Mp3comment metadata truncated

I want to use the mp3comment field to store short pen portraits of the artist. I have run into the problem that DOpus appears to truncate the field at around 132 characters. I can see that this might be desirable when you are using the field in a lister, but it is a little restricting when you are using the metadata in other ways. I suppose to look on the bright side it is useful practice for Tweeting, but seriously guys any chance the field size could be expanded?

I just tried with a 605 character comment on an mp3 file and it was saved OK.

Make sure the file you are tagging uses ID3v2 and not ID3v1 which was full of hard limits like that.

I will check Many thanks

I have checked and according to the manual of Tag 'n' Rename, the tagging software I use, the program writes ID3v2.3 tags by default. Whatever I do the mp3comment field is truncated at 132 characters. Interestingly if I look in the Opus tag editor the Comment field there contains nothing.

However I have a vb script which accesses the mp3comment tag and the text - or at least the first 132 characters - appear fine.

Any ideas?

I have found the source of the problem. The mp3comment tag works fine with mp3 files. However the tag is truncated when the file is in flac format. Unfortunately, the greater part of my music collection is stored in flac format

I set a 519 character comment on a FLAC file and it was not truncated here.

Note that Opus's metadata editor doesn't currently know how to set comments inside FLAC files (only the basic fields it shows under the Music Properties category, like Album, Artists, etc.). The comment field is being stored as generic NTFS ADS metadata outside of the file's main data, so other tools which read the FLAC tags are unlikely to see the comments set via Opus, and the comments will be lost if the files are archived, uploaded, or copied to non-NTFS drives.

Very interesting that you can put a 500 character plus entry into the mp3comment tag when I simply cannot. It suggests there is some difference in your set up to mine. The files are stored on a mounted NAS server and I thought that may be the problem, but if I copy them to a local disk I get the same truncation.

When I read the value of the variable I am importing into my VB code I find that it is truncated at the point Iasj Opus to read the data from the file tags, so it is little surprise it is truncated on output.

Tag 'n' Rename displays the mp3custom data fine. Could it be something to do with the way the flac files have been ripped.

I enclose an offending file and the button that I use to run my vbscript
07 - Emmylou Harris - Millworker.zip (26.4 MB)
Music Metadata.dcf (11.2 KB)

I think I understand what is happening now. I thought we were talking about the metadata panel in Opus, but that was wrong.

Presumably you are not adding these comments in Opus, but using something else? Opus can't add or modify the kind of FLAC comment being used here, as the Metadata panel doesn't currently support it for FLAC files, but the file display and scripting objects can read it. (It's actually happening via the AudioTags plugin, which is used to populate file display columns and scripting objects, but not used by the metadata editor.)

That will truncate long strings, adding "..." to the end, as they're intended for file display columns.

It needs some more thought but maybe we could let the script say how long it wants the maximum string limit to be when it asks for the file's information, and we may also be able to add support for the FLAC comment field to the metadata editor (I am assuming you intend to be able to modify the comments using you script, which would not be possible at the moment).

Thanks for the explanation Leo. I am not really bothered about changing the metadata on flac files. In fact my script sets the fields as read only so that I can't.

I prefer to use Tag 'n' Rename to set the metadata on my audio files simply because of the number of music tracks I process.

Thus, if my script could simply read the relevant flac file tag I would be a happy bunny. I think the issue I have raised is likely to grow' as' from what I see' more and more people are turning to flac as their preferred music format. The fact that you can get apps to play them on Ipad seems to bear this out.

I use FLAC as well. Displaying long comments from FLAC in script dialogs is still very niche, though, even if FLAC itself is fairly common. :slight_smile:

Still, it's easy to increase the limit and I can't see any reason not to, so we'll increase it to 1000 characters for that field. In the past it made sense to limit the column width but users can specify a maximum width for columns now so that isn't really needed. That'll be in 12.2.4.

12.2.4 (beta) with the increased comment limit is now available.

Many thanks. Works a treat.