[ID3 Dev] ID3 tag and audio file formats

[Scott Wheeler]

On Thursday 02 March 2006 13:54, Michal Vician wrote:
> First I wanted to implement ID3v2 as "widely" as possible. Now my
> application supports 39 ID3v2 frames and I'm angry that I can't write it
> to other audio file formats :-( What a pity...
>
> I'm curious if there is a way to "translate" all ID3v2 frames (APIC, ...)
> to "Xiph Comments" etc... If there is no way, I must only admit that my
> application will never support other format than MP3.

No, there's no way to do direct mappings.  Especially with the example that 
you mention -- APIC -- there's no way to store images in Ogg Vorbis's 
standard metadata format; the "Xiph Comments" are just key-value text.  i.e. 
"ARTIST=Frank Zappa".

That said, I think taggers should abstract away most of the differences.  I 
don't know of many users that say, "I want to set the TCON frame of my ID3v2 
tag", rather they say, "I want to set the genre."

If things are kept abstract enough, it's relatively easy to disable parts of 
the interface that are not relevant for a specific file, or to store the 
extra pieces of information in an external meta-data cache (and then simply 
notify the users that the information will not be accessible in other 
applications.  For the most part, in practical terms that's true with the 
more obscure ID3v2 fields because the majority of applications completely 
ignore them anyway.

-Scott

-- 
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow 
sharper. 
--Bertrand Russell

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: id3v2-unsubscribe at id3.org
For additional commands, e-mail: id3v2-help at id3.org