Multi Value Tag Separator (Delimiter)

[Metazargo]

I use the ';' semicolon as the separator in Genres, but recently also in Album Artists sometimes in Artists.

These multi value tags (i.e. genre 'Latin;Jazz') aren't properly read, splitted by media server as TwonkyMedia Server or MiniDLNA. Genres do include the semicolon as one string and artists are chopped of on the semicolon.

TwonkyMedia Server or MiniDLNA can only split genres on a ','. I was told this was according the DLNA standard. Because many artists names contain ',' commas, the semicolon is a good choice to split all the tags with MediaMonkey.

How do you handle this problem?

Find another MediaServer (the only one I found for Linux able to to is was Squeezebox Server, not able to play to UPnP/DLNA renderers and players)?

Thanks for any hint, trick or roadmap.

[Lowlander]

You could change the delimiter under Tools > Options > Appearance. For my Twonky lists multiple artists with / and genre's with ;, either way incorrect in my opinion.

Unless this is important to you I would leave things as is.

[Mizery_Made]

Unless I am mistaken (which is possible, since it's been a while since I've messed with it), then changing the delimiter in Options would have no effect. That option only governs how multiple values are displayed, not saved. If you change the delimiter to "|" for instance, the artist value for instance will still be saved in the songs tags as "Artist1/Artist2."

The only thing you could really do on MM's side, is to not use the Multiple Values feature, by not using the value set in options (or the ";" default if you haven't messed with the option) as then the values should be saved as-is. (IE, "Artist 1, Artist 2" should be saved as-is if the delimiter is still ";" whereas "Artist 1; Artist 2" would be written as "Artist 1/Artist 2" in the tags)

Otherwise, you're left looking at the server software and such. Either finding something different that is able to handle the multiple values, or attempting to get the current software you're using to support it.

[Metazargo]

I use ';' and it seems that the tags are saved as 'Rock;Pop' what I get as genre in my TwonkyMedia Server list.

[MusicBringer]

...and when you edit tags outside MM, (for many years I have used Tag&Rename), MM decides to ignore the ';' delimiter such as Rock;Pop and returns a fresh, unwanted new genre called Rock Pop. Grrhh

[nohitter151]

...and when you edit tags outside MM, (for many years I have used Tag&Rename), MM decides to ignore the ';' delimiter such as Rock;Pop and returns a fresh, unwanted new genre called Rock Pop. Grrhh

Tag and rename probably doesn't read them correctly then. Multiple values display correctly in other programs like mp3tag which uses id tag standards.

[Metazargo]

The only thing you could really do on MM's side, is to not use the Multiple Values feature, by not using the value set in options (or the ";" default if you haven't messed with the option) as then the values should be saved as-is. (IE, "Artist 1, Artist 2" should be saved as-is if the delimiter is still ";" whereas "Artist 1; Artist 2" would be written as "Artist 1/Artist 2" in the tags)

I use ';' and it seems that the tags are saved as 'Rock;Pop' what I get as genre in my TwonkyMedia Server list.

I couldn't reproduce that. I always have the delimiter defined in the options also written to the id3v2 tags.

And I''m still confused about the fact that I read DLNA would be a comma, where also Twonky Media Server understands commas. About 0.25% of my artists names do really have a comma, and about 2% of the titles. Because of this I don't want to switch to commas.

Did I miss something?

[Mizery_Made]

The raw ID3 data should be saved with "/" in place of the delimiter. Most programs interpret it as "; " so if you're saying this because other programs are showing the "; " as well, then that doesn't necessarily mean that your tags are being saved with that.

[Metazargo]

I couldn't reproduce that. I always have the delimiter defined in the options also written to the id3v2 tags.

I don't know into which files I looked then, or why I saw what I saw but it seems that now I only see the separator saved as '/' in the id3v2 tags of mp3 files.

[Metazargo]

I've realized that the separator for artist written to the files isn't recognized by my Squeezebox Server, and the combos are shown as 'Arits1/Artist2'. I've set the separator in SBS to ';', the same setting I have in MM.

After testing through multiple cases I see that in mp3 files the separator of the artist id3 tag is written as slash '/' although set in MM to ';', by design of MM. But the genre separator in mp3 files remains a semicolon ';'. This means that any tag I choose in MM will be written to the artist tag of the mp3 file as '/'. With m4a, both artist and genre separator are ';' .

By this mixed separator setting, I'm forced to use in MM '/' as my separator to achieve a homogeneous behavior on the side of the Squeezebox Server,

In my Squeezebox Server I can set only one separator for all tags; artists, genre. From my 30'000 tracks about 40 artists, and 2 genres use '/' as part of their names. I dislike the slash '/' as a separator in general. I would prefer '|' , or like now ';'.

This post is continued here: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =1&t=53078


What would you recommend to do, give up, and use '/' throughout as separator? Thanks for ideas.

Have you encountered any negative effect in MM while changing the separator from ';' to '/'? In my case it would re-tag the genre tag on many files after a relaunch, would it?


Related readings:
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Problematic artist names [#5480, #5529]: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =6&t=20185
Syncronize Tags doesn't work on many WMA: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =1&t=46832