Stop traktor from editing my ID3 tags..please (also a bug)

Currently I have a music collection that is about a decade old. All the files have already been tagged exactly how I want them. Now I am afraid to have traktor analyze my files since I noticed that no matter what I try I can't stop it from editing some of my ID3 fields.

The most annoying one so far is that it keeps adding the exact date to the "year" field. For example, it would change the year to "2010-1-1" instead of just "2010". This happens regardless of whether I turn auto-analyze on or off. This causes me to constantly re-edit my MP3 files after gridding them just to keep it consistent with my collection. Sometimes I also notice that it adds information to the "track" & "disc num" field too if it's currently blank.

In trying to find a way around it I actually noticed a bug too. If you try to manually edit the year and track tags (using an external editor), traktor will modify the tag again when you load the file onto the deck. This seems to happen randomly as I can only get it to consistently happen with certain files.

I have no idea why Traktor needs to be able edit *any* of my ID3 tags. At least not without my approval.

Basically I am requesting that any "automatic" ID3 tag editing by Traktor be either disabled or have an option available to disable it.

 

This is completely retarded indeed. Suppose you tag music of which you only know the year to be 2010 with "2010," music of which you know the year to be 2010 and the month to be January with "2010-01," and music of which you know the year to be 2010, the month to be January, and the day to be 1 with "2010-01-01." In each of those three cases, Traktor rewrites the tag as "2010-01-01" which results in a significant loss of information. Once again, it's completely unnecessary and retarded.

 

Huh? I'm still trying to figure out how "annoying" = "unnecessary & retarded" but I'm just going to assume you misunderstood what I was saying.

Really, Traktor can populate the field with "Traktor FTW" for all I care. The main problem is that it is "automatically" doing this. Again, I'm not sure why Traktor has to modify any of my tags when most of the time I'm either just analyzing, beat gridding or playing out the file.

If somehow you still don't think this is silly, try entering a date in the year field using the "mm-dd-yyyy" format (07-31-2010 for example). Have Traktor analyze the file (I'm using 1.2.6 btw), then have a look at the field again after Traktor saves its data to it. If everything works out, your song was now released on January 1st, year 7 (07-01-01) Good thing my collection isn't tagged like this but it would be very unfortunate if someone else did.

 

I completely agree, I have Traktor doing things like changing the Genre field to, seriously, (18) for any track I put through it. By "put through it" I mean tracks that I load into a deck. Just importing them into the collection doesn't seem to cause this to happen.

This is a serious deal-breaker for me since I spend so much time organizing my tracks via their ID3 tags. I'll literally have to start copying the music out to another directory before importing it into Traktor to play. Unfortunately, I got Traktor so I could do impromptu mixing without preplanning. This method kills that whole idea unless I maintain an exact duplicate of my pile of tracks.

Traktor should make it's own "Library" file like iTunes does and store it's data in that where I never have to see it. It shouldn't be writing to my files... or it should give the option somewhere in the settings.

 

First of all "hi" to everybody!

Just wanted to say that I just finished tagging an 1,5 TB HD of flac and found out how annoying is to have missing dates on my tags!

Sure, I understand that the program needs extra information to work in "full speed", that's why I do not have any problem with added field tags. Let it add as many new fields as it wants!

What I cannot put up with is the fact that the program really erases the date tag!

This is a major bug and it really makes me laugh that we all people have to face it... Laugh and cry at the same time, cause I spent 3 weeks tagging my hole collection

Please, fix it yesterday!

 

Yep this is pure laziness on the programmer's part. It should be an option.

A possible work-around under Windows 7 is to launch Traktor using a BAT file with the RunAs.exe command, so that Traktor runs under a different user account. For example, a user named "Traktor".

Then, change the permissions on the music folders so that the Traktor user has only Read access.

This will guarantee that Traktor cannot modify the files.

 

What I temporarily did, was to change the policy rights to my external HD only to read for regular users and write only to administrators (windows 7). This causes Traktor to produce errors whenever it tries to change tags, but it stops it form changing the actual data! I also noticed that track's info is stored in Native Instruments folder, so there is no need for extra analysis.

Hope this is only for a while...

 

I have had a long email conversation with Native Instruments Support about this, that unfortunately I am not allowed to post here. I first contacted them in the beginning of the year when I discovered the issue, since this is also very much a deal breaker for me. Back then the conversation ended with the support person assuring me that the issue had been given priority.

