc

04-25-2010, 01:28 AM

Liontamer

04-25-2010, 04:49 AM

Actually I was really just saying that if it was fixed I'd download it... Having the Artist section say the remixer name is good but it's a huge mess in any mp3 player program. Sorting the album by game would be convenient so that you could play all the remixes for a particular game instead of sorting all 2000 songs into one folder. If you sort your mp3s by album then you'd be good probably, but that's a buttload of skipping to find a song you want.

Yeah, you didn't read the thread.

out of curiosity, is this even possible for OCR1000+? the track # field in itunes (mac) won't let me enter more than 3 digits.

Dunno what iTunes limitations are, but since I don't use it to tag mixes, it's moot point. MP3tag handles more then 3 digits just fine, and iTunes diplays more than 3 digits in the track #s with no problem. It doesn't display the extra 0s we add in, which is fine.

halc

04-25-2010, 05:58 AM

Dunno what iTunes limitations are, but since I don't use it to tag mixes, it's moot point. MP3tag handles more then 3 digits just fine, and iTunes diplays more than 3 digits in the track #s with no problem. It doesn't display the extra 0s we add in, which is fine.

ahh, gotcha. thanks. seems a little funny that it would display but not allow input of 4+ digit track #'s.

Brandon Strader

04-25-2010, 06:55 AM

No I didn't read the thread and I didn't mean to cause a stir or anything, I was just agreeing that I would enjoy to see the tagging revisions... sorry for the disturbance. x_x

Liontamer

04-25-2010, 06:56 AM

No I didn't read the thread and I didn't mean to cause a stir or anything, I was just agreeing that I would enjoy to see the tagging revisions... sorry for the disturbance. x_x

It's fine. Doug covered it. :-)

Liontamer

04-26-2010, 06:52 AM

Rozovian

04-26-2010, 09:35 AM

There's a field called "encoded with" which you seem to have interpreted as "encoded by". Maybe it's called encoder in other software. Seems like it's for the mp3 encoder, not the artist converting it to mp3. :P

Rabbit Joint Cover has OCR# in the Video Description tag, the others don't.

All 15 tracks work in iTunes on mac. Some of them I don't recognize from before, I assume those are fixed somehow from previous versions that iTunes couldn't import.

Liontamer

04-26-2010, 01:05 PM

There's a field called "encoded with" which you seem to have interpreted as "encoded by". Maybe it's called encoder in other software. Seems like it's for the mp3 encoder, not the artist converting it to mp3. :P

That's a conscious decision. It's "Encoded by" in Winamp 2 and "Encoded" in Winamp 5, so I'm OK with how I'm using it. It's much more important to me to actually promote the ReMixer and their contact info. There's a separate "Encoder Settings" tag that overrides the "Encoded by/with" field in iTunes if it's filled out.

Rabbit Joint Cover has OCR# in the Video Description tag, the others don't.
Yep, that's just a test tag that a few other mixes have, but won't be in the final file. Glad you noticed it.

If there are other fields filled out, the Album Artist field isn't working, or any other issues like that, everyone please let me know.

Rozovian

04-26-2010, 01:23 PM

Album Artist is ok on mac iTunes. They all say OverClocked ReMix.

Some of them have some info in a Release Date tag, not all.

Track# is all three-digit, don't think any of them are +1000 so can't say about that.

Aquatic Interlude wasn't posted in 2000. Noticed that it had a higher Track# than stuff from 2002 despite the year tag saying it's from 2000.

Liontamer

04-26-2010, 06:22 PM

Some of them have some info in a Release Date tag, not all.

Track# is all three-digit, don't think any of them are +1000 so can't say about that.

Aquatic Interlude wasn't posted in 2000. Noticed that it had a higher Track# than stuff from 2002 despite the year tag saying it's from 2000.

1. I had already cleared out every possible unnecessary field via MP3tag, so this came as a surprise. But the reason this was still around is because the "Release Time" field can only be manually added into MP3tag; it wasn't selectable. Either way, that caught 170 old mixes with that old data still in there. Good catch, I'm glad we took care of that.

2. I'll upload something post-1000 later tonight.

3. There were 2 or 3 other incorrect years that I fixed as well, mostly ones posted near the turn of the year. Glad you noticed.

I've thought about using the URL Audio File/WWWAUDIOFILE field to add the URL for each ReMix, but I have no idea what MP3 players use that data. If anyone knows of a program that does so, let me know.

