How to retain tags!

So I'd like to back-up my 60 gig to a hard drive, and then restore it to an upgraded 120 gig empeg.

I've worked for the last 2 years or so perfecting the tags on my empeg. I don't want to lose them, and so I need to find a way to make sure that doesn't happen. I guess there are a few options:

1) Use Jemplode or Emplode. Problem here is that neither of these can write the empeg tags into the downloaded files.

2) I remember somone saying that they were going to write a program that you could possibly run on your empeg that would write your empeg tags back to the file so that when you download, you are cool.

If I use the Lazy Bastard's Guide, will the files be distributed evenly across both HDs like they would if I used Emplode? You think this is my best option?

Any help?

- Jon

Beg Mike for tag writing in an upcoming Jemplode if it's not already in there.

Shouldn't the tags remain intact? The fid's being lost, I understand.... but..... I assume you're talking about IDv3?

He's saying he was a bad boy and did all of his tag fixing directly in Emplode rather than having the tags properly fixed on his PC in the first place. As per this FAQ entry.

Yes, I'm talking about IDv3 tags. I need to write the tag that I've set up in Emplode to the downloaded file that's written on the HD so that when I re-upload it, my tag is still there...

Jemplode has another problem in that it won't write the position number of a downloaded file's filename!

Mike, please help me!!!???

- Jon

Jemplode has another problem in that it won't write the position number of a downloaded file's filename!

Actually, that's always worked fine for me in Jemplode. {pos:2} somewhere in the file name spec works for me.

Yes, I'm a bad boy. Come on, I know that even you, oh great faq master, have fixed things you've found after the file was already transferred. You don't download, fix and re-upload, do you?

I'm pretty anal, but that would make me feel downright sloppy!

- Jon

Ok, I have v42 of Jemplode, the filename format is set to: "{artist} - {source} - {pos:2} - {title}.mp3" (no quotes, of course) and my file names end up looking like:

Cake - Live - - Daria (Live).mp3

No pos! Am I missing somethin'?

- Jon

Tsk Tsk... I just make sure mine are correct before I upload. I didn't even realize you could fix it on the player!

No pos! Am I missing somethin'?

Odd. Are you downloading playlists? I think Pos is only valid for playlists maybe.

Hm. First I tried it on a whole album and now, I just tried it on a single track and got the same result...

Tried taking out the ":2" and got the same result again!

You are using v42 and you don't have this behavior? Weird.

- Jon

I haven't upgraded to 42 yet, but I made the assumption that he didn't induce any new bugs in this area.

Of course, you know what happens when you make an assumption. You make an ass out of you and umption.

This used to work ok for me - I don't recall what version it stopped in, but I know it didn't work in the last one (v41?). Anyone else have a similar problem?

- Jon

Come on, I know that even you, oh great faq master, have fixed things you've found after the file was already transferred. You don't download, fix and re-upload, do you?

Personally, I fix it on the empeg and in the tags on my local store. Which means that they're still virtually in sync.

Beg Mike for tag writing in an upcoming Jemplode if it's not already in there.

Wouldn't this be even better?

tanstaafl.

Actually I just looked at my setting that seemed to work and it is,

{artist} - {source} - {track number} - {title}.mp3

Perhaps {pos} is just the wrong name?

I think there were issues in the past that your couldn't apply the `:2' modifier to the track number, and your method would produce ``Velvet Underground - White Light, White Heat - 1 - White Light, White Heat.mp3'' rather than ``Velvet Underground - White Light, White Heat - 01 - White Light, White Heat.mp3'', which means that it would sort incorrectly on albums with more than 9 tracks.

If I use {track number}, then all of the tags that don't have track numbers assigned would be set to zero, no? I really need to use pos to keep the tracks in the correct order...

Albums with various artist names are going to get hosed, but at least I can put em in the correct order if I know the pos...

- Jon

> Wouldn't this be even better?

Yes, that would be better, but we don't have that either...!

