Don,
the mp3 meta-data can be stored in either one or both of ID3v1 ID3v2
tags, each having Artist Title Album Year and all sorts of other
wonderful data none of which may be accurate.
mp3 tags may also contain characters like !@#$%^&*()_+/? ©±§ {} and
whatever your OS substitutes for the European ǡēżȅ etc. , any or all of
which the RD Import routine will immediately ignore along with the stuff
you want. Some characters in tags and/or file names cause RDIMPORT to break.
Some of the junk in the tags may be generated by the software that was
used to create the mp3. There are mp3's with incorrect or program
breaking meta data readily available on sharing sites. Whole albums
incorrectly labeled, Tracks with the wrong artist, some completely
different song. Tracks with other stuff edited in to the middle. Some
files labeled as mp3 may in fact be Trojans. Treat all mp3's with caution.
The first step to sanity is to avoid sourcing from mp3's. Most music
started out on CD or an analogue format you can import as a wav file.
Establish maintain and encourage a culture of sourcing "uncompressed"
data. Some mp3 sample rates will just not import. Others will sound
horrible because the process to translate from whatever space saving
format the mp3 was created from or converted to just loses too much in
the process to 44100 16 bit wav.
A lot of this is determined by the sound card used at each step in the
process.
There are mp3's which 'import' with filenames and no audio data.
However there is a vast amount of programming available only as mp3.
Some of the junkiest is material supplied to stations by record companies!
I recommend that all mp3 tags are reviewed and all unneeded material is
removed. If the tags are all empty the file will import with the file
name as the title. This is no biggie for a few tracks but it's a pain
for a few hundred. Using RDIMPORT from the command line you can set
artist and title from the file name using %a %t etc. but a quick scroll
through a typical folder of mp3's will reveal all sorts of spaces and
characters in the file names that are guaranteed to gum up the system.
On my production computer I have a script called mp3clean which takes
out all the junk from file names, replaces _ with spaces removes the
spaces around the - between Artist and Title and Title Cases everything
except .mp3
It's a series of sed routines which I have developed over time. It could
probably be written as one line instead of 10 or 15 passes through the
folders of mp3's but it works and it's fast enough.
All mp3's being sorted are in one folder, you can have sub-folders and
have it dig down but I tend to work on copies of the source mp3's all
loaded into one big directory. More that 2000 files can be a bit precious.
Since there is no constant order for file name Artist-Title vs
Title-Artist and even more options for Album and Year there is sometimes
a bit of organising to do. Your solace is that if you tidy the data up
before import it's going to save eons when you have it in the library.
Now if you must use the mp3 tags you can use id3ed AND id3tool to set
them from the file name. There are GUI's which also enable you to edit
tags but command line is the way to go.
I have a series of programmes which play weekly and are delivered as
mp3's with an unbelievable amount of crud in the mp3 tags. Each one has
been transcribed and edited several times each mp3 editor adding it's
own watermarks. I have a script which inserts the appropriate data in
both mp3 tags and nulls all unneeded tags. I never figured out which tag
RDIMPORT looked at and it was just as fast to do both.
The tracks are copied to a holding folder with a house file name and
using id3ed and id3tool the tags are updated or nulled to ensure the
tracks will import. They then get forwarded to three independent RD
systems where they are imported. The advantage here is that each cut has
the Artist and Title set and characters which cause RDIMPORT to break
have been removed.
I use both id3ed and id3tool because I found each worked on only one
kind of tag and your mp3 may have either or both.
Sorting out data from meta tags can be hugely time consuming. Explaining
all this to people bringing in mp3's that play all right on their
whatever at home is even more tedious. You have to deal with people who
have no inkling of the difference between analogue and digital and that
digital comes in many flavours, and that files have both file names you
can see and header files called tags you cant.
The problem is not unique to Rivendell. I have some connection with
several radio playout systems and all have problems with mp3's such that
not all mp3's work with all systems, filenames and meta data being just
a part of the uncontrolled incompatibility.
In critical cases I have managed to resample mp3 audio using sox or vlc
so that it will play.
Now how to manage this:
It's reasonable to allow a number of production people to import CD’s
because it's not likely to go wrong.
There will be one, possibly two persons you can teach to massage mp3's
using the command line. They don't need to be root, as long as
permissions are set appropriately, but I do recommend they operate on a
production machine using copies of the mp3 files. Create one or two
control guru's. Make them gatekeepers. Set audio standards, and give
them the authority to reject material that does not meet the standard.
Set up a system to allow production staff to bring mp3's to the server
and load them in to a PENDING Group in the library, so that the tracks
can be auditioned and markers set. There is a lot of work in creating
and maintaining any music library. Doing the Rumpelstiltskin from time
to time may be necessary.
If someone wants to lob up with a USB containing random mp3's seconds
before they want them to go to air they maybe need to play them off
something else. Everything that goes in to the library needs to be vetted.
This may involve you in a significant education programme, but the
benefit is simple. mp3 Meta Tags are a time consuming pain and are
unreliable. Command line importing is the best solution, after file
names and tags have been sorted.
Teach someone(s) else to do it and everyone thinks you're a great guy.
regards
Robert
On 19/11/15 06:36, Harris, Don wrote:
I have a client set up running Riv 2.10.3 and when I am in RDLibrary
file import, I can import the audio but I don’t get any of the
metadata. I have tried mp3’s and .ogg files. If I select Rip CD in the
RDLibrary it will populate the fields. I have not tried the rdimport
commandline technique yet but I would rather use the GUI for station
production personnel. Any clues? Thanks
Don Harris
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