Workaround for multiple genre tags (with foobar2000)

[some-xtc]

I don't know, how many people miss the <multiple-value> feature for the genre-tags in rockbox.
Well, as a foobar2000-user, I do.
So I've created a (quite inelegant) workaround/tutorial for this problem:

I'm not a technician, but foobar2000 separates every value with an "NULL"-character in ID3 (like the standard said).
But unfortunately rockbox reads only one value (in ID3 it is the first one, in vorbis comment it is the last one).

First Step:
Do not use the ";"-Separator in foobar2000 for the files stored in your rockboxed player ;-(
Instead you can use "/" or any other character for a "cosmetic" separation.

foobar2000 will write the hole string as one genre value.

(You can easily create a masstager-script for this operation).


The next step is to create a new submenu for your tagnavi_custom.config with prefabricated genre types.
You can use this for example:

Code: [Select]

# Define the multi genre
%menu_start "mgenre" "Choose Genre"
"Abstract"      -> album ? genre ~ "Abstract"       -> title = "fmt_title"
"Ambient"       -> album ? genre ~ "Ambient"        -> title = "fmt_title"
"Electro"       -> album ? genre ~ "Electro"        -> title = "fmt_title"
"Funk"          -> album ? genre ~ "Funk"           -> title = "fmt_title"
"Deep House"    -> album ? genre ~ "Deep House"     -> title = "fmt_title"
"Disco"         -> album ? genre ~ "Disco"          -> title = "fmt_title"
"Downtempo"     -> album ? genre ~ "Downtempo"      -> title = "fmt_title"
"Drum & Bass"   -> album ? genre ~ "Drum & Bass"    -> title = "fmt_title"
"Hip Hop"       -> album ? genre ~ "Hip Hop"        -> title = "fmt_title"
"House"         -> album ? genre ~ "House"          -> title = "fmt_title"
"Jazz"          -> album ? genre ~ "Jazz"           -> title = "fmt_title"
"Pop"           -> album ? genre ~ "Pop"            -> title = "fmt_title"
"Tech House"    -> album ? genre ~ "Minimal"        -> title = "fmt_title"
"Techno"        -> album ? genre ~ "Techno"         -> title = "fmt_title"
"Trance"        -> album ? genre ~ "Trance"         -> title = "fmt_title"

Well, here we go:
Thanks to the "~" [contains] operator we have now something like a "fake"  <multi-value> browsing.
This method works with all metadata containers  (ID3, APE, vorbis comment), because there is now only one string in the genre-Tag.

But like all workarounds, this solution is not perfect:
* you must everytime edit the "tagnavi_custon.config" if you want to add an new genre type
* be aware: With "Jazz" you get also "Future Jazz" and "Acid Jazz" in your entry



But for now, I can live with that :-/
I hope, this helped someone.

( Some friendly developer could fix the bug with the metadata-parser(?) to make the first step unnecessary - thank you ! )