Josh Whelchel

04-27-2010, 04:16 PM

[/LIST]
We will never change this. The artist is the person who made the piece of music.

As for your other suggestions, it's all being worked on. I'm not sure why genre is a URL in any of the OC ReMixes; I don't think we've ever tagged anything like that. Weird.

Believe me, Larry's already got a lot of this done, but we've got other things in the pipeline that sort of take priority. You'll see the improvements to the tags once we find a good time to roll everything out.

Not a big deal - but technically the "ARTIST" tag refers to the "PERFORMING ARTIST," in most cases this IS the person who made the music - but in a lot of cases this is someone else. For the sake of OC Remix this is nearly entirely moot. Back to your regularly scheduled thread.

Brandon Strader

04-28-2010, 04:59 AM

Downloading information for tags from "the internet" could be the culprit for weird or unexplainable tagging, like URLs as a genre.

Kizyr

04-29-2010, 02:44 PM

Here's 18MB of test mixes, retagged. I threw in some bootleg album art. They're all early mixes. Please play these files in various programs and let me know what issues, if any, you encounter.
http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0BzZ-TkKWy5oLZmZhMTVjZTYtZmY5Zi00ZGI5LTlhYmMtMWE0ODdmYj ZiOWZj&hl=en
(Using a Creative Zen Vision:M) The only issue I'm running into is that it doesn't display the year. But, I get that problem with a lot of tracks (not just this sample), so I wouldn't spend any time trying to correct for that if no one else is having issues.

Other than that, everything displays perfectly fine on my Zen.
...although, José is the only other one I've ever met who actually uses a Zen, too. KF

Liontamer

04-29-2010, 03:16 PM

(Using a Creative Zen Vision:M) The only issue I'm running into is that it doesn't display the year. But, I get that problem with a lot of tracks (not just this sample), so I wouldn't spend any time trying to correct for that if no one else is having issues.

Other than that, everything displays perfectly fine on my Zen.
...although, José is the only other one I've ever met who actually uses a Zen, too. KF

Interesting. Are you saying that for whatever tracks the year displays on your Zune but for others it doesn't? Would it be a character limit issue or something like that? If you have MP3 that do display the year properly on your Zune, mail me some (larryoji@ocremix.org) and I'll see if I can figure out a common demonimator. :-)

José the Bronx Rican

04-29-2010, 11:48 PM

The only way to see the year on the Zen for any track is to bring up a menu and display the track info. Said displayed info is woefully deficient: only the Track #, Title, Artist, Album, Genre, Year, Duration, Play Count, and estimated Encoding. If Kizyr is displaying track info and the year is missing, that is weird. I'll try it with my M and W in a bit.

EDIT: All the track info is displayed properly, even the year, and especially the ReMix #/Track # (e.g. "Aquatic Interlude" displays as Track #739). That goes for the Vision M and the Vision W.

SubNormal J3

04-30-2010, 05:46 AM

Hey this is really cool what you guys are doing. When are these changes going to be manifest in the torrents?

Kizyr

04-30-2010, 04:35 PM

Interesting. Are you saying that for whatever tracks the year displays on your Zune but for others it doesn't? Would it be a character limit issue or something like that? If you have MP3 that do display the year properly on your Zune, mail me some (larryoji@ocremix.org) and I'll see if I can figure out a common demonimator. :-)
Zen, not Zune, man! But yeah, checking it now, every track has that problem, so it must be some funny thing with firmware. I wouldn't worry about it, particularly if Jose's having no trouble there.

If Kizyr is displaying track info and the year is missing, that is weird. I'll try it with my M and W in a bit.

EDIT: All the track info is displayed properly, even the year, and especially the ReMix #/Track # (e.g. "Aquatic Interlude" displays as Track #739). That goes for the Vision M and the Vision W.
Yeah it's probably a firmware thing on my end, given this info. KF

Liontamer

06-28-2010, 02:59 AM

http://sites.google.com/site/liontamervgf/OCRTestTaggingv2.rar

Strictly 1000+ tracks, and includes prelim album art. Let me know how they work.

Liontamer

06-28-2010, 04:18 AM

The "WWW..." tags are a bit confusing to me, but I don't read those tags so I guess that doesn't matter.

Which tags specifically?

Ramaniscence

06-28-2010, 07:12 AM

I just noticed that not all of the songs had the same www... tags. I was looking at the extended tags in Mp3tag. I don't remember which song, and it's probably not an issue. Just thought I'd let you know that they were looking good.

