The following describes why tag handling is so important if you're using a Creative hard disk MP3 player but has some information that may be of general interest to others. 4.4.1 Introduction to Tag Metadata
Anyone who has worked with digital audio files knows that metadata tag information can be a powerful tool for keeping a music collection well-organized. Such tag information is embedded inside music files along with the audio data and typically includes information fields such as: Artist Album Track Number Track Title Genre Year Comment These tags are commonly referred to as ID3 tags. ID3 is the tag standard used with MP3 files. Microsoft has defined its own tag format for Windows Media Audio (WMA) files that is roughly equivalent to ID3. The WAV format was created well before digital music became popular, so WAV files do not support tag information. Tag information is typically embedded into an audio file at the time of its creation. That is, when it is first ripped and encoded from the CD source. Ripping and encoding software often connects to online tag information databases such as CDDB or FreeDB to automatically fill tags in newly created tracks. Note that this only works when first encoding because CDs have special unique ID numbers. After an audio file has been created, this automatic database lookup is no longer possible because every encoder is slightly different and people choose different encoding options and bitrates. So although two MP3 files might sound identical to a human ear, if the underlying data bits are not exactly identical, a computer cannot tell they are of the same song. For this reason, we recommend that people ripping and encoding their own audio files from CD make sure that they enable CDDB-like features to automatically fill tags. Many files you download from the Internet will have missing or even wrong tag data. For these files you will have to use tag editing software to fix the information. The various Nomad device models each handle tags differently, and it is extremely important to thoroughly understand how your Nomad deals with tag information. 4.4.2 Tags and Nomad MuVo To our knowledge, the MuVo makes no use of tag information whatsoever. The MuVo has no display so it cannot display the tag information. The tag track number is not used to determine playback order. Playback order is defined by the order in which the files were transferred to the MuVo. Note that Notmad has a feature allowing you to reorder files already on the MuVo. Details in the MuVo-specific feature section. 4.4.3 Tags and Nomad II-Series The Nomad II-Series devices make minimal use of tags. When a music file is being played back on the Nomad II, it reads the tag information from the file and scrolls it on the display. Tag information is not used for organizational purposes. In particular, the tag track number does not determine the playback order. Files on the Nomad II are played in the order in which they were transferred to the device. 4.4.4 Tags and Jukebox Models Tag information is essential to the operation of the various Nomad Jukebox models. To take full advantage of your Jukebox, you must understand how tag information is used. The most common misunderstanding about the Jukebox is how audio files are stored and organized on board. Many people assume that the Jukebox works like a normal hard disk where you can create arbitrary folders and store your audio files in whatever folder you like. This is incorrect. Creative did not design their Jukeboxes this way. Virtual Folders and "A Database of Music" The best way to think of your Jukebox is as a database of music. When you transfer audio files to the Jukebox, they are all stored in a single, flat folder. The filenames they had when on your computer are discarded, and they are stored using internal id numbers. You access your audio files on-board the Jukebox and through Notmad using virtual folders, or views, that the Jukebox constructs using tag information. The Audio Tracks, Artists, Albums, and Genres folders are therefore all dynamically constructed from the tag data associated with your audio files. Given this design, it is not possible to "create" new folders per se. For example, people often ask how to create a new album. Well, you cannot create a new album and move files into it. Instead, what you would do is select some of your existing files and change the album field in their tags. This would have the effect of "creating" a new album. The Tag Database Another Jukebox design characteristic important to note is that it does not read tag information directly from within the audio files stored on your Jukebox. Tag information is often stored at the end of multi-megabyte music files, making reading tags a slow process. When dealing with several thousand audio files on a Jukebox, reading through every file to build the tag database is simply not practical. Instead, the Jukebox maintains a separate database of tag information alongside the audio file storage. Each entry in the database is a complete set of tag data and is associated with one of the files stored on the Jukebox. The Jukebox uses this database so it doesn't have to continually read through all of the audio files. This database is only updated when you transfer a new file to the Jukebox, explicitly edit a tag on-board the Jukebox, or delete a file. During a transfer, the transfer software (PlayCenter or Notmad) is responsible for reading the tag information out of the source audio file on the computer, and handing that data to the Jukebox along with the file. The Jukebox then puts that tag information into its database and associates that entry with the newly transferred file. This scheme has several advantages. First, as mentioned above, it saves the Jukebox from having to repeatedly parse through all the thousands of files on-board to gather all the tag information. Second, it shifts the burden of parsing all the different tag formats from the Jukebox to the software running on the computer. This is important because software running on the computer has signficantly more processing power and resources than what is available on the Jukebox to read new and more complicated tag formats of the future. This way, the Jukebox firmware need not be updated when new tag formats arise. Given this tag database design, Notmad is responsible for reading tag information and passing it to the Jukebox. The next section discusses Notmad's specific tag reading capabilities. Organizing Tags on Your Computer This overall design is surprising to some people at first. The most significant implication is that you should have the tags in all your audio files properly filled out before transferring them to your Jukebox, otherwise they will look a mess once on there. Although this requires some investment of time up-front, most people find that in the long run it makes managing a large collection of music much, much easier. 