Splitting of text string

[Jaydot]

I don't know whether this is the right forum for my query but would appreciate any help I can get regarding the issue. So currently, my involvedpeople tag looks like this (I'm using Mp3tag)

Cinematographer(s):Johny Depp, Kate Winslet;Director:James Cameroon;Editor:Tom Cruise;Writer:[Shelby, Batman] (screenplay), [Keano, Matt] (story), Tommy

I want to have the above string like this (separate rows)

Cinematographer:Johny Depp

Cinematographer:Kate Winslet

Director:James Cameroon

Editor:Tom Cruise

Writer (screenplay):Batman

Writer (screenplay):Shelby

Writer (story): Keano

Writer (story):Matt

Writer:Tommy

Any help would be much much appreciated. I don't use python and don't know how to. I use mp3tag. i dont want to install any additional software.

[andrewilley]

That's not a commonly used tag (Poweramp certainly doesn't read it) and it only exits in the MP3 ID3 tagging format, not FLAC/Vorbis, etc. It is known by the names in the various ID3 specs - "IPL" in v2.2, "IPLS" in v2.3, and "TIPL" in v2.4.

If you really want to use it though, you can go into the Extended Tags screen, double-click to open the required tag, and use Control+Return within the editor screen to create a new line within a text tag. It's rather easier in TagScanner, you can just use the Return key as normal within a tag text editor box.

However the Involved People tag type doesn't seem to like colons, which are fine in other tags such as Comments or Lyrics. I'm guessing because the spec says it should be parsed as a formatted list, like the TMCL tag:

• TMCL: The 'Musician credits list' is intended as a mapping between instruments and the musician that played it. Every odd field is an instrument and every even is an artist or a comma delimited list of artists.
• TIPL: The 'Involved people list' is very similar to the musician credits list, but maps between functions, like producer, and names.

Andre

[Jaydot]

Thanks for the explanation Andre, however, I would just like to split this tag into separate rows. Could you help how to do it? I believe some Python code / regular expression would be needed.

[andrewilley]

Ah, I see, so you've got a bunch of files with the tags already formatted in one particular way, but you want to convert them to the proper spec for that tag? The ID3 tag spec indicates that the correct formatting for the InvolvedPeople tag is to put the role description on the first line, then a comma-separated list of names on the following line, and repeat. Thus:

Job Description
Name, Name 2, Name 3, etc
Job Description 2
Name 4
Job Description 3
Name 5, Name 6, etc

From your examples, a simple batch operation to replace semicolon with carriage return in that tag might be sufficient. If you also replace colons with carriage returns too, and trim any leading and trailing spaces, you'd be pretty close to the spec.

See https://docs.mp3tag.de/scripting/ for docs, but there might be slightly oddly formatted cases that slip through the process. The actual specific coding is probably beyond the scope of a Poweramp support forum though, you'd be better asking in an MP3Tag support area, such as https://community.mp3tag.de/ 

Andre