How to add Metadata to a Montage

I don’t know the limitations of WaveLab Elements but the way it works in WaveLab Pro is this:

Add the CD-Text info and it will be present when you burn a CD, or if you made a DDP but Elements doesn’t support DDP unfortunately.

Only CD-Text can be added to a CD/DDP. So that would be album title, track titles, album artist, track artist (if different than album artist), songwriter, composer, arranger, message, disc ID, ISRC, and UPC.

You can then use the metadata tab in the montage to help transpose that CD-Text into metadata automatically when you render WAV or mp3 files.

Metadata supports more things than CD-Text so you can also add things like track number/track total, the artwork, and a lot more. At least in Wavelab Pro.

I would say ID3v2 is the most common metadata area to use, but my preset also fills in ID3v1, and the AXML chunk for adding the ISRC code to WAV files via the EBU recommendation.

Here is my montage metadata preset you can (try to) use to get started:

To use the preset, you have to first go into the metadata presets area in a montage on your computer, press the EDIT button, then find the preset menu of the window that pops up.

Then choose “Organize Presets” This will reveal where your computer stores the montage metadata presets. Then you can manually put my preset file there and now you can choose it as an option in the montage metadata preset menu.

These screen shots might help you find this:

This preset is what I use for 99% of projects. Sometimes I get a client that wants more of the fields filled in.

Again, I’m not aware of how limited Elements is in this area but with WaveLab Pro, it works quite well.

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That’s so helpful, thank you!

No problem. I should have added that your CD burner needs to support adding CD-text as well. Most of them do but you might want to make a test CD burn and check in a car stereo or something that is known to display CD-text.

iTunes and Windows Media Player do not show CD-Text unless you use some add-on software.

More here:

That’s a great article, thanks Justin. One thing I noticed is that the track lengths in the Montage in Wavelab differ from the track length that appears on the CD (even allowing for the gaps inserted in Wavelab). Any thought on what is the correct track length to use for registering the songs on Gracenote etc?

The track lengths in the montage should match exactly on the CD so either something is wrong, or you may be looking something wrong.

What (I think) I do know about Elements is that you can’t have track markers and move them around as you wish like you can in WaveLab Pro. Elements just makes the CD tracks based on the clip lengths.

Maybe somebody who has used Elements more can weigh in.

The only time I can think of when you might see a difference is that Apple/iTunes tends to round up. So, WaveLab might say a track is 3min 4sec and 621ms but iTunes might round up and call that 3:05.

Either way, the only way I know how to submit CD info to Gracenote is to burn a CD, and use iTunes or the Gracenote Partner app to send a fingerprint of the CD info to them, and in this case, you don’t enter the track lengths, the track lengths are automatically populated from what the software sees on the CD.

Great, thanks Justin!

Hi Justin,

I’m still having a few problems with the workflow in Wavelab. Am I able to render separate files for each track (to create WAVs and MP3s) for my album using the Montage Window, and with Metadata added for each track? Or do I need to use the audio file editor first, add meta-data, render those files, and import them into the montage window?

What I want to end up with is a CD, plus the individual tracks as WAVS and MP3s. I’ve adjusted the lengths of the tracks in the Montage Window, so I would rather be able to do everything from within the Montage Window, otherwise I will have to go back and change the lengths in the Audio Files window. I wish the Wavelab manual was a bit clearer! Many thanks

With the workflow I mentioned, you should never have to use the audio file editor section, everything is done in the montage.

You assemble the files how you want them arranged in the montage, including the track spacing. In WaveLab Pro, this is where you would add the track markers but it’s my understanding that WaveLab Elements doesn’t do CD track markers, and they are just based off of the clip lengths.

Anyway, this is now a good time to add the CD-Text info which can be album title, track titles, album artist, track artist (if different than album artist), songwriter, composer, arranger, message, disc ID, ISRC, and UPC.

From here you can burn a CD, or render a DDP if using WaveLab Pro.

