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ID3 Tag / Metadata - does it touch them without asking me?
Does songbird touch my id3 tags as default, without asking? i do not want it to touch my files, i'd like all changes to be stored in the players database. Is that possible?
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Inappropriate?Going through our posts we saw that your comment/question fell through the cracks. Doh!
When you import your media, and while it is just 'sitting' in your library, Songbird will not mess with your metadata. It is up to you if you want something changed. So.. Yes, If you modify any metadata, Songbird will write those changes to the file by default.
To change this,
1) type in about:config in the URL field
2) Click the Yes, I'll be Careful button
3) Type in metadata in the search field and you will see a bunch of settings that you will be interested in...
4) The one you want is the songbird.metadata.enableWriting - Double-Click it to change it to 'false'
If you don't mind, could you elaborate on why you don't want to write changes to the file.. Because if you moved/changed computers, and imported your media on it, all your changes would be gone :( ... Just wondering though... I know everyone's preferences are different..
If you still need help, just give a chirp back! We are here to help.
Again, sorry about the delay in our response!
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Thanks for the reply. I have to control meta-data writing because I use winamp too and winamp cannot read tags edited by songbird. In general I agree with you about tag editing. Thanks again. - Pascalis - -
Inappropriate?Thanks for your reply. Someone else had also responded actually pointing to the songbird.metadata.enableWriting pointer as well.
Unfortunately, when I tried to import my library after doing that Songbird crashed - out of memory I believe (this was on a Windows XP box, but the library is quite large).
Haven't had a chance to try it again (or on Linux or Mac OS) since then.
The point of not allowing changes to the file is just that I've used too many systems which wrote bad metadata - changed album art, consolidated albums which should be kept apart, "updated" years in accurately, etc.
Also, I backup my entire music library, and would prefer to only incrementally backup changed files - updating metadata makes the files "changed" and means they get backed up again.
I guess it is just philosophical - I don't think of my player application as "managing" my library, just knowing about it to be able to play it - if I find I actually use the app to edit meta data, then I'd be happy to re-enable the preference - but once I set meta data accurately, I see little reason to update it.
I’m thankful
CHAMP
