DeaDBeeF-Player
[Request] Volatile, non-destructive metadata editing
I primarily use DeadBeef as an audio converter. For that purpose it's hands down the best tool I've found, even better than projects that specifically focus on that, like Flacon.
The problem I have is that sometimes I want to edit the metadata before converting, so that the output path (which uses percent-formatting, like %artist%/[%year% - ]%album%/%track%. %title%) is correct. But I only want to change it in the resulting files, leaving the originals untouched.
Right now DeadBeef always modifies the input files. Weirdly, if you edit the tracks loaded via CUE sheet, DeadBeef edits the metadata of the related FLAC file to correspond to the metadata of a first track. Maybe that should be considered a bug, I don't know. In any case, I'd like to be able to set a "volatile metadata mode" checkbox in the menu, or something like that, so that DeadBeef only changes its internal metadata representation, not the original files. I believe that should be possible to implement, because when you edit the second or a third track that was loaded from a CUE sheet, nothing is changed in the files, but the changes seem to be preserved up until you delete the tracks from a playlist.
I'm still on 1.8.8, but I don't believe anything related was changed in the latter versions, judging from the changelog.
Take care, and Слава Україні 💛💙
Hi, this sounds like a bug -- when you are converting, deadbeef should not rewrite tags of the originals. I'll check it out.
unless you mean that you are actually editing the metadata in Track Properties -- in which case, it is correct -- it would always modify the tags.
It is relatively easy to make this possible, and modify the metadata which is stored in the playlist files, without rewriting tags. However, this metadata would be not be very persistent. It would only live while the track lives in a specific playlist.
Wow, thanks for a quick response!
unless you mean that you are actually editing the metadata in Track Properties -- in which case, it is correct -- it would always modify the tags.
Yes, I do exactly that. It's so convenient to just drag'n'drop some albums inside DeadBeef, edit their metadata in properties (e.g. edit the year tag of remasters, merge singles into one quasi-album, remove extra info from the album name, like disc number or disc's unique code and put put it in a separate tag, etc.) and then convert them all at once to correct folders, based on edited tags.
However, this metadata would be not be very persistent. It would only live while the track lives in a specific playlist.
Yeah, of course, that's why I called it "volatile mode" :)