Then you can also render WAV and/or mp3 files of each CD Track from the montage and if the metadata preset is loaded in the montage as I mentioned before, the files will contain metadata that is transposed from CD-Text and other info in the montage. No extra work has to be done.

If I have time later today I can see if there are any major limitations here in WaveLab Elements but in WaveLab Pro it is amazing, and something I do many times per day and a big part of why I use WaveLab.

Thanks Justin. I have loaded your preset, and modified it for my specific project. Do you know how I render individual tracks in Wavelab Elements? Is it via the Render Dialogue, and then by selecting ‘Specific Region’ from the drop-down menu? I have just tried that method, but then an error message appeared saying ‘the range to render is not specified’. As I had selected the track I wanted to render within the montage I would have thought that would have been the specified range - but obviously not!!

Also, do I need to change the Metadata setting in the ‘Audio File Format’ box from ‘Inherit from Source File’ to enable the rendered file to adopt the information from the metadata template? (see screnshot)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cVnuvB4zjHNpf3puuH04pKsVVMN31cpc

Again, this is from WaveLab Pro so there could be some differences in Elements, but attached is a picture of a common Render Tab setting for me.

I think you want “All Regions” and “CD Tracks” if Elements has that option.

I’m not at a computer with Elements installed at the moment.

I tried looking at doing this in WaveLab Elements but it seems like there are many things missing. You may want to consider WaveLab Pro if this is something you do often.

Thanks Justin. I’ve been in touch with Steinberg support today, and they said the only way to do it is by creating region markers for each track, and selecting ‘export region’ to individually export each track. It’s a bit fiddly, but do-able, although I haven’t been able to export the metadata from your template yet using this method. I’ve emailed Steinberg again to see if it’s possible and will let you know how I get on. Thanks again for all your help.

Because the metadata doesn’t seem to support variables, I think the only way to do this (sort of) efficiently in Elements is to burn a CD with CD Text and ISRC and import the CD to files transferring the cd text metadata. Then you don’t have to deal with region markers or rendering tracks one at a time or manually entering metadata for each track render. But you have to burn a cd. And it’s 44.1 khz 16 bit only. And there’s no axml ISRC in Elements at all.

Yeah. It seems that WaveLab Elements really isn’t cut out for this kind of work. I’d go with WaveLab Pro if you need to do this more than every now and then.

My apologies, but that doesn’t work when importing a CD to WAV in Elements. It only works importing a CD to MP3 or WMA. The CD text Title and Performer are transferred to the MP3, but the ISRC from the CD is not, even to the MP3 ID3.

If you import a CD to WAV in Elements and select transfer metadata, it just fills the WAV metadata with a bunch of untranslated variables.

No worries, it was worth a try! It’s looking like I might have to go for the full version option of Wavelab. Cheers for your help guys!

Hey Justin, this thread has been immensely helpful. Thanks for taking the time to explain all this and offer your presets. Real awesome of you.

I noticed that on one of the screen shots you have a volume automation on each track dropping what im guessing is 3db over the duration of each track. If you dont mind me asking, whats the rationale behind this?

I’ve read (and noticed) that small volume drops over long durations aren’t perceivable, but thats the best guess I have… maybe to make each track punch in harder from the previous.

No problem. It’s not so much of a volume drop, as a level increase to the front portion of a song. I usually dial things in based on the loudest sections of each song but sometimes a mix might be too dynamic and the front portion feels too quiet. Rather than slamming the entire track with more peak limiting, level automation before the final limiter can be really helpful. The ones in the screen shots of this thread are pretty simple but lately I’ve been doing more complex ones to get a song feeling loud enough but without the loudest parts getting too squashed.

Cool, thanks! Yeah I didn’t know if there was some psychoacoustic idea behind it. It’s an interesting idea for sure.

With the mixes I get I’m usually doing the opposite- not a lot of macrodynamics in a lot of diy indie + punk music, so often I’m making small momentary gain boosts to help accentuate a chorus or cool part. Usually to either help along the song or counteract some of my compressors’ macrodynamic leveling.