I seem to have some problems with some of my tracks not reading the genre information properly. I use Windows 9x Winamp 2.6-something. I have tried both v1 and v2 tags.
'anime' seems to get mapped to Jpop (which I use for jpop)
and I have at least 1 track that ALWAYS comes through
as "genre" though I've tried everything I can think of.
Many just come through with nothing in the genre field.

I'm Confused... Help?!

Ed

I dont think anime is a valid genre. (in terms of id3) It doesnt show up on my list anyway.

Sean

Genres in ID3v2 tags are free-form Ascii text. So if you strip out your V1 tags and only use V2, you can put anything you want in there.

V1 tags have a hard-coded, standardized table of bytes-to-genres. However, there are two possible sets of tables, one which is 80 entries long, and one which is 125 entries long. The entire list can be found here. Note that "Anime" is not among that list. Anything beyond that list is nonstandard and can be expected to come up strange depending on which software you use.

When I use WinAmp to add "Anime" to a V1 tag, it comes up as byte value 145, which is way outside the standard range.

Hmm well this is a problem for me then. I stripped all the V1 tags and was/am using only v2. Anime comes over as JPOP.
Also in v2 I find that "Salsa" comes across as "thrash Metal"
hehehe

Ed

So, am I wrong about V2 genre tags being free-form text?

AFAIK, v2 does provide for freeform text. Some applications let you type in what you want, and some others only supply a pre-built list. I believe I recall reading something about issues with this for some applications. But, as usual, can't remember where.

Bruno

I suggest you upgrade your Winamp. It must have a problem. I just modified a file's V2 tag (no V1 present) to anime and it imports fine into emplode 2.0b3

I did the edit with MP3Tag Studio. And "anime" is one of the pre-listed tags available. Of course you can type whatever you want, like "piano anime"

I even just did a sync to actually send the song to the empeg and it's still fine. I'd search for it on the empeg itself (without emplode), but unfortunately I left my remote at a friend's house on Thursday. Argh.

Check out MP3Tag Studio in the meantime and see if it fixes you up. Also, I think everyone here is assuming you're running 2.0b3, right?

Bruno

what genre do others use for holiday music? i was ripping a couple of christmas CDs last night, and was frustrated to find that there wasn't a genre for "Christmas", "Holiday", or anything else that seemed pertinent. am i missing something?

--dan.

Type in "Holiday" or "Christmas" or "Festive" or whatever you want. Some software will remember new genres input and will offer them to you in a pull-down menu for later use.

Bruno

What version of winamp you running hybrid?

Ed

Another problem I have noticed is related to the ID3lib library that Empeg use. I spoke with Mike about this back in October 2000, and he agreed that there is a bug in this library which causes mismatched tags when files are uploaded to the Empeg. Apparently, this library is used to convert the tokenised genres into text names (as they are stored as text once in Empeg land). The library simply gets it wrong.

For example, I have a fair few 'Heavy Metal' albums, and they are tagged as such in Winamp/MP3 Tag Studio. When you look at these tracks in Emplode, they are classified as 'Black Metal', even though Emplode has an entry for 'Heavy Metal'.

Mike said he would look into this, but didn't think it would get fixed any time soon (it doesn't appear to be fixed in 2.0 Beta 3).

Andy.

I replied to this yesterday. Guess I forgot to hit continue after the preview...

I'm running Winamp 2.77.

Bruno

When you look at these tracks in Emplode, they are classified as 'Black Metal', even though Emplode has an entry for 'Heavy Metal'.

Funny AMG (All Music Guide) doesn't even have that genre category, only Black Gospel.

We don't use ID3lib in the 2.00 version of emplode - the code is all ours now.

ID3V1 genre translation is simply a table and sometimes it gets it wrong because different applications use different versions of this table.

Rob

My mismatches are all in v2 tagging. Not sure if its v2.3 or v2.4 though. (been doing my homework) I'll pop em into
an editor and compare it to the specs.

hehe Salsa is amusing ;) "Thrash Metal"
hehe.

Ed

Make sure to strip any V1 tags from your files and then try again. I've tried a few of the genres listed and haven't gotten these problems. I'll try a few more, including Salsa when I get in tonight.

Bruno

AFAIK you can't have a mismatch in ID3V2 - the genre is free text.

Rob

Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing.

If he's getting mismatches like that, then he's got a V1 tag in there despite his statements to the contrary.

Open the file in a binary editor such as UltraEdit. Look at the last 128 bytes of the file. Is there a V1 tag in there?

This still brings to light a possible problem with emplode. If a file is tagged with both V1 and V2, which has priority? Which *should* have priority?

