Tags Repeating When Transferring In

[LeePrent]

Using build 933 with build 302 unlocker.

Phone is Samsung Note 20 Ultra 5G.

When I transfer in files from my laptop (Windows 10) some files appear fine, others are showing things like genre, artist, etc repeating in the tags. It's mostly just the tag appearing twice (separated by a semi colon) but can be lots of times... so instead of (for example) U2, I get U2; U2; U2; U2; U2; U2 etc. I can't see any reason why it happens to some files and not others, and I've transferred from this laptop for a couple of years without this issue. I've tried removing the files and re-transferring but this doesn't help so I'm ending up having to edit line by line in the app.

 

[MotleyG]

This looks like there may be multiple artist or genre tags fields in those files. The semicolon is the separator that allows them all to be displayed in Poweramp. Can you look at the details of your metadata in a tag editor on your laptop to confirm?

[andrewilley]

Or could you post a link to an uploaded sample file here (straight from your mobile). There might be null bytes tucked away inside the tags, one of the music syncing apps did that to someone else's files.

Andre

[LeePrent]

Hi Andre

Not sure if this is what you mean. On my phone this shows the genre four times and artist twice. This is a smallish file so hopefully falls in the forum limit.

1. Pure.flac

[MotleyG]

There are many repeated tags in this file. You'll need to go in and delete them with your preferred software. (I use mp3tag, but there are others you can use)

 

 

Edited March 30, 2022 by MotleyG

[LeePrent]

1 hour ago, MotleyG said:

 

 

There are many repeated tags in this file. You'll need to go in and delete them with your preferred software. (I use mp3tag, but there are others you can use)

Thank you. I'm pretty naive on stuff like this, can I do this on my laptop prior to transferring and then transfer "cleanly"? Seems easier if I have a laptop to speed up the process when I'm on with about 35k tracks. 

[MotleyG]

2 minutes ago, LeePrent said:

Thank you. I'm pretty naive on stuff like this, can I do this on my laptop prior to transferring and then transfer "cleanly"? Seems easier if I have a laptop to speed up the process when I'm on with about 35k tracks. 

I would definitely do this on your laptop. Back up your files first. Then use any tag editor to make these changes. I use mp3tag, and it can do most of these automatically in batches.

[LeePrent]

Thank you MotleyG. Genuinely appreciated. Many hours saved hopefully!

[andrewilley]

I'm not sure why your files got created this way, but the underlying tags indicate the file was created with Mutagen 1.45.1 which is a tag handling library that might be used by several other programs.

The Vorbis tagging system used in FLAC files does allow for multiple legitimate instances of the same tag type - e.g. multiple ARTIST names or several GENRE identifiers - but of course the idea is that each one is different to allow for duets or other tracks by multiple artists, or which fall into several different genres for cataloguing purposes.

Tag editors generally regroup these separate instances for easier viewing and editing, so in MP3Tag you can expect to see "Artist1\\Artist2\\Artist3\\Artist4", whereas TagScanner (and Poweramp) shows semicolons so "Artist1; Artist2; Artist3; Artist4".

With either program on a PC (don't even think about trying to do it on a phone with that number of tracks) if you want to check your whole music library in one go you can drag the overall folder onto the program icon and then view your entire library as one long list. It might make a while, or a few sessions, but you'll need to keep scrolling down checking each file for redundant duplicates and remove the extras by hand.

Sorry, I wish there was a quicker solution, but I would suggest not trying to fully automate it as you might then lose genuine cases of multiple Artists or Genres. Unless @MotleyG has a suggestion for a batch process script that could do it safely?

Andre

[MotleyG]

Definitely try single files and smaller batches at first to make sure whatever changes you make meet what you expect. In mp3tag you can use filters on your library to make sure you only look at files that need fixing. In these cases you can look for artist, genre, and year tags (do it separately) to see only those that have more than one occurrence of each. Depending on how many that is, you can then choose to process them individually, or in full batches. I would say that if you weren’t already aware of this concept, that it is unlikely you really intended to have two or more of the same field anyhow.

if you choose to use mp3tag, they have a great online forum. Spend a bit of time to learn the basics before you go into this effort. But it will be worth it and save you many more hours long term.

[6b6561]

Looks like there is an action in mp3tag for removing duplicate tags https://docs.mp3tag.de/actions/remove-duplicate-fields/

[andrewilley]

27 minutes ago, 6b6561 said:

Looks like there is an action in mp3tag for removing duplicate tags https://docs.mp3tag.de/actions/remove-duplicate-fields/

That's handy, didn't know about that one.

My only concern would be to do a test to ensure that it only removes duplicate tags where their contents are identical (the doc says it will only leave the first field). Otherwise, using this tool too broadly could remove genuine multiple artist names too. Certainly it would be quicker than editing files one-by-one once you know the contents are appropriate anyway.

Andre 

[MotleyG]

There are also options to split by separator and combine multiple tags, so this is also helpful. But we’ll off topic for the PA forum.