Unreadable APE tag renders other tags unreadable, tag types recognized, but no tag data is read Options

[m-b]

I have some MP3s, found in the wild, from which Mp3tag won't read the tags. It shows the tag data as blank, and it only says the tag type is "APEv2 (ID3v1 Lyrics3v2 ID3v2.3 APEv2)".

Beginning of file has:

1. ID3v2.3 tag

End of file has, in order:

1. APEv2 tag written by MP3Gain
2. Lyrics3v2 tag containing just the album title
3. ID3v1.1 tag

Also I ran MPEG Audio Info and confirmed:



I experimented with a hex editor and found that the only way to get Mp3tag to read the tag data was to remove the APE tag. Moving the APE tag in between the Lyrics3v2 and ID3v1.1 tags did not help.

All of the tags look like they're formatted OK to me. Here's the APE tag:



I tried removing it and then rewriting it with a fresh MP3Gain scan, and got the exact same tag as before, still unreadable by Mp3Tag. And of course, in my Mp3tag Options, under Tags > Mpeg and Tags > Ape, Mpc..., I have all the 'Read' boxes checked, so it's not that. However, I won't rule out user error

version: 2.51 (also tried 2.50)
platform: Win7 64-bit, Intel
Let me know if more info needed.

[ohrenkino]

I.... And of course, in my Mp3tag Options, under Tags > Mpeg and Tags > Ape, Mpc..., I have all the 'Read' boxes checked, so it's not that. ...

As there is a hierarchy in the tags (APE>V2.3>V1) the APE tags overrule everything else.
If you untick APE for reading then you will see the V2.3 contents.
If you untick V2.3 for reading and writing but keep APE you should deal only with the APE tags.
What was it that you wanted so see? V2.3? But I thought they were empty.
Lyrics-Tags are not supported an can only be deleted.

[dano]

Mp3tag can only display one tag type at the same time.
And the priority is APE > ID3v2 > ID3v1

So at the moment you are only seeing the APE tags.
Go to "View > Extended Tags" and you should see the mp3gain undo tags.

To see the ID3v2 tag you have to go to "Options > Tags > Mpeg" and disable [ ] Read APE

I also recommend to disable [ ] Write APE because if you save a change , all tag types are synchronized from the currently active tag type.
Old tags from the other tag type are not kept.

[m-b]

Oh, thanks for the quick and informative replies. This is quite confusing for me, so I guess it's a usability issue, not a bug.

It seems weird to have to go somewhat 'deep' into the options and disable APE tag reading in order to see the ID3v2 data. You don't normally know what each tag contains. I don't even know which one I'm looking at the data for. Is that what the parentheses (and lack thereof) means in the tag types?

I guess I was under the mistaken impression that the fields seen in Mp3tag were populated from whatever tags had the values...so if for example an album title is in both the ID3v2 and APE tags, but the song title is only in the ID3v2 tag, you'd see the album title from the APE tag and the song title from the ID3v2 tag. Instead, I guess what's happening is (given my config, with APE tag reading turned on), if there's an APE tag, it's almost as if the others don't exist; their data is ignored, I mean.

This post has been edited by m-b: Jun 14 2012, 13:12

[ohrenkino]

...I guess what's happening is (given my config, with APE tag reading turned on), if there's an APE tag, it's almost as if the others don't exist; their data is ignored, I mean.

Exactly.

[garym]

for the tag column:

what is to the left (outside the parens) is the Tag being read. What is inside the parens is the types of tags that exist in the file. So:

ID3v2.3 (ID3v2.3 ID3v1.1)

means that mp3tag is reading ID3v2.3 but the file also has ID3v1.1 tags.

In my opinion, it is much better to have only a single tag in a file. In the old days, some needed ID3v1 tags because of car cd players, etc. But in all the players I use (itunes, foobar2000, Squeezebox players, etc. etc. I've never needed ID3v1 tags). I use ID3v2.3 tags for mp3 files and FLAC native tags for FLAC files.

edit: and you can easily get to "one tag" by setting the read/write tag options in mp3tag correctly and doing a batch tag removal leaving only the correct tag type....

This post has been edited by garym: Jun 14 2012, 14:22

[ryerman]

for the tag column:

what is to the left (outside the parens) is the Tag being read. What is inside the parens is the types of tags that exist in the file. So:

ID3v2.3 (ID3v2.3 ID3v1.1)

means that mp3tag is reading ID3v2.3 but the file also has ID3v1.1 tags.

In my opinion, it is much better to have only a single tag in a file. In the old days, some needed ID3v1 tags because of car cd players, etc. But in all the players I use (itunes, foobar2000, Squeezebox players, etc. etc. I've never needed ID3v1 tags). I use ID3v2.3 tags for mp3 files and FLAC native tags for FLAC files.

edit: and you can easily get to "one tag" by setting the read/write tag options in mp3tag correctly and doing a batch tag removal leaving only the correct tag type....

I also think it is better to have only one tag in a file.
One small shortcoming of Mp3tag is that it will not show that ID3v1 tags exist in FLAC files.
In the Tag column you may see FLAC (FLAC ID3v2) but you will not see FLAC (FLAC ID3v1), even if ID3v1 tags are present.

I admit that such files are rare, but when you're a scavenger (like me) you come across all sorts of crazy tags.

[m-b]

what is to the left (outside the parens) is the Tag being read. What is inside the parens is the types of tags that exist in the file.

Thanks. I get it now, but never would have guessed that's what it meant. There's a tradeoff here between conciseness and clarity in this display format. If I were going for the briefest form possible, I would write my example like this:

ID3v2.3 APEv2 Lyrics3v2 ID3v1.1

This would show the presence and order of tags, and which one was read (bold), with the bolded text having a mouseover tooltip saying "Data is being read from this tag only."

In my opinion, it is much better to have only a single tag in a file. [...] you can easily get to "one tag" by setting the read/write tag options in mp3tag correctly and doing a batch tag removal leaving only the correct tag type.

Sure, and I agree about one tag, to the extent that it's covering general metadata. But like I said, you don't always know what's in each tag. Sometimes they have redundant data, but sometimes they have unique pieces of info you want to keep. I've seen pretty much every combination.

In the file that I was working with, I want to fix some things in the metadata in the ID3v2 tag, and I also want to keep the ReplayGain (including MP3Gain undo info) which lives in the APE tag. The Lyrics3v2 and ID3v1 tags are redundant this time, so they can go, but I've seen cases where they were including info that wasn't in the ID3v2 tag. And although it wasn't the case this time, there are times when the APE tag has more robust metadata than the ID3v2 tag.

So I feel Mp3tag ought to provide a way to switch the data view from tag to tag from the main UI. I can see how that would get complicated, though.