important thread about an ex..

[moses]

Another small, nitpicky question here...

(hey, what else am I good for? )

Is there some kind of limit to the number of characters that can be in the database fields for song titles and such? I've noticed that many of them are truncated with ..

This can be slightly annoying when you're listening to a song you've never heard before and you're wondering what it is so you check the What's Playing Now window, only to see that it's (for example), "Don Caballero - a lot of people tell me i ha.."

ha? Just makes me curious what the rest of it is. And why only the first 28 characters?

(I know, in this case, it's "a lot of people tell me i have a fake british accent.")

I don't know if there's a way to change this in the database (without going through and retyping everything), but it would be cool to know to full titles of some of these songs.

[progdirjim(Admin)]

I've typed in the whole name, but there's a limitation on the number of spaces available in the mp3 tag, I believe - Avian correct me if I'm wrong on that

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

I've noticed that too...and I just verified that the extra info on the end is truncated. Looks like it is indeed a limitation to the MP3 tag. I can investigate further and provide all the geeky details if anyone's interested...

Roger -Dot- Lee

[Yesspaz]

I'm not personally interested in the geeky details (I'm more of a dork than a geek), I just want to know if it can be changed?

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Yesspaz
I'm not personally interested in the geeky details (I'm more of a dork than a geek), I just want to know if it can be changed?

The short answer is "No."

The slightly longer answer is "No, it can't."

The even slightly longer yet ever so slightly geeky answer is "It can't because there's a limit to the string length that the MP3 can hold." There's only so many characters that they allocated for the tags. So if you have a long band name and a long album name, the song title is going to be cut off (that's the order it seems to go in).

In short (too late!), if you've got, say, "The R. Ephraim McGillicutty's Magical Accordian Band" and the album is "Polka-ing Our Way Across Pennsyltucky", you're not going to have much room for long song titles like "The Sierraville Stomp/My Spleen Itches for Reenie". It's gonna get truncated. This is why Nektar can get away with having "Salt and Vinegar and Rhythm and Blues" on their "Prodigal Son" album.

Make sense?

Roger -Dot- Lee, Larnin' and Ejjimikatin' his way into the hearts and minds of Amurrika.

[Yesspaz]

makes sense. So if Godspeed You Black Emperor! covered Billy Mahonie's "Watching People Talking When You Can't Hear What They're Saying," then the song title might me, "Watchi..."

[moses]

I noticed that the recently-added Don Caballero song, "In The Absence Of Strong Evidence To The Contrary, One May Step Out Of The Way Of The Charging Bull" is listed in full.

Did we start using ID3v2 tags? They allow for more information. I'm not sure how much more.

[Rick and Roll]

Originally posted by Yesspaz
makes sense. So if Godspeed You Black Emperor! covered Billy Mahonie's "Watching People Talking When You Can't Hear What They're Saying," then the song title might me, "Watchi..."

Watching me lose my lunch again................

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by moses
I noticed that the recently-added Don Caballero song, "In The Absence Of Strong Evidence To The Contrary, One May Step Out Of The Way Of The Charging Bull" is listed in full.

Did we start using ID3v2 tags? They allow for more information. I'm not sure how much more.

Not that I know of. However, it's possible that this one song (or the whole album, I dunno) was ripped with the v2 tags. I don't honestly know. What's the album name? That's a factor as well.

Yesspaz queried
makes sense. So if Godspeed You Black Emperor! covered Billy Mahonie's "Watching People Talking When You Can't Hear What They're Saying," then the song title might me, "Watchi..."

Exactly, especially if the album title was something long, like, frinstance "Walking through the Sands of Time while Searching for the Dogs of War" or some such.

[moses]

it's possible that this one song (or the whole album, I dunno) was ripped with the v2 tags. I don't honestly know. What's the album name? That's a factor as well.

The album name is "What Burns Never Returns." That's not real short either. Unlike their previous cd, 2, which has truncated names.

So would switching the entire library over to v2 tags solve this problem? Would it be much work? It's certainly something we can live without, just a little nicety.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by moses

The album name is "What Burns Never Returns." That's not real short either. Unlike their previous cd, 2, which has truncated names.

So would switching the entire library over to v2 tags solve this problem? Would it be much work? It's certainly something we can live without, just a little nicety.

Oh, it would likely solve the problem, alright. But do you know what kind of time and effort would be involved in converting 11,000+ MP3 files to the new tags? The process involves, as I recall, re-writing the entire header of the file. This means that whatever you use to convert the files would have to touch each and every song. Now I could probably write a script to do this, and even run it at a very nice priority so that it wouldn't bring the station down, but that would take time, and run the very real risk of corrupting some songs. Corruption that wouldn't be spotted until the next time the song played. Now how widespread this corruption would be couldn't be reliably predicted, and could be anywhere from, say, two GY!BE tunes (no big loss) to everything that's longer than 5 minutes (catastrophic). Also, this would only expand the size available in the fields. This would not extend the information in that field. Thus, any songs that have tags that exceed the current limit would still be truncated. The only way to fix this would be by hand. One song at a time. My fingers hurt just thinking about it, and the production sysadmin and DBA in me cringes at the thought, to be honest. So, yeah, we COULD probably fix the problem, but in my opinion it would be a LOT more effort to convert the older songs than any benefit that could be realized.

This is also assuming that the station could USE the v2 tags. I don't know if it can (I suspect that it can, however -- if not directly, than with another plugin). This is something we could probably experiment with -- given the OK from Avian and PDJ, of course. But as far as converting the songs that are already there, I personally would raise quite the stink about doing it, due to the issues with corruption, if nothing else.

