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<div class=Section1>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Pat, it’s obvious you put a lot of
thought into this proposal, but I think there’s a “showstopper”
item missing from your Disadvantages list. Converting the existing genre
frame to support a bitmap style representation of multiple genres would break
backward compatibility. The ID3 standard has had free-form genres for so
long, it’d be next to impossible to go back to using a fixed list, even
one that allowed for modified pairs like you described. For example, if
your proposal were adopted, how should an ID3-compatible program handle the
genre of “Venezuelan Beaver Cheese Chill Out Groove” or even “Mitch’s
Favs”. You just never know what people have put in the Genre field,
so there’s really no way to convert these values and go back to a fixed
set of values. The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>However, this doesn’t mean that we
can’t clarify the genre frame specification to promote the use of multiple
genres. The only application that I’ve found that supports multiple
genres is ID3-TagIT. It uses what I think is the simplest, best approach
for multiple genres which is simply using a null char delimited list of genre
values. In fact, I’ve adopted its format in my own ID3 library,
UltraID3Lib.) This technique has the benefit of being backward compatible
with all ID3v2 versions. (Apps should just ignore anything after the
first null char delimiter, so they wouldn’t fully support the format, but
neither would this format break compatibility.)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Anyway, not that I want to be such a
downer, but I think it’s too late to go to a limited set of genre
values. There are just too many weird genres out there to ever be codified
in a manageable list.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Mitchell S. Honnert<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>www.UltraID3Lib.com<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<div>
<div class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>
<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center tabindex=-1>
</span></font></div>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold'>From:</span></font></b><font size=2
face=Tahoma><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'> Pat Furrie
[mailto:pfurrie@hotmail.com] <br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> Saturday, March 04, 2006
3:31 PM<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> id3v2@id3.org<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> [ID3 Dev] New genre
coding idea?</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>I’ve been considering how multiple genres can be
assigned via ID3.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>What I do understand:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>1)<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>ID3v1 had a
single byte which mapped to a fixed and limited list of genres.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>2)<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>ID3v2 allows
for a genre frame which can have some mix of genres.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>3)<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Very few programs,
if any, are using the multiple genre capability.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>4)<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Programs
like iTunes seem to allow multiple genres, but in reality users are only
creating a new genre which is the composite of existing types. However
there is no cross-referencing: I can give an MP3 the “genre” of
“rock soundtrack” but if I list everything in the
“rock” or “soundtrack” genres, it doesn’t show
up. Additionally, “soundtrack, rock” is not equivalent to “rock,
soundtrack” in the iTunes world.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>One way of dealing with it is to utilize free-form text with
delimiters, allowing users to enter as many of whatever genres they come up
with. However, this has a few problems:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo4'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>1)<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Because the
length of the field is unknown, padding must be used, and the possibility still
exists of needing to re-write the rest of the file due to exceeding the space
given by any padding.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo4'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>2)<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Any spelling
errors create additional genres when they shouldn’t exist (does
“soundtrack” equal “sound track”?)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo4'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>3)<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'> </span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>What works
for English doesn’t work for other languages. Localization is
difficult.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>The original one-byte method in ID3v1 did have the potential
of being able to be localized, since the genre name lookup table could be
altered for whatever the user’s language is. But it only allows a
single genre, and it is easy to show that most files (of any type) can be
reasonably listed in multiple categories.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Another solution is to use the same look-up table, but have
multiple delimited values listed. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Let’s bit-map the genre information. Make the
bit-mapped switches correspond to smaller divisions of description as opposed
to compounded versions. For example, terms like “Rock,”
“Classic Rock,” “AlternRock,” “Instrumental
Rock,” “Gothic Rock,” “Folk-Rock,”
“Progressive Rock,” “Psychedelic Rock,” “Southern
Rock,” “Symphonic Rock,” “Hard Rock,” “Slow
Rock,” and “Punk Rock” are replaced by “Rock,”
“Classic,” “Alternate,” “Instrumental,”
“Gothic,” “Folk,” Progressive,”
“Psychedelic,” “Southern,” “Symphonic,”
“Hard,” “Slow,” and “Punk.” Note that
any of those terms can be combined with any of the others to give a larger
variety of unique genres (ie, “Instrumental Punk” and
“Southern Folk”), as well as with a myriad of other terms condensed
from the current list of genres, and a host of additional modifiers and
qualifiers. This atomized approach to the subjective art of
classification allows for a far more expansive range of control and choice
while keeping spellings and terms standardized. And while there are fewer
than 150 genres in the more-or-less standard version, this new approach allows
for, well… an awfully big number… 2 to the number of bits used in
the bit map.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>After doing some digging up of genre types from the
Internet, it seems 1000 bits should be sufficient. This includes a wide
range of modifying terms and plenty of reserved space for the future.
Doing a little rounding to come up with an even number, 150 bytes appears to be
a good number to consider for the size of the reserved space.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Bitmap Advantages:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo6'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Efficient. With a small amount
of file space, a very large number of genres can be described.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo6'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Complete. A user can have any
combination of a large number of genre and modifiers to describe each audio
file.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo6'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Language independent. The bits
map to terms which can be localized to a user’s language.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo6'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Can be cross-referenced. Files
can easily be sorted on a single genre attribute or any combination.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo6'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Changes don’t ever affect a
file’s size. Once the fixed-length bit-map has been attached,
regardless of what genre/modifier values have been selected, genre changes will
no longer have any impact on file size.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo6'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Standardized terms and
spellings. A user has a hard enough time entering the same text each time
exactly the same, let alone having different users entering textual genre
information the same. Consistency in spelling and terms becomes possible
when the choices are mapped to a fixed word list.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo6'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Room for term growth. The full
list of genre switches wouldn’t be exhausted, leaving head-room for
additional bit-mappable items to be added over time. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Bitmap Disadvantages<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo6'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>No user-customized genres.
This is the case with the ID3v1 scheme as well. However, the baseline
list of proposed genres and modifiers is much more vast, and the freedom for
creating any combination gives choices many orders of magnitude greater than
before. Also, by having standardized genres, you can be sure that when
you import an audio file with this scheme into your own database, the genres
will mesh – no ambiguity due to spelling, language, or word order (that
is, “soundtrack rock” will equal “rock soundtrack”.)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo6'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Not “human
readable.” The genre and modifier data is bit-coded, so if a user
were to open such a file with a text viewer/editor, they’d have
difficulty making sense of it. However, most users never have the need
to, know how to, or want to open audio files with a text editor.
They’ll use software designed for viewing and editing the tags.
Also, coded in hex, this could easily exist with an XML framework, if need be.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l2 level1 lfo6'><![if !supportLists]><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>-<font size=1 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>
</span></font></span></span></font><![endif]><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Always consumes 150 bytes.
From a relative point-of-view, this is a big increase. This is a lot more than
the 1 byte for ID3v1. However, from an absolute viewpoint, this
isn’t much. For a user with ten-thousand MP3s, the total impact
byte-wise is 1.5 megs. Using my collection of slightly more than ten-thousand
MP3s as an example, it consumes just over forty gigabytes of disk space.
1.5 megs of additional space amounts to a percentage increase of less than 4
one-thousandths of one percent.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>--------------<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Pat<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>--<BR>
No virus found in this outgoing message.<BR>
Checked by AVG Free Edition.<BR>
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.2/274 - Release Date: 3/3/2006<BR>
</FONT> </P>