# Preferences - Audio Files - MPEG-4

The Audio panel allows you to control settings common to all supported audio formats, specific to ID3 (MP3, AIFF, DFF, DFS, WAV) files, MPEG-4 (M4A, M4B, M4R, M4V, MP4) files, FLAC & OGG and APE (APE, WV) files.

## Settings Specific to MPEG-4

Typically ratings are encoded as Apple (0-100) for MPEG-4 files. JRiver Media Center writes the values as Direct*2 (0-10). You can choose this or any other encoding for MPEG-4 files. The possible values are defined above in the ID3 section.

Yate writes ratings to MPEG-4 files using a well defined extensible container format. Various other taggers and media players write the rating to a non container atom named rate. If your ratings are not showing up in your media player of choice (not iTunes or Music), you can tell Yate how to handle the non standard component via the rate atom settings. The following options are available:

> Ignore
>   A rate atom if found will be ignored and will appear in the Unhandled display.
> Read only
>   If the file does not contain any ratings in Yate's standard format, a rate atom will be read and applied as the default rating. The rate atom will not be rewritten the next time the file is saved.
> Write only
>   Whenever a file is written which has a non zero star rating, a rate atom will be written. Any preexisting rate atoms will be discarded.
> Read & Write
>   If the file does not contain any ratings in Yate's standard format, a rate atom will be read and applied as the default rating. Whenever a file is written which has a non zero star rating, a rate atom will be written. Any preexisting rate atoms will be discarded.

When the rate atom is read and it differs from the default rating (the first), it is ignored by default. If you set the preferred on mismatch option, the rate value will be retained.

Unfortunately there are two common field mappings for the Conductor field: CONDUCTOR (Yate's default value) and Conductor. Both mappings are used by various applications. Neither are used by iTunes and Music. If you have Conductor values used in other applications and the values seem to be missing in Yate do the following. Look in the UD Text edit panel for an item named Conductor. If the item is there then your application is using the Conductor mapping. You can either work with the data as a UDTI or you can change the mapping that Yate will use. Note that changing the mapping will not move any existing Conductor field information stored in the previous mapping. Any preexisting information in the old mapping will be available as a UDTI. You can tell Yate to read Conductor and CONDUCTOR via the Read both setting. In this case disparate values will be stored as multiple values in the field. When the file is written, only the specified Conductor mapping will be written. The Read both option is supplied to make it easier to transition to a new mapping.

Unfortunately there are two common field mappings for the Initial Key field: KEY (Yate's default value) and initialkey. Both mappings are used by various applications. Neither are used by iTunes and Music. If you have Initial Key values used in other applications and the values seem to be missing in Yate do the following. Look in the UD Text edit panel for an item named initialkey. If the item is there then your application is using the initialkey mapping. You can either work with the data as a UDTI or you can change the mapping that Yate will use. Note that changing the mapping will not move any existing Initial Key field information stored in the previous mapping. Any preexisting information in the old mapping will be available as a UDTI. You can tell Yate to read KEY and initialkey via the Read both setting. In this case disparate values will be stored as multiple values in the field. When the file is written, only the specified Initial Key mapping will be written. The Read both option is supplied to make it easier to transition to a new mapping.

Yate supports three encodings for fields with multiple values when writing to the files. These are explained in MPEG-4 Multi Value Write Method.

The display of video settings are typically hidden when a file does not contain a video track. You can override this via the Always display video fields setting.

The next two settings pertain to interaction with Apple applications. These settings are also available in Preferences - Apple Apps - General.

Apple applications do not replace values in their libraries when refreshing a file and the associated tag is not present. For example if iTunes has an Album Artist value, when refreshing the audio file it does not find an Album Artist tag, it will retain the current value. Yate typically does not write empty tags to files. It gets around the refresh problem by programmatically telling the application to set the required field to empty. The Content Advisory field cannot be programmatically set. If you want the Apple application to detect a change to an empty state, the empty tag must be written to the files. The Write empty Content Advisory setting will fix the issue with changing a Content Advisory field of explicit or clean to empty.

The Process iTunMOVI for files with video option provides additional integration with Apple applications when processing video files. iTunMOVI is a file component which contains information about the video. When the option is set, Yate will extract role and studio information from the component. When writing files, Yate will modify or synthesize the construct. The Musician Credits, Involved People and Label fields are affected. The Label field will receive the studio name. For more information on how Musician Credits and Involved People are affected click here.

Information of the Roon specific settings can be found in Roon Audio Settings.

Additional information:

Common Audio Settings

APE Audio Settings

MPEG-4 Audio Settings

FLAC/OGG Audio Settings

Roon Audio Settings