FLAC tagging / Use 4 digits year tag instead of "year-month-day" format

MusicBrainz Picard
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1

Hi,

I’ve decided to use FLAC format for some albums I think they’re worth listening lossless. Though, I have one issue for tagging: The year

Here are the “date related” tags
-DATE (YYYY-MM-DD)
-ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE (YYYY-MM-DD)
-ORIGINAL RELEASE YEAR (YYYY)

Windows Explorer use the DATE tag but does not seem to accept the YYYY-MM-DD format. It only display it correctly when the DATE is in YYYY format (from my understanding)

I would like to use the “ORIGINAL RELEASE YEAR (YYYY)” tag so Windows would not show an error and also for softwares to show similar year formatting. For example, in Foobar2000 I see both format (yyyy and yyyy-mm-dd) when sorting by year which I do not really like.

I’ve made some research. Does using the script $set(date,$left(%date%,4)) is my only solution? Will it affect the tag only?

Am I missing something!? I’m not that used to Flac files tagging.

Thanks in advance

2

Your script is exactly the right thing to do to get only the year. Two additions:

  1. You said you preferred the original release date, so you could do
$set(date,%originaldate%)
  1. If you don’t want the now duplicated date unset original date and original year after setting date:
$unset(originaldate)
$unset(originalyear)
2 Likes
3

Thanks for the prompt reply, I’ll try this tonight and let you know!

4

Or don’t use Windows Explorer. :nerd_face:

Unfortunately the support of metadata tags is quiet bad across all file managers.

BTW: Total Commander with the plugin https://totalcmd.net/plugring/AudioInfo.html support some tags, incl. “Date” for FLAC (but only the “Date” tag, no other date/year tags).

P.S.: Since Windows 8 it’s “File Explorer”, not “Windows Explorer”, but maybe you are on old Win 7 (out of free support my MS).

P.S.2: Since there are no clear/detailed specs for FLAC (Vorbis comment), it’s apparently not possible for Microsoft to find the Recommendations (http://age.hobba.nl/audio/mirroredpages/ogg-tagging.html via https://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisComment)

5

Hi, I’m just a little picky. I thought Foobar would manage the years correctly but did not. It was able to show the complete date (yyyy-mm-dd), or incomplete date (yyyy) when the full date is not existing on MB database (I guess). I will import my library in Kodi or Plex soon. I’ll see how it is handled.

I’m on Windows 10, latest update. In task manager, it is still called Windows Explorer. And when you expand, it is indeed File Explorer.

Thanks for the answer. I’ll have a look at the links you suggested

6

Oh and I tested this script

$set(date,$left(%originaldate%,4))

Exactly what I needed. Also decided to keep original date and original in the tags as suggested. I’ll see how it turns out

Thanks all

7

Kodi handles the date in YYYY-MM-DD… just as YYYY. (In the database of Kodi it’s just a integer field, used just for the year).
Kodi currently only uses the ordinary date (tag “DATE” and/or “YEAR” – I don’t know which will be the preferred tag), but not the Original Release tags, but I heard it’s on schedule for a future release. (Also other users prefer to have the original year in Kodi).
See https://kodi.wiki/view/Music_tagging#Tags_Kodi_reads

I just get it from Wikipedia. I’m not using any Explorer (and I never did).