Find out the recorded time of an audio file

Hi There,

I have an .wav audio file which I have recorded and I would like to look into its metadata and extract the

recorded time of this file (e.g., 6:31:12 pm). First I was wondering if this is possible with MATLAB? and if so

could anyone guide me into the right path?

All the best,

Nikan

[Walter Roberson]

WAV format did not traditionally include this as a possible tag apparently. But it is possible that one of the semi-standard work-arounds was used https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2016/02/09/wav-tagging/

[Nikan Fakhari]

Thank you. Idealy do you know how can I extract the metadata from the .wav file using matlab.

is it just using the audioinfo function?

Nikan

[Walter Roberson]

Java https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38753679/how-to-use-id3-tags-audio-file-details-and-information-for-a-java-clip

or take one of the id3 for mp3 from the file exchange and modify it for wav

[Nikan Fakhari]

Thank you, is there a way to exchange the file from .WAV to .MP3 in matlab? I know that this question

were asked before, but the solution provided uses the waveread function which is no longer accessible in matlab.

Best,

Nikan

[Jan]

I'd use the external tool lame for the conversion.

lamebin = 'C:\Program_\lame3.99.5\lame.exe';
switches = ' -m j -h -V 1 -q 2 --vbr-new --nohist --disptime 5';
system([lamebin, switches, ' "', nameOfWAVFile, '" "', nameOfMP3File, '"']);

[Nikan Fakhari]

Thank Jan. Do you have any experinece with my original question? How to extract the recorded time of audio file?

Perhaps looking at the metadata is the best option, but Im very stuck with that. The ID3parase function provides me with the following error:

Output argument "rOut" (and maybe others) not assigned during call to "id3parse".

Do you have any Idea on this?

Nikan

[Walter Roberson]

if ~strcmp(fileId,'ID3')
  fclose(fid);
  rout=[];
  return
end

Notice that the assignment is to rout but it should be to rOut . Your file does not contain ID3 tags at the beginning of the file.

[Walter Roberson]

id3parse() from the File Exchange assumes ID3v2 tags that are at the very beginning of the file. .WAV files do not support an ID3 tag at the very beginning of the file.

There is no standard for how to insert ID3 tags into WAV files. Two broad classes of work-arounds have been used:

1. Just add a 'ID3' tag at the very end of the .wav file -- creating something that does not satisfy the defined format of WAV files. You should be able to concatenate .WAV files, so what you see after a valid header and body in a WAV file, if there is anything at all, should be another valid WAV header and so on. It is, though, potentially compatible with ID3v1 tag readers, as those were expected at the end of .MP3 files
2. Put the ID3 tag inside a WAV LIST chunk. This is compatible with the WAV format, but is not necessarily expected by any media programs

You could potentially modify ID3parse.m to search the content of the input file looking for 'ID3' and trying to read information. Generally speaking, 'ID3' can occur accidentally in audio data, or can occur as part of something like a comment, so the fact that you found 'ID3' does not necessarily mean that what follows is ID3 tags. And given the principle that you can concatenate .wav files, it follows that there could be multiple 'ID3' occurances.

[Nikan Fakhari]

Thanks for this great explanation Walter. I just had one quick question, so deos the ID3 tags for the MP3 occurs at the begining of the file? becasuse when I covert the audio from .WAV to MP3 i am able to read ID3 tags.

Also the second question is that if ID3parse.m were not able to find a tag for recorded date, does that mean that this tag is not included in the file?

[Walter Roberson]

ID3v1 'ID3' chunks were placed at the end of .mp3 files.

ID3v2 'ID3' chunks were placed the the beginning of .mp3 files -- literally as the very first thing in the file.

If you have a .wav file that starts (very first thing) with 'ID3' then it cannot possibly be a valid .wav file.

If you are starting with a .wav file and using id3parse() from the File Exchange on the .wav, then that code will never be able to find ID3 tags in the file, even if they are present.

If you are starting with a .wav file and using some external utility to convert it to .mp3 file, and then using id3parse() from the File Exchange on the .mp3 file, then if the recorded date does not show up, you have several possibilities:

• the .wav file might not have that information stored anywhere in any form
• the .wav file might not have that information stored in a tag format that the particular conversion utility knows to look for; for example the recording date might be stored as a comment field but the convertor might not think to try to interpret comment fields as potential information to be added to the MP3 tags. That is, this situation covers the case where the information is not written following any of the more common ad-hoc ways of writing tags; it might be difficult to find conversion utilities that match whatever random way the information was written into the .wav file
• the .wav file might have the information stored using a different common ad-hoc way than the conversion utility expects, but a different convertor might know about the method (e.g., non-conforming ID3 chunk at the end of the file versus ID3 embedded in a conforming LIST chunk)
• the .wav file might (not common!) not have the information stored in the first header + body, as it might happen to consist of several WAV files concatenated together
• the .wav file might have it stored using a different identifier than is expected by the conversion program

Thus, the fact that the tag does not show up in a .mp3 file converted from .wav does not necessarily mean that the information was not present in the .wav in any form.... but it might mean that.

That particular information is not information that is commonly stored even with .mp3 files, so it would not be surprising if it does not show up in .wav files.

It might be interesting to run the .wav file through a program such as "Audio File Health Check" which is a MacOS program; https://2manyrobots.com/plaster/

[Nikan Fakhari]

Thank you very much for this information. Do you have any idea of the modification that i could apply to the id3pars() function so i could directly look into the tag at the end of the .wav file? potentially all i need right now is to make sure that if my wave file has a recorded date and time associate with it. I would be more than happy to check this with any external software as well does not necessary have to matlab. I know you have included java but i’m not very experienced with that. I would highly appreciate it your help.