- Jon

It wouldn't do anything to balance, but I'd save the fids, and the database. As in, rsync or whatever /empeg/var and /drive0 & /drive1 off, then back onto the new drives. And in fact this roughly corresponds to how I went from 40gb to 80gb a few weeks ago.

I didn't even realize you could fix it on the player!

Jeez, and I went to all that effort to make editing tags in emplode extremely easy and powerful!

> Jeez, and I went to all that effort to make editing tags in emplode extremely easy and powerful!

Haha. You did. So can you help us a LITTLE more by adding the ability to name your files lilke "artist - album - pos - track" and write the Emploded tags back to the mp3???

Please?

- Jon

Greetings!

Two different approaches:

a) You can use emplode to download the tracks to your local hard drive (format is Source - Track - Artist - Title.mp3) and use MP3 Tag Studio to clean up the directory listing and tag based on the filename.

b) You can transplant your existing 60 (one drive at a time if needed) and copy the fids data directly to the new player. Much faster, since you are running at IDE bus speed instead of 10BaseT.

Can someone who is running v42 please test file download and tell me if their pos (that's "position", not "piece of sh*t") is working?

- Thanx
- Jon

Jeez, and I went to all that effort to make editing tags in emplode extremely easy and powerful!

Your work on Emplode 1.1 had me really wanting the release after the first US Owners meet. When 2.0 finally came out in beta form, I spent quite a bit of time using Emplode to correct some things. Basicially my empeg has a mix of my music, and a few friends. The new emplode made it much easier to delete the crap I didn't want on my player (but I allowed to be there initially due to roadtrips), and also rename the stuff I did like. One of my friends likes all the artists with last name first, where I prefer it the other way around. So a simple search for , in the artist name helped clean that up.

So your work on Emplode tag editing hasn't gone completly unnoticed

"Jemplode has another problem in that it won't write the position number of a downloaded file's filename!"

You can use tracknr or tracknr:2, this always works for me. Then if you use Tag & Rename or Tag Studio, you can fix your IDv3 tags before uploading them to your new upgraded player.

Just tested it to make completely sure and it works flawlessly. It looks like this:

{artist} ({source}) - ({tracknr:2}) {title}.mp3

and the result is:

AC_DC (Back In Black) - (01) Hells Bells

I'm sure this will help

Just tried it again with pos and it also works to retain the position. Here it is:

{artist} ({source}) - ({pos:2}) {title}.mp3

and the result is:

Adolescents (Adolescents) - (04) Democracy

Good advice bodybag, but of course, in my case, it won't exactly work as I don't always have the track numbers populated on my empeg... Grr...

Does that pos tag work for you?

Hey, to solve the variable artist problem, why not just put the tracknumber first? It would obviously be messy if all your mp3s were in the same directory, but if you put each playlist into it's own directory, won't that work well to keep your tracks in their intended order?

- Jon

What I'd really like to know is, how do I include the year and the genre when downloading from JEmplode? My IDv3 tags are pretty right-on, but I have fixed a few things directly in Emplode that I wouldn't mind correcting onto my PC.

> how do I include the year and the genre when downloading from JEmplode

Yes, that's another thing that I'd like to see fixed. I hope Mike is reading this thread...

These weren't as important to me until now...

There is an option for "save idv3 tags to file" or something in Jemplode, so it looks like Mike had plans to implement this feature at some point.

- Jon

Jon,
I hope you noticed I also tested the "pos" thing and it works too (see previous threads). This would solve your problem except for year and genre info. I'm sure there's some code to include that too, I just don't know what it is.

Oh right, sorry, didn't see that post until you pointed it out. Are you using v42? Why would that work for you and not for me? Hm.

http://www.jempeg.org/tagNames.html

That page shows all of the tags you can include - genre and year are in there. Hm. So I just need to figure out the pos issue and then I should be able to use mp3tagstudio to do what I need.

The only thing I'd lose is song names or artist names with funny characters... Like Bjork or Sinead...

- Jon

how do I include the year and the genre when downloading from JEmplode?

Again, something that's always worked for me in older versions of Jemplode, no problem. They're just fields just like everything else.

