View Issue Details

IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
0014064MMW 5Tagging / organizing (properties / auto-tools)public2022-09-14 14:33
Reporterlowlander Assigned To 
PriorityurgentSeveritymajorReproducibilityalways
Status assignedResolutionopen 
Product Version5.0 
Target Version5.2 
Summary0014064: Improve Tag Management
DescriptionAdvanced Tag Management in MM4 is outdated as MediaMonkey supports many more tagging standards than ID3. It would improve MediaMonkey a lot of it could better manage tags and clean up tags in MediaMonkey.

The suggestions here are to make MediaMonkey a better tag manager. Something that would be useful for users using their files on multiple platforms and software.
Steps To Reproduce1) Tools > Options > Tags & Playlist. Add an option "Remove and Rewrite tags" as a sub-option to "update tags when editing properties".


2) Tools > Advanced Tag Management. Make it a single option (remove all sub-menu items) and instead have Advanced Tag Management open a window with different options (like Maintain Library):
 a) Remove x Tagging standard (which would be a list of all tagging standards, each individually selectable by user)
 b) Synchronize Tags (which would save DB values to files as currently implemented)
 c) Remove all tags & rewrite. Selecting C would disable A & B as they would be redundant.


3) Another problem that needs to be addressed for both 1 & 2 is that non-database data is lost on cleaning tags (like Artwork). For options 1 and 2C it needs to be rewritten (so stored temporarily on cleaning of tags). When 2A and 2B are both selected this goes as well. When 2A alone is selected there needs to be a warning that non-database values will be lost.


4) Device Profile. Add a setting to have MediaMonkey write clean tags (strip out existing) to synced files. This could reduce tag issues sometimes experienced on synced devices.
TagsNo tags attached.
Fixed in build

Relationships

related to 0005052 new MMW v4 Tag Mapping Panel 
related to 0014063 resolvedmichal MMW v4 MP3 Tags: MM fail to read MP3 Tags if APE tag is present in file 
related to 0016283 closedmichal MMW 5 Missing 4.x Extensions 

Activities

lowlander

2019-12-04 22:40

developer   ~0055599

Last edited: 2019-12-04 22:43

2) Some other options to consider:
d) Remove all database values from tags (this is the safest as no data loss occurs if user synchronizes)
e) Remove all values from tags (this would remove all tags including those not supported by MediaMonkey and from incorrect tagging standards for the file format)
f) Remove embedded Artwork (this would result in loss of Artwork)

I'd maybe not do c, and instead present b as 'Synchronize Tags after Tag Cleaning' after all the tag cleaning options (visually presented separately in dialog). And then still have a separate Synchronize Tags option as well (without this dialog for quick tag syncing (many do this from a hotkey).

Consider having Synchronize Tags in this dialog being able to tag files with removed embedded Artwork (ie. the process would save the Artwork temporarily, remove it from tags, and then sync back from temp).

The reason here is that users need a specific way to preserve tags that aren't in the database (like Artwork), while still being able to clean the tags (primarily to fix corruptions).

rusty

2019-12-09 23:23

administrator   ~0055622

Great suggestion--the tag management tools could definitely use some cleaning up.

In the short term, I think that a much simplified version of this could achieve many of the most common usecases:

1) Sounds like a good idea (for MM to have an option to always rewrite tags from scratch), though if it's risky we may want to defer this, especially considering the changes suggested in 2).

2) Many of these usecases can be met without major changes. i.e. by including the suggested options in Tools > Advanced tag management (rather than in a separate dialog that applies to the entire library):
a)/e) Remove tags [Tooltip: Removes tags and embedded artwork while retaining metadata in the database] , and get rid of the 'Clean x tags' options.
b) Update tags [Tooltip: Updates tags and artwork to match the database]
c) Remove & rewrite tags & artwork [Tooltip: Removes and rewrites tags and artwork based on configured settings]

d) Is this really necessary? I've never seen any requests for this.
f) Again--is this really needed (the user can accomplish this via a)/e) and then b) )?

3) Agreed, when implementing a), there should be a dialog/warning. Either:
This will delete all tags and embedded artwork. Do you want to proceed?
This will delete all tags and embedded artwork. Do you want to retain copy artwork to the database prior to removing tags?

4) Re. updating tags on sync, that probably belongs in a different bug. Let's discuss after concluding on this.

Michal, what do you think? Is the revised proposal easy for 5.0 or should we just push it all to 5.1?

michal

2020-01-09 13:28

developer   ~0055829

It would be risky for 5.0, deferred to 5.1. It will need adding support for clearing to all plugins and thoroughly test then. Note, that for some formats it could rarely be incomplete clear. E.g. in some MP4-like files there still could remain some unsupported tags, because it is hard to differentiate between some unknown metadata tags and some unknown extensions of the format itself, which should not be removed. It should not be problem for formats, where metadata tags are clearly separated, like FLAC or MP3.