It's not really helpful unless you can tell him which ones. That's kind of the point of asking.

Anyway I'll look at it.

Edit: Yea Larry, all the songs have the album as http://www.ocremix.org

That's not the URL anymore, that forwards to http://ocremix.org so the album field should be changed accordingly.

SubNormal J3

06-28-2010, 04:44 PM

The Artwork looks great to me. I found a few tag discrepancies from the mp3s in the RAR archive.

"Lose Your Way" has a tag called "WWW NO DESCRIPTION"

"Chopinesque" has tag called "POLUARIMETER"

"Megalo" has one called "ENGINEER"

Out of curiosity, are these ID3v2.3 UTF-16 or ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 tags?

Liontamer

06-29-2010, 06:26 AM

Yea Larry, all the songs have the album as http://www.ocremix.org

That's not the URL anymore, that forwards to http://ocremix.org so the album field should be changed accordingly.

Yep, I know; that'll be the last thing I change with a mass edit. But for now until everything's updated with the new style, I keep the old URL to remind me we're not fully finished yet.

"Lose Your Way" has a tag called "WWW NO DESCRIPTION"

"Chopinesque" has tag called "POLUARIMETER"

"Megalo" has one called "ENGINEER"

Out of curiosity, are these ID3v2.3 UTF-16 or ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 tags?

http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0#UNICODE
http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0#ISO-8859-1

Dunno what ID3v2 tags these are (Unicode or ISO). Whatever MP3tag uses.

Removed POLUARIMETER tag from 6 files, ENGINEER from 4 files and "WWW NO DESCRIPTION" from 367 files (nice).

I see there's a way to easily see all extended fields for all files at once in MP3tag, so I'll take a deeper look and make some fixes. Great catch, I definitely appreciate you finding stuff like this before everything was finalized!

SubNormal J3

06-29-2010, 06:56 PM

Liontamer

06-29-2010, 08:46 PM

Sure thing. Btw, In Mp3Tag, you can choose to use Unicode or ISO under Tools-->Options-->Tags-->Mpeg. I'm pretty sure UTF-16 is the default. I've been using ISO for compatibility, but I imagine there are foreign characters in the OCR tags so I guess I'll switch it back.

Ah, I gotcha; I haven't looked at those settings in quite a while, since I haven't needed to alter them. Indeed, I used the default, ID3v2.3 UTF-16, because there are some foreign characters we use, mostly accented vowels. I don't know if v2.4 is supposed to be any better, and was thinking about using it, but when edited in iTunes, the tags became v2.3, so I stuck with that.

But yeah, you pointing out the non-standard extended tags that were in these files will lead to a lot more cleanup, so you've given me a lot of peace of mind thanks to that eagle eye. I want these files to be as close to perfect as I can get 'em.

EDIT: EVERY miscellaneous non-standard tag has been removed.

Axiem

08-08-2010, 03:34 AM

Haven't seen any activity on this for a month or so, and I just wanted to check in, since I'm chomping at the bit to get the full OC collection with the "right" tags. How's this whole fixing-tags thing going, and are we any closer to seeing the new mp3s in the torrents?

Of course, I also understand this isn't the highest priority, and these sorts of things take time. I'm just impatient :D

Liontamer

09-29-2010, 03:43 PM

SubNormal J3

09-29-2010, 05:26 PM

Let me know if you need any assistance.

Liontamer

09-29-2010, 08:25 PM

Let me know if you need any assistance.

At this stage, I'm all good, but will definitely post if anything comes up.

SubNormal J3

09-30-2010, 01:56 AM

No worries. Good luck.

evktalo

09-30-2010, 11:05 AM

I checked the latest preview bundle, and it looked good. I'm especially looking forward to the track numbers.

--Eino

BardicKnowledge

11-11-2010, 02:45 PM

So, I have an extra 20GB of space on my iTouch and have decided that there's no reason I shouldn't drop OCR 1-1500 in there (which will become 1-2000 as soon as the torrent is updated).

Here's the thing: The idea of having 1430 ish tracks with no cohesive album title is not appealing to me in the slightest. What is the best way of altering the tags such that they will show up as one ginormous album?

^That word doesn't look nearly as fun written out, btw. Leaving it anyway :p

Rozovian

11-11-2010, 03:20 PM

I just do playlists. Smart playlists for different years is one way of splitting them up a bit, but if you prefer different moods or sounds, you're gonna have to make the playlists yourself.

Tho once the files are all updated with new metadata, we could start sharing playlists.

