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| <h1>Ogg Vorbis I format specification: comment field and header specification</h1> |
| |
| <h1>Overview</h1> |
| |
| <p>The Vorbis text comment header is the second (of three) header |
| packets that begin a Vorbis bitstream. It is meant for short, text |
| comments, not arbitrary metadata; arbitrary metadata belongs in a |
| separate logical bitstream (usually an XML stream type) that provides |
| greater structure and machine parseability.</p> |
| |
| <p>The comment field is meant to be used much like someone jotting a |
| quick note on the bottom of a CDR. It should be a little information to |
| remember the disc by and explain it to others; a short, to-the-point |
| text note that need not only be a couple words, but isn't going to be |
| more than a short paragraph. The essentials, in other words, whatever |
| they turn out to be, eg:</p> |
| |
| <blockquote><p> |
| "Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer-Incentives, _I'm Still Around_, |
| opening for Moxy Früvous, 1997" |
| </p></blockquote> |
| |
| <h1>Comment encoding</h1> |
| |
| <h2>Structure</h2> |
| |
| <p>The comment header logically is a list of eight-bit-clean vectors; the |
| number of vectors is bounded to 2^32-1 and the length of each vector |
| is limited to 2^32-1 bytes. The vector length is encoded; the vector |
| contents themselves are not null terminated. In addition to the vector |
| list, there is a single vector for vendor name (also 8 bit clean, |
| length encoded in 32 bits). For example, the 1.0 release of libvorbis |
| set the vendor string to "Xiph.Org libVorbis I 20020717".</p> |
| |
| <p>The comment header is decoded as follows:</p> |
| |
| <pre> |
| 1) [vendor_length] = read an unsigned integer of 32 bits |
| 2) [vendor_string] = read a UTF-8 vector as [vendor_length] octets |
| 3) [user_comment_list_length] = read an unsigned integer of 32 bits |
| 4) iterate [user_comment_list_length] times { |
| |
| 5) [length] = read an unsigned integer of 32 bits |
| 6) this iteration's user comment = read a UTF-8 vector as [length] octets |
| |
| } |
| |
| 7) [framing_bit] = read a single bit as boolean |
| 8) if ( [framing_bit] unset or end of packet ) then ERROR |
| 9) done. |
| </pre> |
| |
| <h2>Content vector format</h2> |
| |
| <p>The comment vectors are structured similarly to a UNIX environment variable. |
| That is, comment fields consist of a field name and a corresponding value and |
| look like:</p> |
| |
| <pre> |
| comment[0]="ARTIST=me"; |
| comment[1]="TITLE=the sound of Vorbis"; |
| </pre> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li>A case-insensitive field name that may consist of ASCII 0x20 through |
| 0x7D, 0x3D ('=') excluded. ASCII 0x41 through 0x5A inclusive (A-Z) is |
| to be considered equivalent to ASCII 0x61 through 0x7A inclusive |
| (a-z).</li> |
| <li>The field name is immediately followed by ASCII 0x3D ('='); |
| this equals sign is used to terminate the field name.</li> |
| <li>0x3D is followed by the 8 bit clean UTF-8 encoded value of the |
| field contents to the end of the field.</li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <h3>Field names</h3> |
| |
| <p>Below is a proposed, minimal list of standard field names with a |
| description of intended use. No single or group of field names is |
| mandatory; a comment header may contain one, all or none of the names |
| in this list.</p> |
| |
| <dl> |
| |
| <dt>TITLE</dt> |
| <dd>Track/Work name</dd> |
| |
| <dt>VERSION</dt> |
| <dd>The version field may be used to differentiate multiple |
| versions of the same track title in a single collection. |
| (e.g. remix info)</dd> |
| |
| <dt>ALBUM</dt> |
| <dd>The collection name to which this track belongs</dd> |
| |
| <dt>TRACKNUMBER</dt> |
| <dd>The track number of this piece if part of a specific larger collection or album</dd> |
| |
| <dt>ARTIST</dt> |
| <dd>The artist generally considered responsible for the work. In popular music |
| this is usually the performing band or singer. For classical music it would be |
| the composer. For an audio book it would be the author of the original text.</dd> |
| |
| <dt>PERFORMER</dt> |
| <dd>The artist(s) who performed the work. In classical music this would be the |
| conductor, orchestra, soloists. In an audio book it would be the actor who did |
| the reading. In popular music this is typically the same as the ARTIST and |
