I'm running DOpus 10.0.4.0.4444.x64. I use descript.ion files quite extensively. I set them using DOpus, and an external program called WhereIsIt scans my folders and adds the description's to its own searchable catalog.
I realize that Version 10 supports storing the file description in metadata, and I think this is a good idea except external programs can't read it. The help file gives the impression that you can save descriptions in either a description.ion file OR in metadata. I have set Preferences, Folder Behaviour, Use 'description' file comments instead of HTFS comments. I have this field set, but DOpus still write the description to metadata only.
I forgot to add one more thing. After I set a file's description, it appears in the lister (details view), but when I click Ctrl+P to view or edit the files description, the description in the text box is blank.
Thanks for your fast response. They are .avi files.
However, I think I found the problem. I found that I was using a 3rd party Explorer add-in to edit file descriptions. I installed this long before I discovered DOpus, but haven't used it for years, and even forgot about it because I now use DOpus. However, I guess there was something in DOpus 10 that made this add-in incompatible. I uninstalled it, and now DOpus works OK. FYI, the add-in is at rbahr.de/ if you want to try it. I don't need this add-in and certainly don't miss it.
So, I don't really have a problem, but at least this information will be searchable in the forums in case anybody else has the same problem in the future.
I have same problem, but I'm not using any third party add-in to write my descriptions, just DOpus button with action "SetAttr DESCRIPTION".
So the problem is really there. At least with MP3's, DOpus saves description to metadata of MP3, to field called "comment". That's pretty slow to write and read, causing big delays when listing lots of files, compared to reading from descript.ion file.
Is there any option to force DOpus to use descript.ion? If not, that's a big feature request.
Not currently. If the file format itself is able to store a comment/description then we write it that way, the logic being that more software (that deals with the format in question at all) will understand the format's native metadata tags than the old descript.ion format or generic NTFS comments. (It also means the details stay with the file, no matter how or where it is copied.)
Opus also has to be able to display the comment/description no matter where it comes from (lots of other software stores data in the MP3 comment).
Opus only falls back on descript.ion or NTFS comments (depending on configuration etc.) for formats it doesn't know another way to store the data for.
If there's demand then we'll consider an option to force descript.ion to be used instead of the MP3 tags, provided it doesn't cause huge complications with tags/descriptions going out of sync or doing unexpected things in common MP3 tools.
That sounds kind of smart thing to do for DOpus to use metadata where possible, but I still prefer descript.ion, mainly because of speed issues. So it would be great to have an option to let user choose completely how descriptions are saved.
I also support this request. I use descript.ion files to store where I left off watching or listening a multimedia file. I couldn't figure out why certain files (Avi, Wmv) never save their descript.ion, while others have their descript.ion saved. Moreover, DOpus stores the descript.ion text into MP3 tags (I don't want my files to be polluted with minutes and seconds), but it's not able to retrieve it when you read the description back. I think this should be considered as a bug. Also, there is no information about this inconsistent behaviour in the help file.
Please give us an example MP3 file that that happens for, and let us know exactly which field is being set to which value, so we can try and reproduce it.
(I might split this into a separate thread unless it's something we can resolve in just a reply or two. It's not really related to the thread we're in.)
First, of course, enable descript.ion files in the settings.
Actually, for MP3, WMA, WMV or AVI files:
select the file you want and press Ctrl P; then enter the text you want as a description
no descript.ion file is created, but if you press F9, you will notice that your text went to the very file, in the comment tag
press Ctrl P again: the description text isn't shown.
If you do the same thing on ordinary files, you will get the description text back on the last step (and of course, a descript.ion file is created.)
I would like to have the possibility to keep the multimedia files intact, only tag them in an explicit way, and, if I write descriptions, they would go in a descript.ion file in a consistent way.
Leo, were you able to determine why a description information is not stored into a descript.ion files if they are recognized as multimedia files?
I went through old folders that I have and it looks like the default behaviour in DOpus 9 was to store descriptions, even for multimedia files, into descript.ion files. I think of this behaviour suddenly was lost in DOpus 10.
If the file format itself is able to store a comment/description then we write it that way.
Opus 9 itself didn't know how to write MP3 metadata, it was done through a viewer plugin. With the new metadata functionality in Opus 10, the program itself now knows how to write MP3 metadata, so the handling of MP3 descriptions changed.
The issue with the Set Description dialog not picking up the exiting MP3 descriptions to let you edit them has been confirmed and we'll hopefully have a fix for that in the next version or two (unless we run into something unexpected, of course).
Well, this particular behaviour for multimedia file descriptions is not what I would like to see, but at least DOpus will be able to retrieve the description from the comment tag.
One of the consequences of this behaviour is that, if you have the same originating multimedia file with two different "descript.ion", the files themselves would be altered and these two files now will not be considered as duplicates (MD5 checksum).
What about an advanced option in the parameters allowing you to chose one behaviour over the other?
On the other hand, I think this specific behaviour (descriptions going into the comment tag for multimedia files, whereas for other files it goes into the descript.ion file) should be documented in the help file. It took me some time to guess what was happening and to find there were two different behaviours for the same function.
descript.ion is a legacy thing which virtually no music software supports. On the other hand, almost all software supports ID3 tags in MP3 files. It makes sense to use ID3, not descript.ion, so I do not think we will be adding such an option, sorry.
I still watch my video files with VLC and use descript.ion as a bookmark to where I left off. Just to let you know, the workaround to not alter your files with minutes and seconds as DOpus does is to bookmark them (= set description) while they are in use. This way you can force it to use descript.ion files even for multimedia files.