Podcast, where are the audio tags?

Due to my commitment to the podcast movement and a lot of wound hours of listening to the creations of podcasts, I have a lot of notes and tips for both podcasts and podcast listeners. Little by little about everything, but I want to start with the essentials - with audio tags.

The quality of recording, iron for podcasting, and good manners for podcasts have a lot of the well-known Umputun in the podcast environment - in its podcast TipZ - Theory and Practice of Sound Recording and KMB for the podcast. Here in the rules of good form, I would also like to continue on such a nuance as tags. Audio tags, if anyone else is not up to date, is a structured set of information about the audio file (name, track number, album, artist, etc.). Different audio formats may support different tag formats. IDv3, for example, is an mp3 file tag format, WindowsMedia has its own tag format, the same mp3 format is multi-tagged and can contain types of tags like ID3 and APE of different versions. Many podcasters either simply don’t bother, or don’t spend time at all for beautiful and proper tagging. But in vain. The aforementioned Umputun , by the way, despite a large number of podcast projects, approaches tagging in good faith and, thus, provides a good example for the rest.

Why are these tags at all? There is a name, you can add podcasts by topic or folders to folders and enjoy life. Not happy with the name, rename the podcast groups in bulk and that's it. Such questions may arise for some who, most likely, have not tried to use tags. Having tried once, as they say, I eat now. Tags allow you to do the same, plus much more and faster and more convenient. The structure of information (with normal tagging) allows you to manipulate files as you like. Sorting, organizing, selecting by any of the tags (and possibly a group of tags), the search for the desired tracks is accelerated. In addition, tags are convenient to use not only in software players, but also in hardware devices: players, radio tape recorders, all kinds of media players.

From my experience I’ll say that I used to use playlists exclusively from the melkosfot (I immediately refused the “file-folder” option), which brought me little joy: creating playlists, putting tracks there, organizing as I need. When I started using tags, then if the track tags are not in order, you edit them yourself in bulk (there are good tools for this) and you start using files.
What causes inconvenience to me, the ordinary podcast listener, in the “wrong” tags? First, a general list, then I will explain.
  • The lack of information of individual tags, and the whole group of tags as a whole
  • "Ugly" design
  • Frequently change podcast tags in the feed
  • Well, the lack of tags at all

The lack of information lies in the fact that the name of the podcast often includes information such as "Podcast No. 1" or "Track 1" or information about the name of the podcast, not the track. In the case of "ugly design" I mean the unreasonable use of special characters. The biggest evil of all is the frequent podcast tag change. Since I listen to most of the podcasts from the podFM resource , I can say that most authors do not have very well-formed tags. For example, due to the change of tags from release to release, podcasts from one feed are divided into several, for those tags that have changed. No need to fill out all the tags, only the main ones, but deliberately.
  • The name of the entire tape should be placed in the "Album"
  • It is advisable to fill in the tag "Track Number". Let it be the track number in any period (week, month, year) or just a through counter
  • The “Title” tag, if it is different each time, does not have to be filled out with thematic ones (which would be nice), but you can add the podcast feed and track number from the name
  • Tag "Artist" Well, this is naturally the podcast itself
  • It would be nice to fill in the tags "Year" and "Style"
  • And the last and important thing is to change the content of tags as little as possible, and it’s even better to come up with them and do not change them anymore (except for those that are subject to change, such as the tags “Year”, “Track Number”)

Many will say that it is long, tedious and uncomfortable. But no, there is a good tag editor (free for non-commercial use) Tag Scanner with a Russian interface with all the necessary and convenient set of functionality. In addition to him there is also a Russian manual .

In principle, the editor is also easy to master in half an hour and there is detailed help on it, so I’ll briefly say only about its capabilities. On the MusicRenamer tab, you can rename a file from tags (or a set of tags) while modifying the name (letter case, transliteration, etc.). TagEditor is a tag editor directly. TagProgressor is a batch work with tags, that is, group filling tags from any resources. There are 4 options for receiving tags: Internet, generating a tag from a file name, Retrieving a tag by manipulating other tags (for example, Title = Album + Track Number), receiving tags from a file. In addition, lyrics and file graphics are supported. That is, sticking a picture or text content of a podcast is also possible.

Well, eavesdroppers can also use it for quick tag editing. Moreover, there is no need to write again each time, simply on the basis of a file that already has tags, you can fill the desired file with the same tags without effort.

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