| is omitted.</dd> |
| |
| <dt>COPYRIGHT</dt> |
| <dd>Copyright attribution, e.g., '2001 Nobody's Band' or '1999 Jack Moffitt'</dd> |
| |
| <dt>LICENSE</dt> |
| <dd>License information, eg, 'All Rights Reserved', 'Any |
| Use Permitted', a URL to a license such as a Creative Commons license |
| ("www.creativecommons.org/blahblah/license.html") or the EFF Open |
| Audio License ('distributed under the terms of the Open Audio |
| License. see http://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/eff_oal.html for |
| details'), etc.</dd> |
| |
| <dt>ORGANIZATION</dt> |
| <dd>Name of the organization producing the track (i.e. |
| the 'record label')</dd> |
| |
| <dt>DESCRIPTION</dt> |
| <dd>A short text description of the contents</dd> |
| |
| <dt>GENRE</dt> |
| <dd>A short text indication of music genre</dd> |
| |
| <dt>DATE</dt> |
| <dd>Date the track was recorded</dd> |
| |
| <dt>LOCATION</dt> |
| <dd>Location where track was recorded</dd> |
| |
| <dt>CONTACT</dt> |
| <dd>Contact information for the creators or distributors of the track. |
| This could be a URL, an email address, the physical address of |
| the producing label.</dd> |
| |
| <dt>ISRC</dt> |
| <dd>ISRC number for the track; see <a href="http://www.ifpi.org/isrc/">the |
| ISRC intro page</a> for more information on ISRC numbers.</dd> |
| |
| </dl> |
| |
| <h3>Implications</h3> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li>Field names should not be 'internationalized'; this is a |
| concession to simplicity not an attempt to exclude the majority of |
| the world that doesn't speak English. Field <emph>contents</emph>, |
| however, use the UTF-8 character encoding to allow easy representation |
| of any language.</li> |
| <li>We have the length of the entirety of the field and restrictions on |
| the field name so that the field name is bounded in a known way. Thus |
| we also have the length of the field contents.</li> |
| <li>Individual 'vendors' may use non-standard field names within |
| reason. The proper use of comment fields should be clear through |
| context at this point. Abuse will be discouraged.</li> |
| <li>There is no vendor-specific prefix to 'nonstandard' field names. |
| Vendors should make some effort to avoid arbitrarily polluting the |
| common namespace. We will generally collect the more useful tags |
| here to help with standardization.</li> |
| <li>Field names are not required to be unique (occur once) within a |
| comment header. As an example, assume a track was recorded by three |
| well know artists; the following is permissible, and encouraged: |
| <pre> |
| ARTIST=Dizzy Gillespie |
| ARTIST=Sonny Rollins |
| ARTIST=Sonny Stitt |
| </pre></li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <h2>Encoding</h2> |
| |
| <p>The comment header comprises the entirety of the second bitstream |
| header packet. Unlike the first bitstream header packet, it is not |
| generally the only packet on the second page and may not be restricted |
| to within the second bitstream page. The length of the comment header |
| packet is (practically) unbounded. The comment header packet is not |
| optional; it must be present in the bitstream even if it is |
| effectively empty.</p> |
| |
| <p>The comment header is encoded as follows (as per Ogg's standard |
| bitstream mapping which renders least-significant-bit of the word to be |
| coded into the least significant available bit of the current |
| bitstream octet first):</p> |
| |
| <ol> |
| <li>Vendor string length (32 bit unsigned quantity specifying number of octets)</li> |
| <li>Vendor string ([vendor string length] octets coded from beginning of string |
| to end of string, not null terminated)</li> |
| <li>Number of comment fields (32 bit unsigned quantity specifying number of fields)</li> |
| <li>Comment field 0 length (if [Number of comment fields]>0; 32 bit unsigned |
| quantity specifying number of octets)</li> |
| <li>Comment field 0 ([Comment field 0 length] octets coded from beginning of |
| string to end of string, not null terminated)</li> |
| <li>Comment field 1 length (if [Number of comment fields]>1...)...</li> |
| </ol> |
| |
| <p>This is actually somewhat easier to describe in code; implementation of the above |
| can be found in vorbis/lib/info.c:_vorbis_pack_comment(),_vorbis_unpack_comment()</p> |
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