Handling audio (MIDI and WAV) and image (SVG) files in IMatch

[cadudesun]

Hi,

I am new to IMatch and so far I've found it a terrifically useful DAM!

a) The default IMatch configuration wasn't able to preview (quick view) a couple of audio files (MIDI and WAV) and image (SVG). Is there any way to preview these files inside IMatch?

b) Audio files have regular metadata (artist, album, song) embedded. After importing into IMatch I couldn't find a way to access the embedded metadata. Is it possible?

Thanks!

Cadu

[jch2103]

b) Audio files have regular metadata (artist, album, song) embedded. After importing into IMatch I couldn't find a way to access the embedded metadata. Is it possible?

Go to the Metadata panel and choose the 'MP3' drop-down. You should be able to see music metadata there. Be aware, though, that music metadata isn't very standardized. (Metadata is a mess, and audio metadata is even worse...)

[Mario]

Also a good starting point is the Browser Metadata Panel layout, which displays all the metadata IMatch/ExifTool could extract from your files. Audio files are a mess, there are probably dozens of different metadata variants used, and even more flavors of ID3 tags (metadata in MP3).

What do you mean with preview?
IMatch tries to extract the embedded thumbnail from MP3 files so generate a visual. Many MP3 files don't contain an embedded thumbnail.
Midi and WAV do not contain any image data. Metadata, if any, is shown in the Metadata Panel, Browser layout.

In order to render SVG files, IMatch relies on the built-in service in Windows. But support for SVG is generally lacking because it is a) a vector format and b) very complex. No embedded previews which could be used by applications which don't implement a full-fledged SVG render engine. Not even the big browser vendors have complete support for SVG, and as far as I know, Windows itself cannot render SVG files. So IMatch cannot render them.

You could use your SVG editor application (InDesign? InkScape?) to render a JPEG file from the SVG and put that in the same folder or a sub-folder. Then make the JPG a version of SVG (Edit > Preferences > File Relations) and configure the JPEG as the visual proxy. IMatch will then use the JPG file to represent the SVG. If this is worth the effort for you.

[Erik]

If I recall correctly WAV and MIDI don't really even have a so-called standard metadata format.  I seem to remember that putting metadata into a WAV file is a bit of a gamble as software generally doesn't expect it.  I'm not sure about MIDI files. 

While this is getting a bit off-topic, the software MP3-Tag is kind of the EXIFTool (more like a GUI) of audio files and can help you to see what format your tags are in if you have them there for the WAV and MIDI files.  That could help you set up a metadata panel if it's possible with IM.  I actually haven't tried IM for audio files, yet, and I'm not sure if it is flexible enough to grab tag types beyond ID3.  ID3 is almost exclusive to MP3 and its variants, and I'd guess the WAV files and MIDI files don't actually have ID3 tags.  I actually have FLAC as my audio format, so I suppose I should see how IM behaves with them.  Their metadata is in an OGG format, which is kind of like XMP in that there are standard fields, but users can also add non-standard XMP fields, whereas ID3 is more fixed like EXIF.

Last, Windows has its own metadata formats, which kind of get stored in its own dbs.  These are the types of things you can input when you right click in explorer, and it'll support images and audio.  That type of data seems to be almost impossible to access outside of Explorer and the System itself, especially if its from an older version of Windows. 

[Mario]

Give your audio files a test. You may be surprised and what information ExifTool is able to extract...