Rockbox

Since those parts of the code are moving fast, please ask me
for an up-to-date patch that applies to the current CVS :
fdy at melix dot net

This new version is much smaller, and adds APEv2 tags
support to MP3 with very little modifications of the
existing code…

I did a really small update so that it applies to current
CVS. I’m going to post the new version

http://deathwind.free.fr/.fdgjkhkfgj/ApeV2_uptodate.patch

Here is an up-to-date version of the patch. damaki’s seems to be reversed…

   APEv2.patch (2.3 KiB)

Has this been merged into CVS ?

I wouldn’t think so. As far as I know, as of mid-April, APE tags in MP3 files were not understood by any part of Rockbox.

I hope I’m not the only one using this patch. Sync’d to new metadata file structure.

   APEv2.patch (3.4 KiB)

Thanks for updating this patch. I just started using it and it seems to work as advertised.

For those interested I updated the patch again. I also removed support for files other than MP3 that don’t use APE tags since I don’t use them. Should be trivial to add them back in if you need it though.

   APEv2.patch (2.6 KiB)

I updated the patch. Seems to be working for mp3 files.

   APEv2_2008-03-13.patch (2.8 KiB)

This feature/patch has been discussed amongst the developers a few times in IRC over the years, and the general view seems to be that there is no reason to support APEv2 tags in MP3 files - id3v2 are by far the most common tagging format used with MP3s, and (in line with Rockbox’s approach for other file formats), we don’t like to support multiple tagging formats in the same file (it adds complication - i.e. what tags to do you use if both are present, plus the requirement to perform extra seeking/reading when searching a file for tags).

So I think it’s likely that this task will be rejected unless anyone can come up with a good justification for supporting both id3v2 and apev2 in MP3 files.

I think it should be left open as an invitation for someone to improve tag handling in rockbox such that more then one (or rather more then two if you count ID3v1 and V2) tag type could be parsed without adding extra seeks.

@saratoga - the extra seek/read is only part of the issue, there is also the question of whether we want to support it at all. regardless of how it’s implemented.

In any case, if an id3v2 tag is found, Rockbox won’t look for an id3v1 tag anyway, meaning there is nothing to combine a seek for an APEv2 tag with. i.e. if Rockbox supported APEv2, it would always perform an extra seek/read for all files with an id3v2 tag.

I’m underwhelmed by the support for this feature (i.e. there isn’t any…). If no-one comments within the next few days, I’ll reject it.

I use MP3Gain on all of my mp3 files so that I get consistent playback levels on systems that don’t support replaygain. The only problem is that MP3Gain writes its metadata in ApeV2 format. My workflow is significantly reduced with Rockbox supporting ApeV2 in mp3 files.

mp3gain does _not_ save the replaygain information in an ape tag but only the undo data. See http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/faq.php (as players not supporting replaygain benefit from the adjustment mp3gain did the adjustment simply can’t be inside of any tag)

No real reason other than that’s what my files are tagged with being a longimte fb2k user. I figure if I’m going to tag my files in ID3v2 then I might as well make them compatible with everything else but that has problems so that’s what I’ve stuck with rather than retag all my files.