Annoying metadata in MP3 files.

[Gorgon]

So, long story shorter I went down to exchange a broken mp3 player and was limited to what they had on show in the store, I ended up with a Zen X fi 8 gig player. It sounds just fantastic and has a longer battery life as well, only problem is like Itunes or mediaplayer it decides upon installation that I must now spend 12 hours categorizing my entire music library into artists, albums and genres because the idiot onboard menu does not know how to open and play a folder. My collection is years and years of CD rips and downloads in random order and formats, but all neatly arranged in folders and sub folders with artist and album names.

 

The player cannot sort other than by metadata, so if I want to listen to anything and not have 500 tracks with 400 different kinds of meta data scattered in the player I have to create album metadata from the folder names. Is there any way to batch process this. There are a few tools that are free or trialware but they seem to lack the features I require. Any advice would be appreciated.

Edited March 30, 2009 by Gorgon

[Spider]

No support for custom playlists either?

[Gorgon]

Nope, it has to be a file created with the crappy crash ridden proprietary software called 'Creative centrale', or the player itself. The only playlist the player can create are made from the 'now playing' selection. So if you want something specific you would have to add songs one by one from the 'all tracks' list to your currently playing list, and then save it as a playlist. The next time you add something you would have to wade through everything on the player again to organize it.

 

For now I have found a workaround with Mp3 tag, which is not exactly user friendly, but free and open source. It took me half an hour to figure out how to batch strip and batch rename the album metadata, which is not exactly a perfect solution either, I mean that data is nice to have. Maybe I should organize via the 'genre' data which is pretty useless and superfluous anyway.

 

Too bad my Samsung broke, it used open source codecs and could play any file from any location in the player by browsing its own folders.

 

This thing has a 'purchase this track' menu option for any file regardless of whether it is DRM restricted or not. It's like they can't get away from the wet dream of consumers going on a shopping frenzy in their crappy online store the minute they get the player. Everything is designed around it, and it makes for a poor product. Software wise at least, I can't complain about the technical quality of the player. It even has a hard reset button, which most manufactures are too arrogant about their own code to include.

Edited March 31, 2009 by Gorgon

[Humodour]

So, long story shorter I went down to exchange a broken mp3 player and was limited to what they had on show in the store, I ended up with a Zen X fi 8 gig player. It sounds just fantastic and has a longer battery life as well, only problem is like Itunes or mediaplayer it decides upon installation that I must now spend 12 hours categorizing my entire music library into artists, albums and genres because the idiot onboard menu does not know how to open and play a folder. My collection is years and years of CD rips and downloads in random order and formats, but all neatly arranged in folders and sub folders with artist and album names.

 

The player cannot sort other than by metadata, so if I want to listen to anything and not have 500 tracks with 400 different kinds of meta data scattered in the player I have to create album metadata from the folder names. Is there any way to batch process this. There are a few tools that are free or trialware but they seem to lack the features I require. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

I could probably write a Python script that does this for you. I've already built one that reads the metadata of all mp3s in a folder, so modifying it shouldn't be too difficult.

[Gorgon]

I have figured out how to batch change the data with Mp3 tag. Thanks for the offer though.

 

Pretty silly that they would have such a poor understanding of customer needs, I mean everyone's music collection, at least that I know, is one big mess of metadata. Metadata is surely not enough for browsing your collection.

 

Maybe the supplied \Media Centrale' provides some solutions, but I can rarely get it to run more than a minute before crashing.

[Humodour]

Vendor lock-in, dude. The difference between Microsoft and your MP3 maker is that Microsoft's vendor lock-in is at the very least midlly user friendly. (Or more app[propriately Apple/iTunes in this case.)

 

Personally I only buy MP3 players these days that play song straight from folders/HD's, without any sort of playlist/control system. They're rare, though iTunes is also pretty decent if you have an iiPod.

[Gorgon]

Ipods are nice, they just cost about half and again what they ought to.

[Spider]

My mp3 collections has fairly decent meta data. Sorting by artist or album usually works just fine. Sorting by things like genre or year is another thing entirely, of course. So meta data sorting works fine for me, better than folders even. So customer needs aren't exactly that clear cut.

[Gorgon]

Which is why you want both folder and meta data sorting. I'm having to destroy a lot of original data just to get a rough handle on the files in the player.

Edited April 2, 2009 by Gorgon

[Spider]

Of course, more options are usually better. Also means a more expensive product. Just saying if the choice is either or, it's not the wrong path to go by meta data (nor is it the wrong way to go by folders either)

[Gorgon]

Why would that mean a more expensive product. Seems like a pretty simple implementation to me. We are not talking an entire OS for the player here, just being able to chose and play individual files by location.

[Spider]

It's a completely different sorting mechanism. It will fetch different data and process it differently. No, it's not extremely complex, but it's still work that needs to be done. And someone needs to pay for that work. And it could be that the extra day or two something like that would take to implement is what causes development to go over budger.

 

Not many players (that I'm aware of) supports both folder sorting and sorting by meta data.

[Gorgon]

Actually the older cheaper mini versions from Creative, the Zen micro series, support both, the menus are also completely customizable. Only problem is that their power supply is insufficient to use a set of proper headphones, only those ghastly earplug thingies.

 

What would be cheaper than using software already produced.

 

The one that broke from Samsung also had no problem browsing it's folders, only it was touch screen, which is seriously overrated. Give me proper buttons any day. I hated jumping around willy nilly constantly retracing my steps because my thumb was 2 millimeters off.

Edited April 3, 2009 by Gorgon

[neckthrough]

Ipods are nice, they just cost about half and again what they ought to.

Ipods sound like crap. Not sure if its the inbuilt amp or the earbuds. Probably a combination of both. Damn things look so sexy though...

 

I haven't listened to any of the Creative players, but from what I've read they're supposed to sound quite good.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

My guess would be the earbuds as I have a more expensive, third-party set and my iPod sounds fine.

[Gorgon]

It's all in the battery. It needs to be able to run a set of popper headphones. Those earplug things suck big time. Not only do they hurt my hears if I use them too long because of the way they fit. You aren't supposed to stick anything into your ears as it will interfere with the natural ear gunk balance and make your ears clog up.