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Topic: Using Tag/Tagger to edit FLAC tags (Read 4305 times) previous topic - next topic
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Using Tag/Tagger to edit FLAC tags

Hello,

I have been searching for a good tag editor for FLAC files and have started using Tag and Tagger to edit my FLAC vorbis tags. It does a great job, but a problem exists in that it takes a really long time to batch update even just one album of tags. While the tags are being written I notice that a second file with metadata_edit appended to the end is created. It seems to me as if the whole file was being read and rewritten just to change the tag info.

To further confuse the situation, it only takes such a long time sometimes.

Is this a problem with the software or my computer?

Any help appreciated.

Destron

Using Tag/Tagger to edit FLAC tags

Reply #1 –
I'm not sure about the "metadata_edit" part, but the likely reason for the tagging taking such a long time is that there is no padding (or not enough) to write in the vorbis comment area of your FLAC files.  Because FLAC puts its metadata at the start of a file, when you add something there it has to "push" all the music data towards the end to make room.  The newer versions of FLAC add some padding automatically to "fix" this problem, and you can use the "-P #" or "--padding=#" option to specify an amount of padding other than the default of 4096 bytes.  I think some of the older versions of the FLAC encoder did not add any padding, and I'm guessing you used one of them to encode your files.

Using Tag/Tagger to edit FLAC tags

Reply #2 –
Perhaps part of the delay is caused by ReplayGain calculations?

Using Tag/Tagger to edit FLAC tags

Reply #3 –
Quote
I'm not sure about the "metadata_edit" part, but the likely reason for the tagging taking such a long time is that there is no padding (or not enough) to write in the vorbis comment area of your FLAC files.  Because FLAC puts its metadata at the start of a file, when you add something there it has to "push" all the music data towards the end to make room.  The newer versions of FLAC add some padding automatically to "fix" this problem, and you can use the "-P #" or "--padding=#" option to specify an amount of padding other than the default of 4096 bytes.  I think some of the older versions of the FLAC encoder did not add any padding, and I'm guessing you used one of them to encode your files.

exactly right.  the .metadata_edit file is the temp file made when the whole flac file has to be rewritten because there is not enough padding.  if there is enough padding the process will be very fast.

Josh

Using Tag/Tagger to edit FLAC tags

Reply #4 –
Ah! I see, that sounds correct to me. That would explain why it only takes longer on some files. I THOUGHT I was using the most recent version of FLAC but I will have to check again. In either case, I think I will use the -P switch from now on. Too bad I just finished transcoding 900 files from .ape! But, thankfully I found this out before I rip the rest of my CD collection (still just the tip of the iceberg).

Thanks for the help.

Destron

Using Tag/Tagger to edit FLAC tags

Reply #5 –
Any idea how much padding is generally needed for replaygain info, artist, tracknumber, genre & album? Is the default 4096 byte enough?

Using Tag/Tagger to edit FLAC tags

Reply #6 –
Quote
Any idea how much padding is generally needed for replaygain info, artist, tracknumber, genre & album? Is the default 4096 byte enough?

It should be enough.  I've never used anything but the default amount of padding and there's always some padding left over after I enter the information you mentioned.