RockBox database not seeing Ogg metadata (artist/album/song title)

[yonkiman]

This is an odd one.  I populate my rockbox with a directory tree that looks like this:
R:\<MC13>\<artist>\<album>\<track number>. <song title>.  The problem is that after I build, rebuild, update the database, entire artists are missing from the database.  I have consistently found that there is no trace of any of the three "Buffalo Tom" albums in my database but my one "Buffalo Springfield" album always shows up.

I have tried building and rebuilding the database many times, using many different versions of RockBox (3.1, 3.2, and 3 or 4 the current builds over the last 2-4 months (I can't remember exactly when I discovered this problem).  The songs are definitely there on my rockbox  - you can see them in File view and play them, and when you play them all the tag s seem to be fine - but I just can't get them to show up in my database.

I have 6,404 songs in 2,523 directories according to Windows. 

I don't see them in the database whether I'm looking at Artist or Album Artist (and both fields are set correctly in the tags).  In fact all the CDs were ripped and tagged inside the same software (MediaCenter 13).

I just searched inside the database files and saw that the "Buffalo Tom" albums do show up in the database_4.tcd file in my RockBox directory.  So the problem seems to be that they are in the database but not displayed when I look by artist, album artist, album, or song - there's no trace of them through the UI although they are in the database files. 

Any ideas what could be causing this?

Thanks,
Fred

[Llorean]

When you're playing them, you may not be seeing the tags. If tags are missing, many WPSes will attempt to use the folder structure to guess what the tags should be.

Why don't you verify the tags in a proper tagging program, or in the Rockbox context menu option while the song is playing?

[yonkiman]

Why don't you verify the tags in a proper tagging program, or in the Rockbox context menu option while the song is playing?

Here's the score:

• RockBox does not see the tags (which would explain why the ogg files aren't making it into the database), however
• MediaCenter, Foobar2000, and Mp3Tag do see the tags in the metadata (not from the filename/directory structure).
  

So it's sorta looking like the problem is on the RockBox side.

What now?  Is it possible there's some other metadata present (or missing) that's causing the file to be skipped?

Is Ogg working OK for everyone else?...

[Lear]

What now?  Is it possible there's some other metadata present (or missing) that's causing the file to be skipped?

Could be. Check the size of the tag (MP3Tag can do it, though you may need to define a custom column for it). If it is too big (e.g., due to embedded album art), and the album/artist etc. tags are in the "wrong" place, Rockbox will ignore them.

[evilnick]

Are the tags in Vorbis comment format? Some software can tag vorbis files with id3 tags which Rockbox doesn't read (on vorbis files)

[yonkiman]

Are the tags in Vorbis comment format? Some software can tag vorbis files with id3 tags which Rockbox doesn't read (on vorbis files)

What software would I need to check that?

[Chronon]

MP3Tag should be able to tell you the format of the metadata, if I recall correctly.

[Lear]

I'm pretty sure Rockbox won't even play Ogg Vorbis files with ID3 tags... E.g., see this thread.

[yonkiman]

Are the tags in Vorbis comment format?

They sure look like it:

[dip]

I had sometime the problem that the end of tag were truncated in the database browser (e.g. for some songs the GENRE "classical" was only shown as "cla"). The reason was that for these songs other tags contained very long entries so that a Rockbox internal buffer was full and other tags were truncated when browsing the database. Maybe for the same reason some tags can be completely missing if the remaining tags of these songs are too long.

Could that be the reason in your case?

I could solve the problem by increasing the the default value of ID3V2_BUF_SIZE from 300 to 900 in apps/metadata.h and compiled my own version. But I always hope that the default value of this variable will be made device dependent in a future version of Rockbox since e.g. my iPod Video has enough memory to set the value to 900 without any negative side effects while other devices with less memory may need a small value.

[yonkiman]

Maybe for the same reason some tags can be completely missing if the remaining tags of these songs are too long.

Could that be the reason in your case?

Sounds like you'd know better than me!  It's as good a guess as any...  But I don't know why MC13 would be writing huge Vorbis comments for every single one of my Ogg files...

I could solve the problem by increasing the the default value of ID3V2_BUF_SIZE from 300 to 900 in apps/metadata.h and compiled my own version. But I always hope that the default value of this variable will be made device dependent in a future version of Rockbox since e.g. my iPod Video has enough memory to set the value to 900 without any negative side effects while other devices with less memory may need a small value.

Sounds like a reasonable solution to me!  Thanks for the thoughts.

Does anyone have any recommendations for what I should do next?  I've contributed financially to the rockbox project, but trust me - you don't want me writing code for it...  :-)

-Fred

[yapper]

Post one of your problems files somewhere so that hopefully someone with more knowledge can take a look to see what is going on.

[Lear]

But I don't know why MC13 would be writing huge Vorbis comments for every single one of my Ogg files...

Album art is a possibility. From what I've read, Media Center supports storing album art in Vorbis tags.

I could solve the problem by increasing the the default value of ID3V2_BUF_SIZE from 300 to 900 in apps/metadata.h and compiled my own version.

Sounds like a reasonable solution to me!  Thanks for the thoughts.

That size change has been in the current/daily build for a couple of days now, so if you haven't done so already, you could give a recent build a try.

[yonkiman]

Album art is a possibility. From what I've read, Media Center supports storing album art in Vorbis tags.

Excellent guess!

I could solve the problem by increasing the the default value of ID3V2_BUF_SIZE from 300 to 900 in apps/metadata.h.

I'm guessing the album art would still be too large...

That size change has been in the current/daily build for a couple of days now, so if you haven't done so already, you could give a recent build a try.

Cool.   I've installed the latest RockBox daily build (it's indexing right now).  I've also put one of the problem ogg files here on my website (http://www.yonkitime.com/sounds/Staples.ogg).

Thanks everyone,
Fred

[Lear]

I'm guessing the album art would still be too large...

It's not related to that buffer size at all, actually, as Rockbox doesn't read the album art. But I wrote a patch that should fix the problem. I'll test it with your file too, as it contains album art.

Side note: Interesting to see that Media Center supports ReplayGain, but in a non-standard, incomplete way...