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Topic: Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3 (Read 4195 times) previous topic - next topic
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Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

I need a program that will remove the comment field from the ID3 tag -- but there's a catch.  I need to exclude some mp3s.  I also need it to leave the remaining tags in tact, or not touch them at all.

See, I would use Media Center, but it messes up the way I have the track tags formatted (XX/XX).

Thanks in advance!

Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

Reply #1 –
Case's Tag can do this.

foobar2000 also has an excellent masstager that will allow you to do just what you want.
IIRC, it is based on Case's Tag.
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

Reply #2 –
Quote
foobar2000 also has an excellent masstager that will allow you to do just what you want.

Yes, but foobar won't "leave the remaining tags in tact, or not touch them at all". In fact it'll remove them all and rewrite according to global settings, which may not reflect currently used set of tags (id3v1 + id3v2 isn't supported at all, for example).

Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

Reply #3 –
The GodFather quite possibly does what you're looking for.

Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

Reply #4 –
Quote
Yes, but foobar won't "leave the remaining tags in tact, or not touch them at all".

Not if you use the masstager plugin.
Try it on a couple of MP3, then make up your mind about it.
I'm the one in the picture, sitting on a giant cabbage in Mexico, circa 1978.
Reseñas de Rock en Español: www.estadogeneral.com

Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

Reply #5 –
iTunes does a decent job in mass tagging, and I've never had it corrupt an MP3.

Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

Reply #6 –
Quote
Quote
Yes, but foobar won't "leave the remaining tags in tact, or not touch them at all".

Not if you use the masstager plugin.
Try it on a couple of MP3, then make up your mind about it.

Before mastagger:

Code: [Select]
[20:23][Temp](21)> tag test.mp3 
Tag - Automatic Tag from filename      Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Case
Version 2.0.39b, Compiled 2003-04-11

g:\Temp\test.mp3
Format:  MPEG 1 Layer 3, Stereo
Details: 44100 Hz Stereo, 320 kbps, playtime 07:50
Tag:     ID3v2


After masstagger (fb2k 0.7.2b7, mp3 tagging set to "id3v1 only"):

Code: [Select]
[20:23][Temp](22)> tag test.mp3 
Tag - Automatic Tag from filename      Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Case
Version 2.0.39b, Compiled 2003-04-11

g:\Temp\test.mp3
Format:  MPEG 1 Layer 3, Stereo
Details: 44100 Hz Stereo, 320 kbps, playtime 07:50
Tag:     ID3v1


Either I don't know what Tag's really reporting or I can see my id3v2 gone.

Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

Reply #7 –
If the comment in a big ID3v2 Tag is removed then the entire Tag will be rewritten, isn't it?

And what if the Tag is padded like EAC does (with 4kb)? Is 4kb too big to remove the comment without rewriting?
[ Commodore 64 Forever...! ]

Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

Reply #8 –
Quote
iTunes does a decent job in mass tagging, and I've never had it corrupt an MP3.
iTunes (version unknown) has been reported to ignore existing ID3v1 tags when ID3v2 is also present, to the point of appending a second ID3v1 tag (ie corruption).

iTunes (version unknown) has been noticed to write ID3v2 comments with a frame name of "COM " (rather than the correct "COMM") - this makes for a corrupt ID3v2 tag.

Quote
If the comment in a big ID3v2 Tag is removed then the entire Tag will be rewritten, isn't it? And what if the Tag is padded like EAC does (with 4kb)? Is 4kb too big to remove the comment without rewriting?
The entire ID3v2 tag will have to be rewritten, yes (unless you replace the contents of the comment with spaces, but that's silly). However, there are two possible approaches to rewriting the ID3v2 tag:
1) Parse the entire tag and reconstruct it when writing (can fix corrupt tags written by other programs if the new tagger is very well written, but can also lose data if new tagger doesn't understand one or more of the existing data frames).
2) The other approach is to leave the existing ID3v2 tag untouched, except for removing the frame containing the old data that was changed, and writing a new frame in its place with the new data, and updating the size field in the ID3v2 tag header. This approach would be faster, and requires a much less complex tagger (because it only has to understand frames it writes, not all possible frame types).
When rewriting ID3v2 every effort should be made (by the tagger) to avoid rewriting the entire file if the changes can fit within the existing tag size (incl. padding), and if rewriting the entire file is neccesary (because the new tag size is larger than available space) then additional padding should be added to simplify future updates.

Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

Reply #9 –
Quote
iTunes (version unknown) has been reported to ignore existing ID3v1 tags when ID3v2 is also present, to the point of appending a second ID3v1 tag (ie corruption).

iTunes (version unknown) has been noticed to write ID3v2 comments with a frame name of "COM " (rather than the correct "COMM") - this makes for a corrupt ID3v2 tag.

Yes, iTunes will ignore an ID3v1 tag if an ID3v2 tag is present. I would say this is the correct behaviour; prefer recent versions over antiquated versions.

I haven't tried going from ID3v2 to ID3v1 (why would you want to do that antway?) but upgrading tags worked well. It sounds like these bugs are fairly old - are you sure they haven't been fixed?

Mass Removal of Comment Tag In ID3

Reply #10 –
I'm not sure how old the bugs are, I just know they were (maybe still are) present in some/all versions of iTunes, so I wanted to point out that some versions of iTunes have been known to corrupt MP3s, or at least their tags.

You're right that preferring the contents of ID3v2 in preference to ID3v1 is perfectly understandable, but writing a second ID3v1 tag after an existing ID3v1 rather than updating the existing one is entirely not acceptable.

(edit = typo)