OCR ID3 tagging improvements - DONE!

[Dafydd]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[kethinov]

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.

Finally: zicron, your Monstrous Turtles remix is amazing. Thanks for your incredible work, along with dozens of other fantastic artists on here. So many of you have done an excellent job. The fact that OCRemixes make up hundreds of songs in my library is a testament to all of your skill!

Thanks for reading. Keep up the awesome work everyone.

Kethinov

[Rozovian]

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]

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. 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]

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.

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]

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]

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 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]

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

I beg to differ.

[Rozovian]

Two concepts:

Entitlement. Grow up.

Playlists. Learn to use them.

[Kanthos]

I beg to differ.

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

[Liontamer]

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, including a recently posted mix. Where you been?

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]

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]

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]

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.

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. And I did it by using basic tagging features already available to me, not by needlessly disrupting our vetted, established system.

[Rozovian]

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

[Liontamer]

Rozovian said:

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.

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 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.

 

J3 said:

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]

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]

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.

[DragnBreth]

"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.

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]

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. 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]

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]

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.