The real problems come up when you:

(a) have characters in your fields that don't work in file names, such as / or ?, or

(b) you use a field delimiter that exists in your fields, such as:
{Genre} - {Artist} - {Album} ({Year}) - {tracknr:2} - {title}{ext}
but you have a genre, artist, or album with " - " in their name.

That's why file naming conventions are only part of the solution. What we really need, from both emplode and Jemplode, is full proper V1/V2 tag rewriting on download.

"What we really need, from both emplode and Jemplode, is full proper V1/V2 tag rewriting on download."

That, and a easy to use, idiot proof, can't screw it up Backup/Clone/Sync 2 players/Sync PC type of gizmo. That's all (maybe)

it should be {tracknr} rather than {track number}..

i can tell you that pos is a P.O.S. It won't work for anyone. I'll get that bugger for 43.

There are a handful of ID3 options in the Tools=>Options menu for jEmplode. These should allow you to have existing ID3 tags removed and replaced with the tags you explicitly set. I haven't tried this since 40, so it's possible i managed to hose it up in the big rewrite, but the code should be in there to do this.

Mike

So if I run v40 now I can use the {pos:2} AND write the idv2 tags properly?

If so, can I download this version somewhere?

- Jon

pos works for me, but I'm using v41. I tested it on a few tracks this morning with no issues. FYI

Not sure exactly what version lost "pos", but I would try tag rewriting in 42 to make sure it's working (or not). Old versions are at the bottom of the page, but I'd be careful getting those ...

Ok, here's some test results...

v42, options are set to:
Write ID3v2 Tags to Downloaded Files is ON
Preserve Existing Tag Frames in Downloaded Files is OFF
Remove ID3v1 Tags from Downloaded Files is ON (just changed this)

I download an album and the only field not populated is the genre. The track number is populated correctly from the track number field.

I think that having that "Remove ID3v1 Tags from Downloaded Files" set to OFF gives flakey results...

What would be great is to have an option to populate the track number field from the pos... I don't know if other people have badly populated track number fields like I do, so maybe this is a feature that won't be used much... No biggie if it's a biggie for you.

So basically, if you can just fix that {pos:2} problem when writing files, I'd be psyched. The genre thing can be fixed with mp3tagstudio...

- Jon

What would be great is to have an option to populate the track number field from the pos... I don't know if other people have badly populated track number fields like I do, so maybe this is a feature that won't be used much...

I agree, I would like to see that feature as well. I would like to see that be done directly on the player itself inside the database so that it's permanent. Not just at download time.

An interesting problem is when a song appears in multiple playlists ... then it has two pos values...

Hence my desire to do it directly in the player database, and only in reference to the selected playlist.

Sort of like an extension to the "set playlist order" dialog currently in emplode.

Imagine this:

I have a playlist called "Still Life (Talking)" which is the name of a Pat Metheny album. In it are a handful of carefully-ordered tracks which have no track number in their properties.

I select the "Still Life (Talking)" playlist, or perhaps the tracks that are within that playlist, and hit a "Write playlist position number to track field" option. It goes through and does it. But only in reference to THAT PLAYLIST because that's what I had selected at the time.

Now, all I need to do is go through and do that for all my album playlists and I never need to use POS on a download any more, I can now use TRACKNR from now on.

I have a similar problem with Emplode information that is not related to ID3 tags (as far as I can tell). If I have spent tons of time setting flags (for use in Wendy filters) in one player, how can I attach this information to my MP3s in my permanent store, and how can I then pass on the flags to my other two Empegs (which have identical content) ?

Same issue applies to PINs, how can attach that info to my permanent store and pass on to the other players?

Thanks!

permanent store: you can't.
other players: keep a master, and clone it using rsync (or similar) to the others.

Thanks! Seems like an involved procedure, but it is great that it can be done. Would this work if I am synching a single hd 40gb empeg to a dual hd (20gb+20gb=40gb) empeg? (and vice-versa) ?

Greetings!

As long as you don't use the --delete flag, you should be able to add the content in, since their should not be any "overlapping" files.