Yate supports multiple items for field types wherever supported by the ID3 specification. It also permits multiple values for fields wherever permitted.
When more than one item of a particular field type is supported, you can manage those items by viewing the specific panel designed for that type. Panels are viewed and mapped via right clicking on a tab in the edit panel. Where the field has a default value (for example the Comments field), you can access the multiple item editor by clicking on the function button for the default field. The following field types may have more than one item: Artwork, Comments, Commercial Information Webpage, Equalization, General Encapsulated Object, Lyrics, Official Artist/Performer Webpage, Private Information, Rating, Relative Volume Adjustment, Terms of Use, Unhandled Items, Unique File Identifier, User Defined Text Info and User Defined URL.
Yate presents defaults for most non-binary multiple item types. The default items are defined as follows:
- Comments
- The default Comment is the first comment with an empty description.
- Commercial Information Webpage
- The default Commercial Information Webpage item is the first found in an audio file.
- Lyrics
- The default Lyrics is the last lyric item. This was done for iTunes compatibility.
- Official Artist/Performer Webpage
- The default Official Artist/Performer Webpage item is the first found in an audio file.
- Rating
- The default rating is the first rating in an audio file.
- Terms of Use
- The default Terms of Use item is the first found in an audio file.
Multiple values are completely different than multiple items. The ID3 specification allows for most text oriented fields to contain multiple values. These values are separated by a character with a binary value of zero. On the Settings - Audio Files tab, you may set a visible delimiter to represent the invisible zero character. The default value is ;;;. So if you see ;;; in your fields it means that you have more than one value in the field. You can edit the multiple values, one per line, (without worrying about the delimiter) by selecting Choose Value for a field's function button menu.
Multiple values are useful for some field types such as Genre where you might want to have more than one piece of identifying information.
A word of caution: Most other applications, including iTunes, do not support the multiple values capability and as such you may have strange displays of metadata if you utilize multiple values.
While the multi-value delimiter is the correct means of separating multiple items in fields, Yate optionally permits the use of non standard delimiters when splitting and reconstructing fields associated with Application Lists.