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Is there more than one "comment" field in ID3 tags??
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Is there more than one "comment" field in ID3 tags??

DJMark 7:35 AM - 15 June, 2006
I've written before about my frustrating experiences in trying to deal with the " 0000069F 0000057D 00005B9D ...." tags that were written into the comment tags of my files when I used to use Traktor. I've been using the comments fields for other things (key), and if I enter that info into a new file in iTunes, it shows up just fine in SSL. Anything that Traktor ever saw, though, has those funky tags in "comments". Oddly, these Traktor-induced comment tags don't ever show up in iTunes (I see the key info that I've entered)...I've tried forcing iTunes to re-write all the tags, re-entered all the comment tags on the affected files, changed ID3 versions than changed them back to 2.3....nothing worked.

Someone here suggested trying Media Rage (thanks), and I found that the affected files when viewed in Media Rage showed the Traktor crap, not my key information. After some experimentation I tried making a Smart Playlist in iTunes out of all the Traktor-touched files...then selected all those files and tagged them all as being part of a "Traktor-touched" compilation (actually I used a less-polite word than "touched")...so that all these files would be routed to one folder within iTunes' directory structure. Then I opened that whole folder of files in Media Rage's Data Changer, and told it to delete the comment tags on all of them. Voila...it worked. I opened the library in iTunes again, verified my key information was still there, forced it to write all the ID3 tags to the files (in case at that point the comments were still in the iTunes XML, but not in the files)...opened the library in Serato and *finally* all of that Traktor crap is gone and I can see the key information I want.

So from all of this, it seems like there might be more than one possible place "comments" are written in a file's ID3 tag (depending on the software used)...does anyone know about this?
nik39 10:14 AM - 15 June, 2006
Hm, not sure if thats the answer (as it is too obvious that you haven thought of it) but there is a comment tag in id3v1 and id3v2. Is that the problem? Can you send me one of that file (I would also like to reveal that secret mistery)?
Thundercat 11:31 AM - 15 June, 2006
Short answer: yes. How it works, I ain't that smart. I know that with the tag editing program I use (Tag Clinic) allows you to see / edit / enter multiple levels of coments. There are a few fields that work this way.
DJMark 1:43 PM - 15 June, 2006
Quote:
Hm, not sure if thats the answer (as it is too obvious that you haven thought of it) but there is a comment tag in id3v1 and id3v2. Is that the problem? Can you send me one of that file (I would also like to reveal that secret mistery)?


I had already tried entirely deleting all the affected files' v1 ID3 tags (leaving only the 2.3 tags), had no effect.

As I said in the first post, I finally got rid of all the Traktor-induced crap in the comment tags...I'll see if I can dig up some archived files that I didn't fix.
MusicMeister 4:52 PM - 16 June, 2006
To answer your question, yes, and no.

The ID3V2 tag is very flexible. There are LOTS of tagging options and not all software will read all of the tags. Most software has a limited number of tags that it looks for to display and nothing else. Once you add in 'custom' fields and the like it only gets more confusing.

If you want all the information that is ID3V1/ID3V2 I recommend a quick look on their web site. www.id3.org
All the details on the v1/v1.1/v2 specifications is there in all their bloddy glory. ;-)
MusicMeister 4:53 PM - 16 June, 2006
doh, that should be bloody glory...
Kenrick 10:15 PM - 14 March, 2007
I know I am almost a year late ;-) but I felt compelled to answer this thread as I am having similar comment issues.

There is only one comment field. However, there can be several different comment descriptors or languages within the field. You will see one of the comments or no comments at all depending on what mp3 software you are using. For instance, iTunes may see a comment with the data "deep" and SSL may see a comment with the data "0000069F 0000057D 00005B9D" for the same file. From my observation using ID3-TagIT the "deep" comment will have a comment language code of "eng" and the "0000069F 0000057D 00005B9D" comment will have a comment language code of "eng", "und" or "xxx". SSL will read the comment that is first in the list (check out ID3-TagIT to see what I mean) no matter the language code. iTunes prefer that your comment code is "eng".