How to add Metadata to a Montage

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.

Hi Justin
I use your preset for my mp3 files for streaming. Thanks
Now they asked for a field “collaborating artists” . I have tried this by adding the CD text field Message, but it did not come up in the sesulting metadata.
Is that possible and if yes: How can I implement that in this preset ?

Steven

I realize this thread is a few years old…but I’m just discovering it after tearing my hair out practically the same amount of time. :rofl:
There’s a bunch of info here that I’ve picked up over the years and/or already knew…but the problem I’m having doesn’t seem to have a solution anywhere…at least that I can tell… and I’m hoping someone here can address it.
I’ll lay down the basics first and then describe my problem.

I’m using WaveLab Pro 9.5 on a 2019 iMac Retina 27", 3GHz 6 Core i5, 64GB RAM running Catalina 10.15.6.
I use Montage to make mix CDs for myself and friends.
I burn directly from the montage on a stand alone Super Drive.
I’m familiar with the CDText edit and its functions/fields.
In CD Text Edit, I give each disc a specific album name, usually a variant of the name of friend who the CD is going to.
In CD Text Edit, I rename or adjust EACH track’s name because sometimes the import name is kinda wonky.
In CD Text Edit, I edit the artist name on EACH track because…well… it’s a mix CD… and that’s kinda what mix CDs do. :rofl:
Stay with me because here is my problem… :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
When I take the CD to the in car player (2014 Camry) ALL of the text edits I’ve made in CD Text Edit appear on the car display …except one. The name of the artist/performer is blank. Track is correct, album is correct… but no individual performer… NOW here’s the rub… if I make the artist/performer text the SAME across the entire CD… for example, each track is “The Beatles” (even though the track may actually be the Stones )… it shows up on my car display…on every track.

This makes ZERO sense to me… if the player is reading a field in one instance… WHY isn’t it reading it in another instance?

Someone… PLEASE help this simple minded music lover who just wants to share his love of music. :rofl:

Thanks so much in advance.

Without seeing a screen shot of your CD-Text entries, it’s hard to say but one thing I’d suggest trying is this:

Do you have a second CD player you can use to see if you get the same results as the 2014 Camry?

…wow… THANKS SO MUCH for the rapid response. I don’t have another CD player to check…but I know from friends that I’ve given discs to that they don’t see the artist either…but… if I may… it seems to me that it’s not a player issue … if I type in “Beatles” in the first entry and then click the CD Text Edit button that spreads the same artist info across each track… then I SEE “Beatles” in the artist spot… it’s ONLY when I have DIFFERENT artists that my artist segment is blank. Do you understand?

Mark

Let me see if I can get some shots to upload here… gimme a sec.

I understand the issue. I’d have to test this on my end to see if it happens with mixed artists names.

here are a few screen grabs looking at the editor’s first page… and the individual artists entries



…and this is how they look in the CD player in the car…


…here’s the change in the editor shots… followed by the newly burned CD… it’s just baffling to me…




It looks like the artist name is coming from the album section. Try this: leave “The Beatles” in the album section and put different artist names in the tracks and see what happens.
Jim

…Thanks for the suggestion!..but trust me, I have tried that :rofl: :rofl: :wink:…as the first 3 pics I posted show, something is jacked up… or I just don’t know what the hell I’m doing!

Mark