VORBISCOMMENT

Section: Ogg Vorbis Tools (1)
Updated: December 30, 2008
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NAME

vorbiscomment - List or edit comments in Ogg Vorbis files

SYNOPSIS

vorbiscomment [-l] [-R] [-e] file.ogg
vorbiscomment -a [ -c commentfile | -t ``name=value'' ] [-q] [-R] [-e] in.ogg [out.ogg]
vorbiscomment -w [ -c commentfile | -t ``name=value'' ] [-q] [-R] [-e] in.ogg [out.ogg]

DESCRIPTION

vorbiscomment Reads, modifies, and appends Ogg Vorbis audio file metadata tags.

OPTIONS

-a, --append

Append comments.

-c file, --commentfile file

Take comments from a file. The file is the same format as is output by the -l option or given to the -t option: one element per line in 'tag=value' format. If the file is /dev/null and -w was passed, the existing comments will be removed.

-h, --help

Show command help.

-l, --list

List the comments in the Ogg Vorbis file.

-t 'name=value', --tag 'name=value'

Specify a new tag on the command line. Each tag is given as a single string. The part before the '=' is treated as the tag name and the part after as the value.

-w, --write

Replace comments with the new set given either on the command line with -t or from a file with -c. If neither -c nor -t is given, the new set will be read from the standard input.

-R, --raw

Read and write comments in UTF-8, rather than converting to the user's character set.

-e, --escapes

Quote/unquote newlines and backslashes in the comments. This ensures every comment is exactly one line in the output (or input), allowing to filter and round-trip them. Without it, you can only write multi-line comments by using -t and you can't reliably distinguish them from multiple one-line comments.

Supported escapes are c-style "\n", "\r", "\\" and "\0". A backslash followed by anything else is an error.

Note: currently, anything after the first "\0" is thrown away while writing. This is a bug -- the Vorbis format can safely store null characters, but most other tools wouldn't handle them anyway.

-V, --version

Display the version of vorbiscomment.

EXAMPLES

To just see what comment tags are in a file:

vorbiscomment -l file.ogg

To edit those comments:

    vorbiscomment -l file.ogg > file.txt
    [edit the comments in file.txt to your satisfaction]
    vorbiscomment -w -c file.txt file.ogg newfile.ogg

To simply add a comment:

vorbiscomment -a -t 'ARTIST=No One You Know' file.ogg newfile.ogg

To add a set of comments from the standard input:

    vorbiscomment -a file.ogg
    ARTIST=No One You Know
    ALBUM=The Famous Album
    <ctrl-d>

TAG FORMAT

See http://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/v-comment.html for documentation on the Ogg Vorbis tag format, including a suggested list of canonical tag names.

AUTHORS

Program Authors:: Michael Smith <msmith@xiph.org>
Ralph Giles <giles@xiph.org>
Manpage Author:: Christopher L Cheney <ccheney@debian.org>