Roger -Dot- Lee

[Rick and Roll]

why didn't you just say so?

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Rick and Roll
why didn't you just say so?

In all the time that I've been posting here, chatting here, and otherwise making my presence known, have you EVER known me to keep it short?

Besides, it's not really a 'no' per se, but more of a 'don't hold your breath', at least from my perspective.

Roger -Dot- Lee

[progdirjim(Admin)]

If it's technically feasible to use v2 tags, I think we should where practical. I don't call going back and reviewing/changing all of our music practical. I recently got a new version of EAC, thr program I use to rip CDs, and it must now support v2 tags, hence the new Don Cab having the fullname. So all new stuff will likely be OK. We may fix existing stuff on a case by case basis...

[Yesspaz]

So, is it possible to change to v2 only the tracks that are already too short. For instance, there's no need to "fix" Yes-Fragile-Roundabout. But the five-part "The Appleseed Cast-Low Level Owl, Volume One-Messenger/Doors Lead to Questions/Steps and Numbers/Sentence/Bird of Paradise" would benefit from it.

If song-by-song could work, this would cut the 11,000 files down to perhaps, 4,000? A somewhat managable number? Just thinking - remember, I am computer illiterate.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Yesspaz
So, is it possible to change to v2 only the tracks that are already too short. For instance, there's no need to "fix" Yes-Fragile-Roundabout. But the five-part "The Appleseed Cast-Low Level Owl, Volume One-Messenger/Doors Lead to Questions/Steps and Numbers/Sentence/Bird of Paradise" would benefit from it.

If song-by-song could work, this would cut the 11,000 files down to perhaps, 4,000? A somewhat managable number? Just thinking - remember, I am computer illiterate.

Hoo boy. On the surface, you'd think it might be easier to do 4000 files than 11,000 files. Of course, you'd be wrong, since you'd have to go through and determine, by hand, which files have to be changed.

Me thinks it's time to illustrate just what would need to be done for EACH SONG in order to update the files in question. My fingers are already hurting just thinking about it.

• Identify the files to be updated - this would likely be the most time consuming portion of the process. As some songs will allow for their full title with the existing tags, but some won't due to other factors, such as band name and album name, one would have to examine each of the 11,000 songs to see if it fit in the 'would benefit from being updated' category.
  
• After identifying that a given song must be updated, one must locate the file on disk. Not a big problem, since the path name is in the database, but one that can be affected by other factors, such as the nature of the utility Jim mentions in his earlier post. If it's a command line utility, it would have to be handled one way, if it's a windows GUI, it would have to be handled a different way.
  
• Making a backup copy of the song to be converted. This, in my opinion, is the single most important step in the entire process. If, by some strange quirk of fate, the song gets corrupted by the upgrade process, and we don't have a backup of the song in question, it's toast. Gone. It will either not play, will sound like dogbreath, or might possibly crash the station, depending on the nature of the corruption. This will double the hard drive space required by each song updated until such time as the song has been played in its updated form and has proven to be sound.
  
• Update each tag - Each tag would have to be updated by hand to reflect the longer song name. There would be no other way of doing this, especially if the song name is truncated in the disk file name. This is where my fingers start hurting.
  
• Test each song - Another mandatory step, in my opinion. It would be much better to test the song before putting it up on the playlist instead of finding out, during live production, that the song sounds like a bad George Bush speech.

OK, now I can hear everyone who's had the fortitude to wade this far through this missive without wondering what the HELL I'm talking about asking "But Roger -Dot- Lee! You don't have to do them on the station! Why don't you download the files that need to be updated, update them on your Very Own System, and reupload them!"

Well, my friends, that's a very good question. And I'm about to tell you why. Assume, for a moment, that I actually have a life, and wish to accomplish more with said life than updating 4000 MP3 tags. So, being the prudent person that I am, will probably only get to 3-4/day (a reasonable limit, considering the upload speeds I have to contend with -- dog slow on a good day). Thus, these 4000 songs, assuming that the 4000 number is anywhere close to reality, would take me on the order of 12 years, give or take for vacation and sudden bursts of productivity.

So, in short (WAAAY too late, r.l) it might SEEM easier to pick and choose, but in reality, it ain't.

Of course, if PDJ sez "do it", I'll likely get started as soon as possible.

Roger "And send him the bill" -Dot- Lee

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Gah. Sometimes I'm just too long-winded for my own good.

[Yesspaz]

Wow! Yeah, that's insane. Just to clarify, let me quote myself

Originally posted by Yesspaz
A somewhat managable number? Just thinking - remember, I am computer illiterate.

See? I have no idea what I'm doing in this thread anyway

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Yesspaz
Wow! Yeah, that's insane. Just to clarify, let me quote myself



See? I have no idea what I'm doing in this thread anyway

It's all good. At least you now have an idea why I cringed when someone mentioned going through the library and updating all the tags. If it was just a matter of waving a magic wand and everything would be OK, then I'd be all over it. But in my 12+ years in computers, I have yet to find ANYTHING that's that easy, and anyone who tries to tell you that it is is usually trying to sell you something.

Y'all just didn't know what it would take to get this type of stuff up to date, and how much effort would have to be expended for a little benefit.

Roger -Dot- Lee, educating users since 1992.

[Yesspaz]

Lemme guess: On a Mac, I'd be oh so easy