BardicKnowledge

11-11-2010, 09:07 PM

Thanks -- I'll try by year to start with since that's easy, and move onward to genres later (though one advantage of having year instead is forcing myself to occasionally listen to genres I wouldn't play).

Emunator

11-11-2010, 09:12 PM

Use the Compilation feature, just highlight all of your remixes, edit the info and, under the Options tab, there should be a field that says "Part of Compilation?" Select yes, and now all of your remixes will be neatly sorted as a compilation, so you can view them all in one place.

As for the album name though, I thought the default album tag was "http://www.ocremix.org" for everything downloaded from the site?

Radiowar

11-12-2010, 02:44 AM

As for the album name though, I thought the default album tag was "http://www.ocremix.org" for everything downloaded from the site?

this in conjunction with "OverClocked ReMix" in the album artist tag works best imo. i also tag site projects that way so OCR stuff gets organized in its own folder, as opposed to being scattered around the compilations folder.

RECKENEFIN

11-12-2010, 02:58 AM

My two cents on the matter. I divided it up by game/series. Example: "OCReMix: Mario's Mixes" for an album title, and then I just organized within there by game chronology. If a game wasn't represented by more than one track, they got throw into the "OCReMix" album.

Just throwing out another option. It wouldn't be too horribly difficult since the game name is included at the beginning of all the default track names. The chronology bit was kinda tedious, but then again that was my choice.

Liontamer

11-12-2010, 04:37 AM

Here's the thing: The idea of having 1430 ish tracks with no cohesive album title is not appealing to me in the slightest. What is the best way of altering the tags such that they will show up as one ginormous album?

As Wes pointed out, the URL is the album for all the individual ReMixes, so I don't get why iTunes wouldn't sort them with that as 1 album. Elaborate?

Use the Compilation feature, just highlight all of your remixes, edit the info and, under the Options tab, there should be a field that says "Part of Compilation?" Select yes, and now all of your remixes will be neatly sorted as a compilation, so you can view them all in one place.

Practically speaking, what's the benefit/functionality of doing this? I mean, doing that for every track wouldn't take me more than a few minutes, but can anyone explain what that actually does?

Would be helpful for http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20433

Emperor Charlemagne

11-12-2010, 04:48 AM

man and I thought I had a lot when I have a measly 433 OCR songs in my library.
Then again my tastes are often selective. :p

Liontamer

11-15-2010, 03:24 AM

Still waiting for answers to my previous questions. Can anyone answer them?

BardicKnowledge

11-15-2010, 04:28 PM

As Wes pointed out, the URL is the album for all the individual ReMixes, so I don't get why iTunes wouldn't sort them with that as 1 album. Elaborate?

First, sorry for not reading this sooner Larry -- had a busy weekend.

In any case, the default for my iTunes is to list songs by different artists under different albums, even if the album tags line up. This happens unless I highlight them all, edit the tags under "Get Info" (with all selected still) and check "Part of a compilation". I've now done that and have one massive OCRemix album, which is what I wanted.

Practically speaking, what's the benefit/functionality of doing this? I mean, doing that for every track wouldn't take me more than a few minutes, but can anyone explain what that actually does?

Would be helpful for http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20433

Benefit is that they all appear as one album as opposed to a few hundred different albums (which all have the same http://ocremix.org/ tag, but a separate album is created for each artist, leaving us with hundreds of albums by default).

prophetik music

11-15-2010, 04:45 PM

Still waiting for answers to my previous questions. Can anyone answer them?

the issue is that they all need either the same Album Artist (I usually use OC Remix or something similar) or the Compilation tag checked.

honestly, it's easier to organize by album artist, because it allows you to pull every single OC Remix - whether a site release, project release, or anything else - into one playlist by simply selecting that artist on your ipod. album compilations exclude each other, generally, so you'd have to manually assign them to a playlist to get every track from OCR. this is problematic since it doesn't update itself when you add music.

Liontamer

11-16-2010, 05:48 AM

Thanks for clarifying, y'all. Well, as far as my project for re-tagging every individual ReMix for re-release, we won't need compilation checked in iTunes, because everything already will have OverClocked ReMix as the album artist. Thus everything should be grouped. I've actually been tagging the Album Artist field for recent ReMixes. Try any of the last hundred ReMixes in iTunes and that field should be filled out.

