Home of the Squeezebox™ & Transporter® network music players.
Results 1 to 8 of 8
  1. #1
    Banned MrSinatra's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Pa
    Posts
    3,696

    Vorbis question, "Description" vs "Comment" ?

    i mostly deal in id3 and mp3, so i'm no expert in FLAC and Vorbis, but i do have a good amount of FLACs.

    i thought one of the strengths of Vorbis was its "wysiwyg" model. one for one matching, so if you had a field called RATING thats how it would look in an app or mp3tag or whatever.

    however, i have come across an issue where some apps seem to be taking the field called DESCRIPTION and displaying it in the app as COMMENT and/or vice versa.

    is it not wrong to conflate these?

    by spec, there is no COMMENT field in Vorbis, but is it not a de facto standard?

    http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html

    whats the consensus here? should they be conflated or no? how do your apps handle them?

  2. #2
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    United States
    Posts
    8,171
    Quote Originally Posted by MrSinatra View Post
    i mostly deal in id3 and mp3, so i'm no expert in FLAC and Vorbis, but i do have a good amount of FLACs.

    i thought one of the strengths of Vorbis was its "wysiwyg" model. one for one matching, so if you had a field called RATING thats how it would look in an app or mp3tag or whatever.

    however, i have come across an issue where some apps seem to be taking the field called DESCRIPTION and displaying it in the app as COMMENT and/or vice versa.

    is it not wrong to conflate these?

    by spec, there is no COMMENT field in Vorbis, but is it not a de facto standard?

    http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html

    whats the consensus here? should they be conflated or no? how do your apps handle them?
    Not at home, but I recall my dbpa has an option to map description to comment.
    Location 1: VortexBox Appliance 6TB (2.2) > LMS 7.7.2 > Transporter, Touch, Boom, Radio w/Battery (all ethernet)
    Location 2: VBA 3TB (2.2) > LMS 7.7.2 > Touch > Benchmark DAC I, Boom, Radio w/Battery (all ethernet except Radio)
    Office: Win7(64) > LMS 7.7.2 > SqueezePlay
    Spares: VBA 4TB, SB3, Touch (3), Radio (3), CONTROLLER
    Controllers: iPhone4S (iPeng), iPad2 (iPengHD & SqueezePad), CONTROLLER, or SqueezePlay 7.7 on Win7(64) laptop
    Ripping (FLAC) - dbpoweramp, Tagging - mp3tag, Spotify

  3. #3
    Banned MrSinatra's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Pa
    Posts
    3,696
    Quote Originally Posted by garym View Post
    Not at home, but I recall my dbpa has an option to map description to comment.
    see this is problematic...

    are there any other fields in vorbis that get mapped or conflated? or just these two?

    the problem is that for apps that do this, they will READ both, but WRITE/prefer one over the other, and of course, it won't be universal as to which one wins out.

    i was under the impression that almost all FLAC/Vorbis users here used COMMENT exclusively, and didn't use DESCRIPTION, or map it, at all.

    is this correct?

    its bad enough that Vorbis already has an "ALBUMARTIST" / "ALBUM ARTIST" issue, but this one could be worse.

  4. #4
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    United States
    Posts
    8,171
    Quote Originally Posted by MrSinatra View Post
    see this is problematic...

    are there any other fields in vorbis that get mapped or conflated? or just these two?

    the problem is that for apps that do this, they will READ both, but WRITE/prefer one over the other, and of course, it won't be universal as to which one wins out.

    i was under the impression that almost all FLAC/Vorbis users here used COMMENT exclusively, and didn't use DESCRIPTION, or map it, at all.

    is this correct?

    its bad enough that Vorbis already has an "ALBUMARTIST" / "ALBUM ARTIST" issue, but this one could be worse.
    back home to check. See picture...these are the FLAC mapping items in dbpoweramp. As far as I can recall these are the default settings.
    Attached Images Attached Images  
    Location 1: VortexBox Appliance 6TB (2.2) > LMS 7.7.2 > Transporter, Touch, Boom, Radio w/Battery (all ethernet)
    Location 2: VBA 3TB (2.2) > LMS 7.7.2 > Touch > Benchmark DAC I, Boom, Radio w/Battery (all ethernet except Radio)
    Office: Win7(64) > LMS 7.7.2 > SqueezePlay
    Spares: VBA 4TB, SB3, Touch (3), Radio (3), CONTROLLER
    Controllers: iPhone4S (iPeng), iPad2 (iPengHD & SqueezePad), CONTROLLER, or SqueezePlay 7.7 on Win7(64) laptop
    Ripping (FLAC) - dbpoweramp, Tagging - mp3tag, Spotify

  5. #5
    Banned MrSinatra's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Pa
    Posts
    3,696
    ugh, well at least u can control it. i think mp3tag has some default mappings too.

    so dbpa is actually using the field named DESCRIPTION for what apps call COMMENT?

  6. #6
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    United States
    Posts
    8,171
    Quote Originally Posted by MrSinatra View Post
    ugh, well at least u can control it. i think mp3tag has some default mappings too.

    so dbpa is actually using the field named DESCRIPTION for what apps call COMMENT?
    seems to be. just looked at some recent FLAC rips, and with those defaults, things in the "comment/description" tag show up as comments in foobar2000.
    Location 1: VortexBox Appliance 6TB (2.2) > LMS 7.7.2 > Transporter, Touch, Boom, Radio w/Battery (all ethernet)
    Location 2: VBA 3TB (2.2) > LMS 7.7.2 > Touch > Benchmark DAC I, Boom, Radio w/Battery (all ethernet except Radio)
    Office: Win7(64) > LMS 7.7.2 > SqueezePlay
    Spares: VBA 4TB, SB3, Touch (3), Radio (3), CONTROLLER
    Controllers: iPhone4S (iPeng), iPad2 (iPengHD & SqueezePad), CONTROLLER, or SqueezePlay 7.7 on Win7(64) laptop
    Ripping (FLAC) - dbpoweramp, Tagging - mp3tag, Spotify

  7. #7
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Location
    Colorado
    Posts
    10,073
    The vorbis field naming "spec" (actually, proposal) is nearly as useless as the ID3v2 one. It's a starting point, and little else. Note that it also suggests placing the composer or orchestra in the PERFORMER field. I have a feeling that they avoided use of the field named COMMENT since that's the nomenclature that they've used for the whole tag.

    Just use COMMENT. Yes, if you use programs that map names, you'll have to be careful. Use a hex editor to actually look at the field names being written to the file. Luckily, the vorbis comments are written very near the beginning of FLAC files, so are easy to find.
    Attached Images Attached Images  

  8. #8
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Posts
    584

    Vorbis question,"Description" vs "Comment" ?

    Hi,

    In article <JJZolx.5dz6vb (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com>,
    JJZolx<JJZolx.5dz6vb (AT) no-mx (DOT) forums.slimdevices.com> wrote:
    > Just use COMMENT. Yes, if you use programs that map names, you'll have
    > to be careful. Use a 'hex editor'
    > (http://www.searchandreplace.com/fshexedit.htm) to actually look at the
    > field names being written to the file. Luckily, the vorbis comments are
    > written very near the beginning of FLAC files, so are easy to find.


    Chances are, you'll have 'metaflac' installed on your system somewhere:

    metaflac --list --block-type=VORBIS_COMMENT filename.flac

    Andy


Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •