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Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
13-04-2020, 10:56
Post: #1
Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
Hi,

My music collection has been managed with iTunes for many years.

iTunes does not store ratings in the music file tags but in its own database.

I would like to embed the iTunes rating information into the music files (predominantly mp3) so that it can be indexed by minimserver.

I understand that there are a number of different tags that can hold rating information. Can anyone suggest which is the best to use:
  • Rating
  • Rating MM
  • Rating Winamp
  • Rating WMP
  • POPULARIMETER

Additionally, I have an iTunes script from (Doug's Scripts) that will "Copy Rating Stars to Other Tag"s but that only supports copying to Composer, Grouping or Comments.

I tried a test on a few selected files, copying the iTunes rating to the Grouping tag, and then adding "Grouping" to my indexTags but grouping does not appear after a rescan ?

Any advice greatly appreciated.
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13-04-2020, 12:39
Post: #2
RE: Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
The best ID3v2 tag to use for this is POPULARIMETER. MinimServer maps this to RATING.

MinimServer maps the iTunes Grouping tag to CONTENTGROUP, so you need this in indexTags instead of Grouping.

All supported tag mappings are listed in this section.
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13-04-2020, 14:56
Post: #3
RE: Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
Thanks Simon.

When I add Rating to indexTags, its clear that some of my files already have embedded rating information. A review of these files shows that some are tagged with each type of rating tag as per my earlier list. I assume that means that Minimserver also supports mapping other Rating type tags to FLAC/Vorbis Rating ?

I've tried adding CONTENTGROUP to indexTags which then displays, but does not seem to reflect ratings in any of the test files copying iTunes rating to Grouping tag.

Looking into the iTunes script a little more it states "This script will convert the rating value (0-100) of a track to the appropriate number of stars as Unicode text"

Would the fact that it (appears to be) a number of stars as unicode text rather than an integer value preclude this from displaying ?
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13-04-2020, 17:40
Post: #4
RE: Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
The section that I linked in my previous post lists all the tag types that MinimServer supports and shows how tags are mapped from other tag types into FLAC/Vorbis tag names.

You said that ContentGroup displays but what you see does not reflect the rating values you were expecting. What values do you see for ContentGroup?
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14-04-2020, 00:52
Post: #5
RE: Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
The problem (for me at least) with the list of tag type mappings, is that the ID3v2 frames are not what we might see in any tagging tool.

Given this was the first time I had included CONTENTGROUP in indexTags, what displayed initially was some unrelated information. Once I cleaned that up, leaving only the files with unicode text star ratings NOTHING displays. In fact the CONTENTGROUP category no longer appears at all.
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14-04-2020, 09:10
Post: #6
RE: Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
It sounds like the ratings have not been copied successfully to Grouping. Can you use a tag editing program (for example, Mp3tag) to check one of the files to see whether the rating value appears under Grouping?
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14-04-2020, 09:25
Post: #7
Photo RE: Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
Yes, this is how they display in Mp3tag (see attached)


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14-04-2020, 10:33
Post: #8
RE: Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
I have checked this in Mp3tag.

The iTunes Grouping tag was originally written to the standard ID3v2 frame TIT1 and MinimServer is mapping TIT1 to ContentGroup.

More recently, iTunes has created a nonstandard ID3v2 frame GRP1 and is now writing Grouping information to GRP1. MinimServer does not support the nonstandard GRP1 frame.

Mp3tag shows GRP1 as Grouping and this is what you are seeing in the screenshot you posted. Mp3tag shows TIT1 as ContentGroup.

As a workaround, you could copy Grouping information to Comment (the Mp3tag frame COMM) unless you are using Comment for some other purpose. MinimServer supports the COMM frame and maps this to the Comment tag.
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14-04-2020, 10:58
Post: #9
RE: Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
Thanks Simon.

It certainly doesn't make it easy to work out what is going on with all of these non-standard tag implementations.

I've added a custom column to Mp3Tag using the correct %contentgroup% value and can see that the contents for the test files were indeed blank.

I've copied the unicode values from Grouping/GRP1 to ContentGroup/TIT1 and after a rescan minimserver is showing the unicode star values correctly in the CONTENTGROUP category.

I do use comments, so if I am going to copy the rating values from Grouping/GRP1 perhaps I should copy to a dedicated Rating tag rather than contentgroup/TIT1.

To save conversion to the 255 base POPULARIMETER, can I safely use one of the other rating tags ?
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14-04-2020, 12:39
Post: #10
RE: Advice on Embedding Ratings into Tags
You can use TIT1 (ContentGroup) if you don't need this for any other purpose. It doesn't conflict with comments as these use the COMM (Comment) frame. To rename this to something sensible in MinimServer, you can use the aliasTags property.

Alternately, you can create a custom tag in Mp3tag (perhaps RatingStars to avoid confusion with other Rating tags) and copy the star values to this. Again, you can use aliasTags in MinimServer to change its name there.
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