International digital publishing includes metadata standards that enable the embedding of labeling information within published works. This is true of metadata from audiofiles that tell the listener the song title, artist, and other information about the content of a sound file.
Radio streaming passes the metadata information from each song or program so that listeners can see at a glance what is playing on each radio station.
Despite its wide popularity with streaming stations the free Zara V 1.6.2 does not pass metadata information. There is a 3rd party software that allows file names to be transmitted which can be displayed on websites, but file names are not metadata.
Audacity allows adding and editing metadata on sound files.
Winamp has an extensive metadata reading and editing feature and when used as a streaming radio player does transmit the data to listeners.
The two popular stream encoders, B.U.T.T.s and Altacast, allow manually typing in and sending streaming metadata when driven by the Zara playlist.
To our knowledge the newest Zara 3, with price tag, does include full meta data features.
KDX Worldround Radio is busy exploring these questions and hunting for new software or tricks that can solve such problems.
Strides
Talking about these more esoteric side-roads of audio production and streaming is difficult because of how easy it is to misunderstand or not understand what is being said.
Since the opening post in this thread we have made strides which could be of interest to two other people in the universe.
It turns out Zara 3 has no ability at all to read & transmit metadata tags ID3 v1 or ID3 v2.
Zara 2, on the other hand, is able to read & transmit both types of metadata.
And to our astonishment the free Zara v 1.6.2 is able at least to read ID3 v1 metadata and show it in the "Now Playing" window on the Zara Control Panel. We had not previously been aware of this feature.
Many incoming files have ID3 metadata already included, but sometimes it's only the v2 type which does nothing for free Zara.
To the rescue is Winamp which, by simply dropping an audiofile into the playlist it is possible to open the ID3 v2 Info window where editing can be done, and there is a handy button for transferring the metadata to the ID3 v1 panel, hit save, and the new metadata is injected into the mp3 file without re-encoding (losing quality). This works to order for putting title and artist information into the Zara "Now Playing" window.
We are getting closer to automatically generating metadata that listeners will see in the stream directory.
Experiments this week will succeed or fail.
Cracked the Code
Last night, following days of exploration into the possibilities of streaming radio programming from free Zara v 1.6.2, KDX Worldround Radio has mapped out a method for transmitting metadata from within Zara out to directories and listeners.
Like many things in science, computer programming, software and electronics, "it was all there the whole time", but hidden by lack of clear documentation and the unawareness of Zara users, or the lack of mention from anyone who "knows".
Following are the steps for making it happen:
1.) In its default state Zara v 1.6.2 provides a display window showing the "currently playing" title of an audio file, but this information is not passed to stream directories or online listeners. The Metadata of types ID3 v1 or ID3 v2, if contained within given audiofiles, is not seen;
2.) In Zara, under Tools/Options/Tags one may activate "Tags", enabling Zara to display ID3 V1 metadata in the Zara "Currently Playing" window, if such metadata exists on a particular audiofile, but this information is still not passed to listeners;
3.) The secret recipe part 1 is found in Tools/Options/General where one finds a function that determines where Zara will write a text file it generates titled "CurrentSong.txt". The path to this file is entered here, commonly pointing to the ZaraRadio folder. Zara automatically writes the information seen in the "Currently Playing" window to this text file. My Zara Manual says nothing about this but may be missing some pages... it trails off at page 42;
4. In the stream encoder, for us either B.U.T.T. or Altacast, the path to "CurrentSong.txt" can be entered into the Stream "Update from file name" box and activated by checking the box;
5. Once all this is done the contents of the "Currently Playing" window in Zara will be transmitted to the "Now Playing" line on directories and listener players.
Next, we believe there is a second way to achieve the same thing, which will be explored this week.
Surprise
Upon closer examination we now realize that the methods described in posts prior to this one work as described... but...
The ID3 v1 metadata tags show within the Zara playlist and "Now Playing" window, but now here's the "but"...
But the information that shows up on streaming directories and listener players is...
The audiofile title and not the ID3 V1 metadata.
Shucks.
But at least it's more than we had before.