This looks really great! Thanks for sharing! I've never heard of audio tags before, so Newbie question here: Is a metadata tag something that's embedded with the audio format (mp3, m4a, flac, ape, etc.)? So if I make a "bookmark" on an audiobook, can I embed that into the file itself?

> extensive list of supported tags (additional fields, covers, chapters, etc.)

Are these part of a standard? Anywhere I can read more about this?

Thanks for your feedback.

> I've never heard of audio tags before, so Newbie question here: Is a metadata tag something that's embedded with the audio format (mp3, m4a, flac, ape, etc.)? So if I make a "bookmark" on an audiobook, can I embed that into the file itself?

You did never hear of this? Really? Sure, that is exactly how it works... Bookmarks are sort of a more "personal" thing, but most metadata formats support custom "tags" to store anything you like. More common tags would be "artist", "title", "album", "description", "lyrics", etc.

> Are these part of a standard? Anywhere I can read more about this?

Yeah sure. Id3v2 would be a good start, since it is used for some formats: https://id3.org/id3v2.3.0

Then there is APEvc: https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=APEv2_specificat...

MP4 is native tagging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_14

etc. etc. too many to link them all. The implementation tone uses is https://github.com/Zeugma440/atldotnet

Correction, ID3 is a good start. ;) Id3v2 is ... much more.

Unrelated, I like your project! Nice!

(I'm not entirely sure what your tool does that isn't done by the standard tagging tools id3, id3tool, id3v2... but that's NOT a criticism. I wrote my own multithreaded-resumable-forensic `dd` and a homegrown replacement for `tar` for instance)

I'm not a "power user" or developer of _tag_ related stuff, but under your Future Plans, the "split" and "merge" features (and even more advanced things like that...) is the sort of code I do. I've written "that kind of tool" at least twice before. A few years ago as a one off for a client doing movie scores with many many TB of multitrack (24 channels) audio, and wanted something HIGH performance for tunable and batchable splits, silence detection, merges, as well as automatic clustering (!).

Those split/merge features, that, I'm guessing you're planning on implement by requiring ffmpeg _AND_ using another library just to wrap it? I'd do in native code and, as a result, performance would be orders of magnitude better.

I don't use windows (at least, I'm not willing to use windows for any 'pro bono' work ;-) ) but if you were to write your tool in C or C++ instead, or perhaps... have a common API layer of sorts... I bet you'd find plenty of people (including me!) who wouldn't mind, and actually enjoy, helping you out by "gifting" some fast and MUCH leaner solutions for any and all of the audio processing work that it looks like you're planning on needing to shell out to other things to accomplish.

You're absolutely correct :-)

> Unrelated, I like your project! Nice!

Thanks for your feedback, you're welcome...

> (I'm not entirely sure what your tool does that isn't done by the standard tagging tools id3, id3tool, id3v2... but that's NOT a criticism. I wrote my own multithreaded-resumable-forensic `dd` and a homegrown replacement for `tar` for instance)

Not much really, it is just a tool that supports multiple platforms and multiple metadataformats all in one static binary AND supports chapters... it may be a bit more versatile and easy too use than existing tools. But that is opinionated.

> wanted something HIGH performance for tunable and batchable splits, silence detection, merges, as well as automatic clustering (!). Those split/merge features, that, I'm guessing you're planning on implement by requiring ffmpeg _AND_ using another library just to wrap it? I'd do in native code and, as a result, performance would be orders of magnitude better.

Yes, I plan to use `ffmpeg` for the first part, but also include `fdkaac` and maybe `sox` or other audio specialist tools to provide better audio. My plan is also to integrate a dependency downloader, that does not want you to install the dependencies yourself, but does everything for you. I'm the author of `m4b-tool`[1], which has also split, merge and silence detection, so I have a little experience in exactly this topic you are talking about (tone is planed as long term successor of m4b-tool, but this will take time). I will use a library called CliWrap[4] to integrate shell execution though, but do it multithreaded to provide more performance.

> I don't use windows (at least, I'm not willing to use windows for any 'pro bono' work ;-) ) but if you were to write your tool in C or C++ instead, or perhaps... have a common API layer of sorts...

If I understood this correctly: C# is not Windows-Only any more, and it is pretty fast on all platforms. It provides Ahead of Time Compilation and a so called self-contained binaries working without any C# runtime or VM... using github actions I provide a full featured monolitic executable binary, but I could also provide a library. C# is even capable of and using unmanaged code, writing drivers and embedded stuff, like RPi... I think it is not a bad language to start such a project, but at least the best I know well enough ;)

> and actually enjoy, helping you out by "gifting" some fast and MUCH leaner solutions for any and all of the audio processing work

It would really be nice to find some collaborators, thank you. There are some C# audio processing libraries out there (like NAudio[2] or cscore[3]), but currently windows only or pretty complex. We'll see... :-)

This was very helpful. Thanks again.

[1]: https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool [2]: https://github.com/naudio/NAudio [3]: https://github.com/filoe/cscore [4]: https://github.com/Tyrrrz/CliWrap