Bob Peirce

I can use kid-cli to determine if the file contains the OldHD name. That works fine. However, in order to change it and nothing else I had to write a litle C program that passes each character except the OldHD name, which it changes. I haven't written a program in 15 years so that was ingteresting, but I got it working and I think it does what I need.

Thanks. As I understand it the bookmark file that is loaded into iTunes looks for a caf file in the PPat path, and finding that knows what location to access in that file and for how long. The whole thing is propietary so I'm not even sure what all is going on. I checked out AtiomicParsley, and although there is a Mac check box, it appears only to run on Windows. After additional research I'm not even sure changing the path is enough. Not knowing the structure of the file I'm at a loss as to what...

I think I've confirmed the need for a non-destructive change. I took a test bookmark, changed the path and saved it. It wouldn't play. No surpsrise there. Then I changed it back to the original path. It still wouldn't play. I restored the original file and it played. It is pretty clear the programs using these bookmarks expect to find precise information at precise locations. I don't know why it was written that way. Maybe it was easier. Nevertheless, if I change the path [PPat] I absoultely can't...

This is probably in poor taste for this site but does anybody know of a tag editor that can batch edit the PPat tag without affecting the rest of the file? Kid can edit the tag but other things get changed in the process.

I actually used the kid3 GUI in the previous post. So I tried the script that is supposed to only change the path from /Volumes/OldHD to /Volumes/NewHD. A before/after "od -c" of the m4a file shows the script also changes more than just the path. Since I don't know the full structure of the file I have no idea what else is being changed or if that is why it won't work. It is possible this file needs to keep a very precise structure to work. In other words, the program that uses it may be looking...

I tried a script to change PPat and it did, but the change didn't work. So, as an experiment I did an octal dump of an m4a file then changed PPat in kid3 and changed it back to the original in kid3. I saved it and did an octal dump. The two output files were considerably different. I don't know why but I thihnk it may have something to do with why the change didn't work.

I tried some more variations and this one worked. m=$($kid -c "select " "$k" -c "get PPat") I think the space after select is important. I also tried "select $k" but it doesn't work. This is very confusing but I'm making progress. In fact, I think I may have this working!

This mostly works but I discovered, if k contains the name of the m4a file and the file copntains a quoted string, this works: print "$k" but this doesn't: m=$kid -c "select \"$k\"' -c "get PPat" This works if there are no quoted strings, but either kid3 or ksh strips the quotes from the string and kid can't find the file. I tried a few obvious possibilities, none of which worked. -c "select" "$k" -c "select" \"$k\" -c "select \"$k\"" -c "select \\"$k\\"" I also tried the new ksh command substitution...