Because of possible issues such as this, I stripped all V1 tags from all my music. I used to do V1 and V2 tags at encode time, now I only do V2. If a program/product doesn't support V2, I don't use it.

Bruno

If a file is tagged with both V1 and V2, which has priority?

V2. It's in the FAQ.

Which *should* have priority?

The application has no way of knowing.

I can envision some complex rule-based processing that one could do on the tags at import time, and it would result in a good educated guess as to which of the tags is the good one. I don't think Emplode does it, though.

I haven't tried throwing a dual-tag file at Emplode recently, so I don't know how well it behaves at the current time. I'll have to check that out.

Yeah, behavior seems to be the same as before: V2 always takes priority over V1 if it's present.

It gets me to thinking, though. Perhaps the problem the gentleman is having with his Genre tag is the one noted in that FAQ entry? There's a second V2 tag or some other kind of garbage ASCII data at the end of the file.

You can store v1 genres in a v2 tag by putting it in brackets, e.g. "(11)". This then refers to the same table as the ID3V1 genres.

Well, we stand corrected, then.

Somehow that doesn't sound right. Looked it up. Not that Id3 is a "standard" per se. www.id3.org Doesn't look like
"freeform text" unless perhaps its storing Unicode?


" TCO
The content type, which previously (in ID3v1.1, see appendix A) was
stored as a one byte numeric value only, is now a numeric string. You
may use one or several of the types as ID3v1.1 did or, since the
category list would be impossible to maintain with accurate and up to
date categories, define your own.
References to the ID3v1 genres can be made by, as first byte, enter
"(" followed by a number from the genres list (section A.3.) and
ended with a ")" character. This is optionally followed by a
refinement, e.g. "(21)" or "(4)Eurodisco". Several references can be
made in the same frame, e.g. "(51)(39)". If the refinement should
begin with a "(" character it should be replaced with "((", e.g. "((I
can figure out any genre)" or "(55)((I think...)". The following new
content types is defined in ID3v2 and is implemented in the same way
as the numerig content types, e.g. "(RX)"

So its a numeric string, meaning tables. must be the winamp
and emplode tables don't match? ;(

no v1 tagging left. using winamp 2.77 and looked at this in
tag studio (I hate ad/spyware) and they looked correct.
Used a hex editor and pfe as well to examine the header,
seems that winamp can do several different things with the
frame used for "content". Either use a tabled tag if you
select from the list or if you type in freeform, stores that.

Ed

So have you narrowed your problem down to tagging with winamp? To one of the instances where it doesn't use freeform text?

All my self-ripped music has been tagged with AudioGrabber - it all shows up properly in emplode, Winamp and Tag Studio. A bunch of other files I've stripped and tagged with Tag Studio. They also come up fine in emplode and Winamp.

My current genre beef with emplode is "AlternRock" instead of "Alternative Rock" - and the fact that it doesn't store new items you manually input.

Bruno

and looked at this in tag studio (I hate ad/spyware)

Someone on the BBS pointed me to a replacement DLL that impersonates the Cydoor adware DLL. You use something like Lavasoft's "Ad Aware" to clean all the adware from your system, then you toss this Cydoor-faker DLL into the same directory with Tag studio and all is peachy. Anyone have that link again?

Yes, it does appear to be the way either Winamp applies
the tag as v2, or the way emplode 2b3 reads it.

If the track is unlabeled and I v2 tag it in winamp, it does
not always work properly. Only found 3 mismatches so
far.

if the track gets done by say, Eac and Lame, it will work.
However it still looks correct in winamp oddly enough.

Very confusing, tag studio never says there is a problem
with either. I suspect that winamp is using a 1.1 table
entry and emplode isn't converting that properly or something.

Also I noticed that tag studio hacked on the system.ini as
well, but I didn't have a unhacked to compare. I'll do that on
another system in install watcher pro. (awesome free package)

Ed

Ah, here's the link to the Cydoor Dummy DLL:

http://www.cexx.org/dummies.htm

Basically, you use Lavasoft's Ad-Aware (a must-have program) to clean your system of all adware. Then, for the few programs which refuse to run without Cydoor, you fake 'em out by feeding them this replacement DLL.

I've use ad-aware before and I do like it! But I had one problem with it : after installing, it takes my system about 30-45secs MORE to boot. I don't exactly know what my system is doing then, but I can't do anything with it.
I mean, it has already booted to the desktop, and everything seems as it's good to go, but when I click something, be it explorer or something else, it takes about 30secs+ to start the program.
After this "delay" the system is peachy. I've encountered this delay on both my win2000 and winXP system.

Anybody else noticed this or (even better) knows a workaround?

In Ad-aware, there is a "scan on windows startup" option. You might try turning that off and see if it fixes it.