Field names

This page describes a proposed update to the minimal list of 15 standard field names in the Vorbis I specification. Please keep discussion confined to the Discussion page (or, better, the <vorbis-dev> mailing list).

After the proposal has been discussed, and accepted or rejected, this page should be deleted.

Analysis

To determine what field names are being used in the wild, the following resources were analysed:

• Reactor Core proposal
• Carnival of Technology proposal
• Proposals on the XiphWiki VorbisComment page
• OggImporter to Spotlight
• EasyTAG tagging program (routine "ogg_tag.c" in the source code)
• Mp3tag tagging program (post in the Mp3tag Forum)

The analysis is presented as an Excel spreadsheet (note that it contains two sheets, the first of which is more interesting).

Proposal

The following modest list of additions to the minimal list in the specification is proposed:

1. COMPOSER
2. TRACKTOTAL – complements the existing TRACKNUMBER
3. DISCNUMBER – used if part of a multi-disc album
4. DISCTOTAL – total number of discs in a multi-disc album
5. ENCODED-BY – see VorbisComment page
6. ENCODER – see VorbisComment page
7. METADATA_BLOCK_PICTURE – see VorbisComment page
8. SOURCEMEDIA – recommended because two different field names have been proposed
9. PRODUCTNUMBER – recommended because two different field names have been proposed

The field names SOURCEMEDIA and PRODUCTNUMBER could be dropped if Xiph does not wish to prescribe field names. (The alternatives which have also been proposed to store the same information are SOURCE MEDIUM and EAN/UPN, respectively.)

The field name REMIXER has not been included as its use is covered by the existing VERSION.

The triple RIGHTS, RIGHTS-DATE, RIGHTS-URI, proposed on the VorbisComment page, has not been included because this is structured metadata. VorbisComments are inherently unstructured and this should be respected.