4.4.5 Notmad Tag Reading and Generation When transferring a file to a Jukebox, Notmad must read the tag information from the source audio file on the computer and pass it along with the file data to the Jukebox. This section describes how Notmad does that. This section does not apply to Nomad II-series and MuVo. It only applies to Jukebox models. ID3 Tags ID3 is the tag format for MP3 files. Notmad is capable of reading both ID3 V1 and ID3 V2 tag formats. For each file, Notmad will first attempt to read the V2 tag. If it does not exist, Notmad will read the V1 tag. WMA Tags WMA files have their own tag format, which Notmad can read. If you are using WMA files, you must have Windows Media Player 7.0 or higher installed on your comptuer for Notmad to be able to read WMA tags. Filename Parsing If the tag information cannot be read from the audio file, Notmad attempts to guess the tag information by parsing the name and path of the file. Filling-In Missing Tag Information To successfully transfer a file to the Jukebox, Notmad must provide at least the Artist, Album and Title, because these are the fields the Jukebox uses to uniquely identify an audio track. If Notmad cannot either read all three of them from the tag or guess them from the filename, they must be filled in manually by you or filled in with boilerplate information. Normally, if Notmad cannot fill the three fields for a file during transfer, it will pop-up a dialog box asking for you to manually fill in the information. Notmad Explorer has several options to alter this default behavior. They can be found on the "Jukebox" tab in the Configuration dialog. First, Notmad can be configured to skip files whose tag information cannot be automatically determined. Check the "Auto-skip files with incomplete ID3 tags" option to enable this. You can examine the transfer log afterwards to find which files did not transfer due to incomplete tags and fix them later. Second, Notmad can fill the missing fields with boilerplate text. Check the "Auto-complete ID3 tags with missing fields" option to enable this and provide the text you want Notmad to fill with in the box below it. Kevin----- Original Message ----- From: "Gina Grunden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "PC audio discussion list. " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 8:01 PM Subject: Re: Tagging mp3 files > Pardon my ignorance, but what's this whole tagging mp3's thing? What's it mean? > Hmm. > > Gina & Wendell > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Dave Reynolds" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "PC audio discussion list. " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 10:09 AM > Subject: Re: Tagging mp3 files > > > > Tag Studio doesn't appear to do anything. It doesn't retag the files despite > > them being selected in windows explorer. I'm sure that there's something I > > have ticked which I shouldn't. David T, any ideas? > > Many thanks, > > Dave. > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Dave Reynolds" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: "PC audio discussion list. " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 3:33 PM > > Subject: Re: Tagging mp3 files > > > > > > > Wt up until now, but my external mp3 player uses the tags to organize its > > > database. The tag can be different from the actual file name, and I want > > > them to be the same. When playing in winamp, the tags aren't a problem > > > because the songs play in alphabetic sequence, but on my external player, > > > the tags are used, and if they contain nothing or contain rubbish, the > > > tracks will play in the wrong sequence. I hope this gives you some idea. > > > Dave. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > > From: "scott" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > To: "PC audio discussion list. " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 1:47 AM > > > Subject: Re: Tagging mp3 files > > > > > > > > > > can someone explain to me why you'd want to tag an mp3 and what its all > > > > about?thanks > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > > > From: "David Truong" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > To: "'PC audio discussion list. '" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2004 8:25 PM > > > > Subject: RE: Tagging mp3 files > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi Dave, > > > > > > > > > > in MP3 tag studio Control+enter is equivalent to the execute button. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > On Behalf Of Dave Reynolds > > > > > Sent: Sunday, 18 April 2004 7:02 AM > > > > > To: PC audio discussion list. > > > > > Subject: Re: Tagging mp3 files > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Hi again Andrea, > > > > > I'm totally confused. I downloaded the program, but can't get anything > > > to > > > > > happen. There's a dialog with lots of checkboxes etc. I can set > > > everything > > > > > up, but there's no OK button or GO button or Convert button. How do I > > > > start > > > > > it doing things? Many thanks, Dave. > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > > > > From: "Andrea Sherry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > > To: "PC audio discussion list. " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > > Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2004 7:21 PM > > > > > Subject: Re: Tagging mp3 files > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > You might try MP# Tag Studio. I have fond it superb for the > > operation > > > > > > you describe. The link is: http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts > > > > > > HTH > > > > > > Andrea > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > > > > > From: "Dave Reynolds" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > > > To: "PC audio discussion list. " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > > > Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 3:43 AM > > > > > > Subject: Tagging mp3 files > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > I'm having a bit of a problem with some wrongly tagged mp3 files. > > The > > > > > > name of the file bears no resemblance to the tagging. I'd like the > > tag > > > > > > to be > > > > > the > > > > > > same as the file name. I've got lots of files to alter. Does anyone > > > > > > know > > > > > of > > > > > > a program that will do this for me, or at least make it a bit > > easier? > > > > > > Thanks, Dave. > > > > > > E-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit me on the web at > > > > > > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dkreynolds > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > > PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... > > > > > > http://www.pc-audio.org > > > > > > > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: > > > > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > > Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. > > > > > > Checked by AVG Anti-Virus (http://www.grisoft.com). > > > > > > Version: 7.0.230 / Virus Database: 262.8.3 - Release Date: > > 15/04/2004 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. > > > > > > Checked by AVG Anti-Virus (http://www.grisoft.com). > > > > > > Version: 7.0.230 / Virus Database: 262.8.3 - Release Date: > > 15/04/2004 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > > PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... > > > > > > http://www.pc-audio.org > > > > > > > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: > > > > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... > > > > > http://www.pc-audio.org > > > > > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: > > > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... > > > > > http://www.pc-audio.org > > > > > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: > > > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... > > > > http://www.pc-audio.org > > > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: > > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... > > > http://www.pc-audio.org > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... > > http://www.pc-audio.org > > > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... > http://www.pc-audio.org > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ PC-Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... http://www.pc-audio.org To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
