Vorbis Comment

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Vorbis Comment is a metadata format, similar to ID3 and APE tags, specified by Xiph.org initially for use with (Ogg) Vorbis, and since then also used for, notably, FLAC and Opus.

IETF Standard Draft for FLAC defines it this way:

  A Vorbis comment metadata block contains human-readable information
  coded in UTF-8.  The name Vorbis comment points to the fact that the
  Vorbis codec stores such metadata in almost the same way.  A Vorbis
  comment metadata block consists of a vendor string optionally
  followed by a number of fields, which are pairs of field names and
  field contents.  Many users refer to these fields as FLAC tags or
  simply as tags.

It is a relatively simple format that allows the user to specify arbitrary fieldname/value pairs, using UTF-8 Unicode as the character encoding.

To avoid incompatibilities between tags, some standard fieldnames are suggested by the Vorbis Comment specification (TITLE, VERSION, ALBUM, ARTIST, TRACKNUMBER, DATE, etc.). Every fieldname is allowed and there is no obligatory format for values. Same fieldnames can be used several times. In contrast to ID3 it is a it's quite free of regulations.

Several unofficial efforts have been made as proposals and recommendations for Vorbis Comment specification.

Two such documents are available on Web. First one is called Ogg Vorbis Comment Field Recommendations and second one is called Proposals for extending Ogg Vorbis comments.

Used by

• (Ogg) Vorbis
• Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
• Opus
• Speex
• Theora

External links

• Oficial specifications
• Free Lossless Audio Codec, draft-ietf-cellar-flac-04, 21 August 2022
• Goals and non-Goals of Vorbis Comments