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Fields, Frames and Atoms - What's In and What's Out

mp3, aiff, dff, dsf and wav files are tagged according to the ID3 specifications. You can find the specifications at www.id3.org. Using ID3 terminology, tag items are called frames.

MPEG-4 files call tag items atoms.

FLAC files call tag items tags or comments.

In Yate, we typically refer to items as fields.

You can see a complete list of the implemented frames, atoms and comments in the Field Mapping Table.

For those of you familiar with the ID3 specification, we thought you might like a list of frames which we don't currently handle.

The following frames are made available to you in Yate but do not have editors. The contained data can be viewed and exported. You get to choose as to whether or not you want to trash the frames.


AENC Audio encryption
ASPI Audio seek point index
COMR Commercial frame
ETCO Event timing codes
MLLT MPEG Location lookup table
POSS Position synchronization frame
RBUF Recommended buffer size
SYLT Synchronized lyric/text
SYTC Synchronized tempo codes

The following frames are completely unsupported and are always dropped from the file. Yate does not support encrypted frames, multiple tags per file or frame groups.


ENCR Encryption method registration
GRID Group Identification
LINK Linked Information
SEEK Seek frame
SIGN Signature frame

Yate supports all FLAC comments. Comments that are not mapped to a Yate field appear in one of two places. If an unmapped comment name contains the word URL it will appear in the User Defined URL items, otherwise it will appear in the User Defined Information items. The item name will be the description field.