Field storage in media files

[macaro]

Why doesn't MediaMonkey use all the fields in a media file (mp3 for example)? The best example is mood, which has a property in the mp3 file, but files that have a mood in MediaMonkey do not have the mood in the properties section when accessed through explorer. This has presented as an issue, because I had a database that either wasn't backing up, or got overwritten, and all of the properties that I filled in the custom boxes and mood are lost. Shouldn't there be as much information stored in the media file itself?

[Lowlander]

By default tags in MediaMonkey are stored in the files. You may have disabled this (Tools > Options > Tags & Playlists). MP3 has an issue where there are multiple ways to write tags to files so sometimes 1 software can't read the tag from another software, but MediaMonkey should be able to read its own tags.

[macaro]

My tagging options are enabled and the settings seem to be the same from previous installations. I've only used MediaMonkey to edit my files for about two years now. There are some other fields that I've noticed don't write, such as comments. But if there is already text there it will show. I also had a lot of edits to rating, which I know writes, but I have lots of songs with very old ratings in this database. I also found that there were songs I changed the genre of, but in this database they are back to the original. I guess the lesson here is make multiple backups of the database...

[Lowlander]

If you're using an old database it would have old values. Rescanning should work if the files have the newer tags.

[macaro]

I think rescanning helped a bit. I know I was further along, so I'll have to do more maintenance. I've also noticed that Custom 1 gets written to Comment in the MP3 properties dialog. That's where I'll write all my custom tags to. I still think it's unfortunate Mood does not write to Mood in the properties dialog, that seems like an obvious choice, just like genre -> genre.

[Lowlander]

Mood is written to the Mood tag, just use something else like MediaInfo to see this, I assume that Windows users some proprietary tag for this.

[macaro]

Yes, MediaInfo showed that. The windows tag is separate. So if I had mood tags already filled out, and my music collection hasn't changed, just the database, why would it overwrite the tags already in the mp3 files? Is the only advantage to the database the smart playlists, or can those be exported periodically and then imported after a new install?

[Lowlander]

The advantage of the database is speed, it's much faster than reading tags from each file. You also get search.

AutoPlaylists can't be exported as AutoPlaylists.