OCR ID3 tagging improvements - DONE!

[Josh Whelchel]

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]

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

[Kizyr]

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-TkKWy5oLZmZhMTVjZTYtZmY5Zi00ZGI5LTlhYmMtMWE0ODdmYjZiOWZj&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]

(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]

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.

[Kizyr]

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]

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

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

[Liontamer]

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]

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.

[Liontamer]

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!

[Liontamer]

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]

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

[Liontamer]

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

djp has a lot on his plate. When he thinks it's a good time for it and has time for it, we'll get it done. We want to make sure to do it right.

[Liontamer]

Let me know if you need any assistance.

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

[Eino Keskitalo]

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

--Eino

[BardicKnowledge]

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

[Rozovian]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[EC2151]

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.

[Liontamer]

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

[BardicKnowledge]

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).