Ryan, to answer your question, you could have downloaded MP3tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/) and batch tagged every mix with "OverClocked ReMix" as the album artist before dropping them into your iPod and you'd have been pretty much set. You wouldn't have needed to use the compilation field.

prophetik music

11-16-2010, 01:42 PM

Ryan, to answer your question, you could have downloaded MP3tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/) and batch tagged every mix with "OverClocked ReMix" as the album artist before dropping them into your iPod and you'd have been pretty much set. You wouldn't have needed to use the compilation field.

or just selected everything, right click -> get info in itunes, and set album artist as whatever you want.

BardicKnowledge

11-16-2010, 04:35 PM

I'll do that when the 2000 torrent comes out and I redownload the second batch. Thanks, everyone!

Liontamer

11-17-2010, 01:34 PM

or just selected everything, right click -> get info in itunes, and set album artist as whatever you want.

True. I'm not used to using iTunes for natch tagging since I don't normally use it and MP3tag is just a much better tagging program (being that tagging is its sole function). I highly recommend everyone download MP3tag. (www.mp3tag.de/en/)

I'll do that when the 2000 torrent comes out and I redownload the second batch. Thanks, everyone!

It'll already be done in the new torrent, so you won't actually need to do anything. Excitement!

The Biznut

11-22-2010, 12:45 AM

As for sorting songs further, I have a few smart playlists set up

OCR 5 star
OCR 4 star
OCR unrated

I rate tracks as I listen, 5 stars if I like the song and it is upbeat and energetic, 4 stars if I like the song and it is more mellow. 3 stars if it is an okay song, and 1 star if I never want to hear it again.

Upon resyncing, the songs are autmatically added to the appropriate playlists so I can shuffle the 5 star or 4 star playlist and get OCRemixes I know I like in a style I prefer at the time.

I can also keep listening to random unrated songs to get them sorted.

Seems to work for me.

BardicKnowledge

11-22-2010, 04:56 AM

Emunator

11-22-2010, 06:01 AM

prophetik music

11-22-2010, 01:37 PM

That's a good idea, but it really makes me wish there was an easier way to "tag" songs with iTunes instead of going in and editing the Comments field, which is oftentimes taken up with other information anyway, so I wouldn't have to automatically update a bunch of different genre-based playlists every time I get a new song in my library.

i agree. i also wish that itunes used a character - a semicolon, maybe - to separate artists within the field. so, a track done by zircon and sixto wouldn't show up as different artists than zircon, or sixto. this would allow you to listen to, say, every track by sixto, by just selecting the artist's name, and not digging through a zillion other artists. realplayer back in the day had that, and that was the only reason i used it as long as i did. i don't understand why they haven't fixed that, honestly.

Tyler Gill

11-22-2010, 03:46 PM

i agree. i also wish that itunes used a character - a semicolon, maybe - to separate artists within the field. so, a track done by zircon and sixto wouldn't show up as different artists than zircon, or sixto.

It's a pain sometimes. The ID3v2.3 standard uses / to separate artists, but unfortunately, WMP is (sadly) the only media player I've see that supports it. It might be nice to have that built in for the complete retagged OCR collection, just in case anything else ever comes around to support it though.

Liontamer

11-28-2010, 05:58 PM

It's a pain sometimes. The ID3v2.3 standard uses / to separate artists, but unfortunately, WMP is (sadly) the only media player I've see that supports it. It might be nice to have that built in for the complete retagged OCR collection, just in case anything else ever comes around to support it though.

Thanks for bringing that up. Neither djp or I could find where it says / is an ID3 standard for separating artists. Either way Windows Media Player is a poor program for sorting music in the first place (it isn't even intuitive how to show disc #), so it's at least OK if we don't cater to that standard. Same with RealPlayer as Brad referenced.

All of that aside, / just isn't in common or trending enough usage to bother using it. It's the same reason we don't use OGG. OGG is good, but doesn't have enough support. If anything else comes up that would in fact be successful addressing this issue, definitely let us know.

JUST FYI, I've basically looked at iTunes/iPod and Winamp as the two standard MP3 players. If there's any other broad-use robust MP3 player I should look at, lemme know.

Tyler Gill

11-29-2010, 01:13 AM

From http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0 -
TOPEThe 'Original artist(s)/performer(s)' frame is intended for the performer(s) of the original recording, if for example the music in the file should be a cover of a previously released song. The performers are seperated with the "/" character.The ID3.org spec for ID3v2.3 defines it (even though, yes, it is technically an informal standard), but yeah, no one supports it. It's kinda sad to see that even good programs like Winamp don't do it, but oh well. Not much we can do. Personally I just use commas and &s and figure then I can just search for them in iTunes if I want to retag it ever.

