[ID3 Dev] Need Help Understanding My Own Tags

[John Slane]

I am not a developer.  I am a user who is very confused about how my id3v2 tags are being created and read by various software packages.  I have used programs like iTunes, MediaMonkey, id3Tag, AllFrames Tagger, and more.  Each of these seems to have its own way of writing metadata to an id3v2 tag.  And each can read SOME of the frames written by the others.  Some of the frames written are STANDARD frames (like YEAR), and others are NONSTANDARD (like COMMENT MUSICMATCH_MOOD).  I am near despair in trying to figure out how one program is going to interpret the frames written by another.

It seems to me that I would benefit greatly if I could simply see what actual frames these programs are writing to.  The id3v2 standard defines 74(?) frames: AENC, APIC, COMM, COMR, ..... etc.  None of the tagger software I mentioned above identifies which of these frames is actually being used.  Therefore, I have no way of directly comparing the way these programs read and write.

Can you suggest any available Windows software that will let me:
- read the tag of an mp3 file, 
- see the metadata in ALL the frames, and - most importantly -
- see the 4-letter code name (AENC, APIC, ...) for each frame?  

With such a tool, I could see what my music software is actually doing to the tags, and figure out how to make the tags from one program work with another.

Freeware would be best, of course.... but I'm getting desperate enough to buy if necessary. ;-)

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.  I have been working on this for weeks, with virtually no progress whatsoever.

If my questions are not within the scope of this mailing list, please forgive my ignorance.

If there is another authority I might more appropriately contact, I would appreciate contact info.

Gratefully,
John Slane
Dublin OH
jaslane64 at yahoo.com

 
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