WAVScribe: A WAV Metadata Editor Built Out of Frustration

It has been some time since I’ve had a proper post…and there’s a reason behind it: I’ve spent every waking hour (and some non-waking hours) building a tool.

A tool you say!? What kind of tool!? A garden tool? A microphone preamp? The next best thing since sliced bread? Well, not quite…

What I will say is that it completely consumed my life for quite some time. By consume, think starting at 3pm sitting behind a keyboard and then around 6am I’m thinking I really should quit. Sometimes there was a nice seam to allow it, but most of the time there were too many things going on and I just couldn’t pull myself away. Maybe around 8am or so I’d finally get to the point where I wasn’t thinking clearly and had no choice but to quit. So we’re talking 17 or 18 hour days. I’d then eat some breakfast, sit in my BDC (big daddy chair), and zone out for a bit before going to bed. 3pm that afternoon I’d start all over. If it wasn’t for the gym every third or fourth day I probably would have died of exhaustion – as ironic as that might sound.

So what is it that I made? What is this mystery tool that we probably already know from the title of this post? Well…let me not say it and start with a little backstory first.

About two and a half years ago I embarked on a very large recording project: Taiwan’s trains, platforms, and stations. But I didn’t know at the time that it would be a very large project. It was a result of my son’s obsession with train photography. I wanted to spend more time with him so I tried to merge our hobbies. As you can imagine, a clicking camera and recording sound don’t go well together. Plus he’s all about the beautiful locations for his shots and I’m about quiet locations. The overlap often isn’t there. So we had to go our separate ways.

By the time I had a full grasp on the scope of the project, it was too late to turn back. But you don’t need to know all that. What you need to know happened sometime in the planning stage, at that neck-deep, too late to turn back point. I sat down to plan the whole thing out. It would be my very first released sound library. Finally I could show the world what I’m about! All those years of practice was going to pay off. Or…something like that. The problem was, I didn’t have everything I needed. There was one thing in particular that I hadn’t a solution for: metadata.

A good sound library needs good metadata! I’ve seen posts saying something to the tune of “Unless it’s a very rare sound that I desperately need, if it doesn’t have good metadata embedded, I’m not buying it”. Sounds harsh, but I can understand why. And I wanted to make sure my train library had the “best” metadata I could provide. So I went on the hunt for a program that would embed it for me. And…guess what?

It confused the HELL outta me! I looked into the software that embedded all those fields that I wanted to embed. There were some solid choices. But they were not cheap. And metadata is just one part of those programs. The other features I had no use for. I simply wanted a program that embedded metadata only. That’s it. And I couldn’t justify the cost for those programs just to use them for metadata only. Ok, no problem. I had read that there were plenty of free choices. Perfect! 

The free choices

Now came the disappointment and frustrating part of the hunt. It was either horrible Ui and/or doesn’t embed a lot of fields. That was essentially the landscape at the time. And I say “at the time” because things have changed a lot since then. So, I had the choice of either ponying up for a full metadata embedder or accepting not to embed all that I wanted to embed. That didn’t sit well with me, so I decided to build what I had hoped to find!

WAVScribe is born

Ok, it wasn’t born that moment. I didn’t have a name for it for a while. It was an on and off project in the beginning. I knew it would take a while to build and I knew I had to study up on metadata. And oh boy DID I have to study. So at some point it started to take a shape. There was one moment when I knew it was a real thing. That’s when the hours started piling up. I guess you can say that’s when I got a dose of clarity and knew I had to just keep going.

What WAVScribe does?

In short, it’s built to make things quicker and easier. Embedding files is one of those chores that just takes time. I’m hoping people will notice that WAVScribe saves them time. You can pin the metadata fields you actually use so you’re not constantly searching for them. You can fill in one finished file and paste its metadata across a whole batch. Or set up templates for the stuff you embed over and over. One fell swoop over a bunch of files rather than one at a time. You can bulk-edit in a spreadsheet and import edits straight back into the files, including file renaming. I’ve tested the various batch processes up to 101,000 files successfully. And it also has full UCS v8.2.1 integration if you tag your files that way…which is entirely optional if you don’t. Everything entered is written to every standard the file carries (bext, iXML, XMP, LIST/INFO, ID3) in one pass, so the metadata can be read by the next tool those files end up in. Here is the main user interface…

There’s a lot of other little goodies but I’ll leave it at that for now.

What’s the current status?

Currently we are in the sign up process of the open beta. The beta will run for two weeks. I’m seeking approximately 20 testers. We had a private beta running a few weeks ago, so this is the second beta. If you happen upon this post, the beta is probably over, but here is the link on the off chance that someone sees it before the sign up is closed.

wavscribe.com/beta

When does it launch?

Good news, it might be launched already! But if not, well, it will be later this year. Likely much sooner if the second beta doesn’t find anything major. But even small stuff takes time to fix/change. So we’ll see. At any rate, I’ll announce it here for sure.

That’s really it. And for anyone who has followed me on this blog…maybe half a person on occasion? I hope this explains my absence in posting. I hadn’t gotten lazy. Life just kicked me in the nuts and I had to figure some things out.