Liontamer

11-29-2010, 05:00 PM

Running everything through BPM Analyzer today to see if I can get a complete BPM list for all of the ReMixes.

http://download.cnet.com/MixMeister-BPM-Analyzer/3000-2169_4-10290906.html

From what I can tell, the prog is generally accurate, but it has its flaws as far as determining BPM, like giving slow songs a fast #, when it should halve the #.

Anyway, giving it a whirl to see how it is. I may even make a Google Doc spreadsheet to share and troubleshoot with.

SubNormal J3

11-29-2010, 11:45 PM

Wow. You're really going all out on this. Hopefully it's not too much of a hassle to get the BPMs.

Liontamer

11-30-2010, 12:36 AM

Well, the BPM results are certainly informative, but based on what I've seen and staff feedback, we're not going to go whole hog and include BPM data in the MP3s. If we knew it was 99% accurate, we would. But what I've found from running BPM Analyzer can be useful for the genre/moods/instrumentation tagging system in the database as far as broadly hitting what are uptempo or downtempo mixes.

Clairval

10-31-2011, 01:24 PM

Post - #2000 OCRemixes progressively had a new way to standardise ID3 Tags : track number, author comments, and http://ocremix.org as the album (instead of http://www.ocremix.org). While the change is great, I bet people using media sorting software (iTunes, Banshee, Rhythmbox...) are often frustrated to see thousands of old remixes alphabetically sorted in a separate album. Here are the two downsides of cleaning up the old remixes tags :

Someone will have to retag track number, album and mainly comments for about 2000 remixes.
The torrents we've been fightning for years to keep online will be obsolete.

Are these issues big enough for us to keep things as they are ?

Liontamer

10-31-2011, 01:44 PM

http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=32414
http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20433

Before the end of this year (or after MAGFest at the latest hopefully), everything on the site will be corrected/updated and we'll have brand new torrents.

Clairval

10-31-2011, 02:21 PM

Gureto, thanks ! Couldn't find info on that.

Rexy

12-18-2011, 12:23 AM

So while browsing around the site within the past week, and ultimately even downloading some tracks that I hadn't heard before, I've noticed when looking towards a handful in Windows Explorer that some of them were tagged as track '0' in the track number tag.
I first noticed it with a mutagene track that I thought should've been taken down in one of the lockdowns (thanks for the clarification Larry), though then I noticed it again when going on a Link's Awakening download spree tonight and noticing it on both of Scott Peeples's contributions.

Is there any explanation why some of the tracks were tagged this way? Is it a marking to suggest that they should be taken down when the new torrents were up (just as stated with the mutagene track), or is it seen as some kind of error? Whatever's up with these tracks, I'd definitely appreciate the response :)

Liontamer

12-18-2011, 02:22 AM

MP3 tagging/encoding programs from ye olden days were just weird. There's not really any involved explanation other than some programs added weird metadata, and that'll be taken care of in the new torrents. Someone who's familiar with the quirks of programs used in 2000-2003 might know the actual answer.

mrnerdhair

02-21-2012, 03:04 PM

So... it's the new year, plus a bit, and magfest is over... any word yet?

Please? Can I at least have some zipped bindiffs?

Daemos

03-11-2012, 06:13 AM

check the end of this thread out.
http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=6108

Daemos

03-27-2012, 06:31 PM

I picked up 2 of the newer songs from the site today:

ReMix: Suikoden 'Days Long Passed, Seldom Remembered' http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02410/

and

ReMix: The Legend of Zelda 'Zelda Heineken' http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01845/

One of these has album art and a different album name from the other. Is this normal? I know the older torrents had this issue, but I thought the new mixes had a format or something.?

djpretzel

03-27-2012, 07:46 PM

We are in the process of retagging older mixes to fit our newer tagging conventions & album art; a torrent will be released when this activity is complete.

Daemos

03-29-2012, 05:22 PM

Will any of the older album torrents be updated?

examples:
Kong in Concert's torrent is actually .WAV files. Not the mix of .mp3 and .flac files the most of the others.

Relics of the Chozo simply has a .rar file full of .wav files.

KyleJCrb

03-30-2012, 01:28 AM

Many of the earlier albums are definitely inconsistent in their formats and tagging. Liontamer mentioned that he may go back through the old albums and retag them to the new standards in place once the main site remixes are done. Don't hold me (or him) to that, though.