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Old 06-04-2020, 06:16 AM   #1
K8ch
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Default Metadata method is poor, at best...at this time.

I am very thankful that Reaper is incorporating metadata.

However, it will never be suitable for professionals, until:
1) Fields can be created, as needed
2) Metadata can be tweaked, AFTER the initial render is done.


Here's why this is true:
Reaper developers cannot keep up with the changing demands of music licensing, and the myriad of way people produce music with Reaper.
People use Reaper to create music for so many uses, that Reaper can't possibly anticipate knowing which fields anyone might need, at any given moment.
So, we can only the fields they offer us.

Meanwhile there are much better FREE programs that do this so much better.


Suppose, I wanted to adjust/tweak the data AFTER I rendered my perfect mix?
Reaper can't do this without having to re-render the mix.
I -DON'T- want to have to try to re-create the final mix again, just so I can change the friggin' metadata!
Free programs CAN do this to existing files.


The ONLY thing that Reaper's metadata capabilities are good for, is the basic stuff like tempo; the song length, the recording settings ("24-bit/48K", for example), and anything else that will remain an absolute constant, over the life of that music.
But that's about it.
Nothing that would hep professionals.

Everything else IS subject to change, during the lifetime of this piece of music.
Keywords may change, over time....or "descriptions", or splits, moods. "sounds like" may even change over time.

Those who license their music may have to periodically tweak their metadata info, to best suit their music..and Reaper doesn't appear to allow for that.

Meanwhile, free, dedicated programs appear to do all these things, much easier/better that Reaper, in this regard.


Your thoughts?

If I am wrong and am mis-understanding, feel free to point out the flaws in my logic.



Peace,

K
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Old 06-04-2020, 06:18 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by K8ch View Post
1) Fields can be created, as needed
2) Metadata can be tweaked, AFTER the initial render is done.
1) Could you give an example, please?

2) You can use the batch converter to add/remove/change metadata on any media files.
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Old 06-04-2020, 08:26 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by schwa View Post
1) Could you give an example, please?

2) You can use the batch converter to add/remove/change metadata on any media files.



1) Well...I gave 3 examples, but it might be helpful if I described a couple of likely scenarios:

Scenario 1:
I have an upbeat cue that I want to submit to a music supervisor.
The supervisor has provided a description of what he/she is looking for.
That description fits my song PERFECTLY, but I have not used some of the adjectives the supervisor had used, in his description.

That supervisor will likely use those same adjectives as his/her "search terms", to find the music that will fit.

I want to take those particular pieces of music that ARE appropriate, and re-write portions of the description/mood/keywords/whatever so that I use those same terms that the music supervisor used -to be sure that MY music comes up in that search.

If I use the free, "MP3tag" program, I can change make the needed changes to song metadata, pretty quickly.
"Mp3tag" shows me all the audio files in the folder, and their metadata.
So, I can move between the metadata of several songs, without having to load each one...and it makes changes very quickly.



Scenario 2:
I have a some whose metadata includes a "mood" category, and I've described a piece I wrote as, "dreamy".
A music supervisor said they wanted "romantic" music -which ALSO describes my "dreamy" music piece.
So, I want to tweak the "mood" metadata in my "dreamy" piece, to include the word, "romantic"...just so my music will be in the supervisor's search results.



2) Can you describe what you mean here?
This seems imprecise and a slow method...but I'm willing to be wrong.

No matter: Because the categories of information can't be tweaked as needed, we're left with only those categories the Reaper -thinks- we need.


The people at Reaper are absolutely exceptional at what they do. Period.
But, they're not necessarily out there in the world of music licensing, or publishing (as far as I know).

So, I'm not sure they'd know really understand exactly what's needed, for the various ways that people need to add metadata to their files.


I hope that helps!


Stay safe and well.




Peace,

Keith
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Old 06-04-2020, 11:30 AM   #4
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Managing a database of files and editing metadata in bulk is best done with a program that is designed specifically for the job, no argument there.

I'm not quite getting what you mean by "the categories of information can't be tweaked as needed, we're left with only those categories the Reaper -thinks- we need." What is an example of some metadata that you want to add, but cannot?
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Old 06-04-2020, 06:20 PM   #5
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To chime in here, maybe it would be helpful to have an action, that sets the Metadata to the last rendered file.

So I could change the metadata after the rendering in the Render to File-dialog, like correcting typos, etc, hit apply and run the action that writes just the metadata to the file again.
And the action would use the metadata from the current project and write that to the file. Maybe an action as well, which let's you select the file, into which to write the metadata, if the last one rendered isn't the one who needs the new metadata.
I'm not sure, whether it would also be a good idea to have a function like "ApplyMetaDataToFile(filename)", but this could allow things like a metadata-manager written in ReaScript.

Using the batchconverter would be possible but clearly overkill for such things. Especially as it's not that easy to ReaScript the batchconverter(I'm currently attempting that and it has some issues, but these things would be better discussed in a FR or at least Nitpick, I think).
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Old 06-06-2020, 09:29 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by schwa View Post
Managing a database of files and editing metadata in bulk is best done with a program that is designed specifically for the job, no argument there.

I'm not quite getting what you mean by "the categories of information can't be tweaked as needed, we're left with only those categories the Reaper -thinks- we need." What is an example of some metadata that you want to add, but cannot?


Well, what I mean is that I cannot add my own fields, which I'd very much like to do.

Some examples would be...fields like: "splits", "IPI #", "ISWC #", "Public Domain ?", "type of vocal", "In the style of:", "Instrumentation", "Cue Type", "PRO member #"....


Stay safe,

Keith
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Old 06-07-2020, 05:35 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by K8ch View Post
Well, what I mean is that I cannot add my own fields, which I'd very much like to do.

Some examples would be...fields like: "splits", "IPI #", "ISWC #", "Public Domain ?", "type of vocal", "In the style of:", "Instrumentation", "Cue Type", "PRO member #"....

Metadata is defined as a set of public, open formats, like ID3, BWF, etc. Whatever fields exist in those formats are what exists. For most formats, there is no way to make up fields. For some formats, we could add our own made-up fields, but because those fields aren't part of the standard, there's no other software that would know to look for the new fields.

You can add anything you want in the "comment" field of some metadata formats, and some schemes have a flexible field like TXXX for ID3 where you can enter something like "producer=schwa". We could also add flexible fields for the IXML format, but again, there's no other software that would display it.
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