[vlc-devel] vlc_meta.h

[R. Bernstein]

As I believe I mentioned previously, there are a number vlc meta names
(VLC_META_xxx include/vlc_meta.h) that don't cover descriptions for
CD-Text, CDDB, VCD and ISO-9660. There are several way to address:

  1. Don't do anything and let the modules add whatever name they
     want.  But then why were the names in include/vlc_meta.h there in
     the first place? Probably to ..

  2. Merge similar names from different modules into a smaller set.
     For example "Title" could be a DVD title or a VCD "Album Id", a
     CDDB "Title" and so on. I get the impression that if such notion
     was conciously considered or discussed, this is sort of what was
     there before my last commit to vlc_meta.h.

  3. Be very specific about the names and add them to vlc_meta, so
     instead of "Title", there is "CDDB Title", "CD-Text Title", "VCD
     Album Id". 

Here is a problem with possibility #2. A CD-DA has several ways to get
the same Meta information. Again using Title, it could come from CDDB
(and there may even be several matches), it can be from CD-Text on the
CD, it could come from MusicBrainz (again several matches). CD-DA also
has several "Disc ID's": "Media Control Number" (aka MCN or UPC), the
CDDB id, the MusicBrainz id.

A downside to using 3, is that one may want a title and doesn't care
whether it comes from CDDB, CD-Text or musicbrainz. My suggestion here
is to have some way of linking all of these specific tags into a
general tag. Maybe there could be a "is a" link from "CDDB Title" to
"Generic Title". Ditto for Music Brainz "Title", a VCD "Album", a DVD
Title. 

Also then there might be a routine Find_Generic("Title" ) which
selects one of these. One might also imagine setting some sort of user
preference for which title to find first. For example, the prefence
for a CDDA "Title" might be first use CD-Text, then MusicBrainz, and
finallyCDDB information.

However having written all of this, I should say that right now the
issue is a little moot. As far as I can tell, not very many plugins
set meta information and with the recent changes the few that did
(VCD, CDDA) are broken in their new incarnations. :-)


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