Kinsky & Minimserver - some new user questions

[simoncn]

(12-12-2012 12:49)whgmkeller Wrote:  Okay, fair enough. I was under the impression that m4a also use ID3 tags, mainly because I am able to browse through my collection based on tags such as Genre, Artist and so on. I use Jaikoz to maintain the tags in my collection but unfortunately Jaikoz does not support a Style tag.

Am I correct in assuming that m4a also use some form of tags? Not ID3 but there must be some form of standardization I guess?

What I would love to know is how to enter information on the musical style (as a sub-genre) to my (m4a)files. Can you help me understand how I should do this? Is there a standard tag or something like that that I should use and that Minimserver (no abbreviations anymore :-) ) can understand and work with?

The official specification for the tags in m4a files is an Apple document titled "iTunes Metadata Format Specification". You can view it at this page or you can download it by signing up for an Apple developer ID (it's free of charge) and logging into the Apple developer site.

There are a few unofficial pages with some useful information. Some examples:
http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/mpeg-4files.html
http://code.google.com/p/mp4v2/wiki/iTunesMetadata
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exif...kTime.html
http://www.jthink.net/jaudiotagger/tagmapping.html (see the Mp4 column)

As well as predefined tags such as 'gnre' (genre) and 'trkn' (track number), m4a files can contain '----' atoms which can hold any tag name and value. This means that you can put a 'Style' tag inside a '----' atom, and MinimServer will read it from there.

A good tagging program will be able to write custom tags to m4a files in this format. If Jaikoz can't do this, you should investigate other options. Mp3tag is very good, and it can handle all common tagging formats (despite its name).

Quote:Simon, sorry if this takes up (too much of) your time.

Cheers, Willem

You're very welcome.