I don't think the world has seen any improvements yet, though. Now I have submitted to NI Support an example mp3 and a copy of that mp3 that has been screwed up by Traktor. I have also attached screenshots from the tag info menus of foobar2000 and mp3tag. Support writes that the info has been filed together with the description of the issue.

So. I guess we can only wait. This is a fundamental problem, in my opinion - user's tags should be absolutely untouchable to Traktor.

Until everything works the best solution, I find, is to set all files as "write protected" after they have been tagged correctly...

 

I am also experiencing problems with Traktor removing parts or all of my tags, mainly the comments where to keep info about the songs bpm, key, etc. It's very frustrating to have to rewrite those tags.

 

I completely agree, no file writing should ever happen from Traktor without the users consent! Offer an automatic option, and if NI insists, set it to default as well, but one has to be able to switch it off.
Also, there is a gigantic thread about it spread over the last years ( in german though, but with some good insights into the what's & hows. Shame really that NI prefers secrecy over transparency. https://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=73427&page=37 ).
c.

 

Anyone have an update to this thread? Did a analyze in Traktor and it changed all of my dates to year-01-01

 

Unfortunately, there is nothing new resolving the issue.
Traktor keeps messing up tags and no one seems to care...

 

flame on

there are about a gazillion ways to keep an application running in user space from modifying data.

why do brain dead users request one unnecessary feature after another? for christ's sake, traktor is supposed to be a DJ software, not an operating system.

flame off

 

...ehm what? :lol:

 

I don't see the contradiction dude. Traktor rewrites the date field of the tag in a way I find undesirable. But unlike alec.tron, I don't think the issue is severe enough to prevent Traktor from writing tags (or severe enough so that the user needs to manually nod off tag rewriting). But, if someone disagrees and wants to disallow Traktor from modifying metadata, he or she can just write-protect their files (there are a couple of other ways to do that as well).

 

To me this is a huge problem - it completely messes up my music collection, especially by concatenating multiple genre fields.

Of course, it is possible to set the whole music library to write protected, but this is definitely not a very handy solution. It is not practical at all when adding files to the collection and it prevents media players from adding playback statistics to the files.

Simplemindedly running on the barricades to defend a piece of software that we all love is totally not called for and only hinders further improvements...

 

To be clear, not every writing of meta-data should need a manual user confirm, that'd be just archaic. Hence me mentioning handling it as a user preference so everyone can decide between
a) traktor may write everything
b) ask me when traktor wants to write
c) deny every write attempt
'Cos, as the following illustrates:

everyone has a different philosophy when it comes to data they invest time in. But my point remains imo:
Traktor is a tool and relies on a data-base to work with, but I as the user of the tool should be able to define what and how it handles changes to the data/-base to work with the users' philosophy, which is the classical definition of a tool, to help it's user with a job at hand...
A tool shouldn't dictate how you setup the world it lives in....Or put simply, a screwdriver that requires you to custom-build your own screws, is a **** screwdriver, init.
c.

 

I just found it funny how you first agreed with the topic and then complained about those who did so as well. I am aware that it you are not complaining exactly about the same thing as others do but at the first sight it looked funny.

But, to get back to topic, I totally agree that there should be an option to set whether Traktor edits any tags or not. I don't get why I should explicitly protect my files, only because of Traktor.

 

Also, while we're on the topic, I'd love to be able to write info from the collection database file into file-metatags (I need this to be selective and not global though...). Be it either as a scripted rule (I haven;t foudn a way to script anything in Traktor, but then again, I didn;t dig very deep...i.e. whenever a certain field, and only that, is changed -> write it into file ), or as through file selection & user command...
As a practical case, once I edited the bpm from the auto 'guess' to a user edit (by x2, tapping or whatever), I actually would want to write this change into the file (and just this, in this case the bpm tag) to be available for other programs to pick up...
Guess I should start writing bugs & feature request in the official channels/support system...
c.

 

I may tell you, though, that this topic has been in circulation for quite some time now - since Traktor Pro came out, I believe - and it doesn't seem to be getting priority, although it should. I have exchanged 20-30 emails with tech support about this and all I've achieved is for them to file a report on the problem.

I also sent them a zip with some material demonstrating the problem very clearly. I may as well share this here too (not the copyrighted tracks themselves, of course...)

Below is the last email, I sent them - you can see the images attached to this post.