• Registered: 2012-09-06

Topic: Custom tags not being written to file

Hi

I am having problems getting some additional custom tags written to a WMA file, specifically I want to add WM/TotalTracks & WM/TotalDiscs as these are not written by default.

I have addded a script as follows:

$set(WM/TotalDiscs,%totaldiscs%)
$set(WM/TotalTracks,%totaltracks%)

and this correctly creates two new tag lines in the bottom pane with the correct WM/... name and the correct values populated in the 'New value' column. When I click 'save' the values are copied over to the 'Original value' column but the tags are not written to the files (have checked with a metadata listing tool) and if the file is reloaded in to Picard the values are missing from the 'Original value' column again!

I've also tried with a very simple entry in the the script to add a test tag and this also fails to write anything out to the file.

$set(test,%title%)

Is it not possible for Picard to write custom tags? Or am I missing something obvious?

Any help appreciated.

  • Registered: 2008-08-10

Re: Custom tags not being written to file

It's not currently possible to write custom tags to .wma files, sorry. What software are you using to read WM/TotalTracks & WM/TotalDiscs? I'm surprised there weren't already standard tags for that, but I don't have any wma files in my collection.

  • Registered: 2011-08-08

Re: Custom tags not being written to file

Who needs WMA files. Their lack of compatibility is ridiculous. I prefer to use either m4a (aac audio) or mp3s over wma files. You can play .m4a with WMP 12 and iTunes. You can only play .wma files with WMP, and not iTunes.

  • Registered: 2012-09-06

Re: Custom tags not being written to file

bitmap - thanks for the reply, I had a feeling that was the case. I'm ripping with dBpoweramp so will just have to add them in there, was trying to limit it to ripping then do all my tagging in Picard.
I'll mainly be using XBMC and WMP so not so concerned with the total track and disc values in the WMA's from a player point of view. However I also want to be able to make copies of the files later in smaller formats for ipod etc so wanted the data stored in the file for easy transfer over to other formats when I convert the files.

chuck - many many people use WMA's, if WMP is your player of choice and you want a lossless format then it is the only practical option. M4A ALAC's are not handled by WMP without plugins to make them appear in the music library rather than 'Other media' so it is not a clean solution.

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2008-03-07

Re: Custom tags not being written to file

In the past Picard used either only official tags or tags that are commonly used by other software. For the total discs/tracks there is no official WMA tag, but maybe some commonly used tags. Jaikoz uses WM/DiscTotal and WM/TrackTotal (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc … 3pONXd6MWc)

@garrypsmith: Do you know if WM/TotalDiscs and WM/TotalTracks tags are used by some other software or were they just for your personal use?

  • Registered: 2012-09-06

Re: Custom tags not being written to file

@outsidecontext - I had noticed that Jaikoz uses the WM/DiscTotal and WM/TrackTotal tags along with a number of other non 'offical' WM tags. I'm not using Jaikoz so decided to go for WM/TotalDiscs and WM/TotalTracks as they more closely resemble the names used by other formats that natively store this data.
I'm only using the tags for personal use, I want to be able to batch copy/convert my WMA collection to other formats such as M4A later and want the data stored for easy transfer to those formats that do store it.

As it stands I'm having to use two different tools (Picard and MP3Tag) to do my tagging. It would be much easier if Picard would allow me to add the custom tags while collecting the MusicBrainz tags so I only needed to use one tool.

  • From: Western Europe
  • Registered: 2012-09-05

Re: Custom tags not being written to file

@garrypsmith

As I understand you just need to store the information about total tracknumer and total discnumber for any later processing. As mentioned before these tags seems to be not supported in wma, refer to http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Picard_Tag_Mapping. So for just keeping the needed information why not to use comment tags? E. g. comment:totaltracks and comment:totaldiscs can also be fulfilled by tagger script automatically. I use this code snippet to keep information about individual matched album in unofficial compilations because there I have to overwrite the album tag manually to bind everything together.

$set(comment:album,%album%)

Cheers, Tubebend