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Artist tag is not indexed for MP3 files


rumzieee
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rumzieee

Emby is not properly reading all ARTIST tags for MP3 files. FLAC files are okay, seems to be only MP3 files.

Not sure what causes this, but I tag MP3 and FLAC files the same in mp3tag and MusicBee, with an ARTIST tag for each artist on the track:

Title: Believe ft. Big KRIT (DatPiff Exclusive)

Album: Before The Box

Album Artist: David Banner

Artist: David Banner

Artist: Big K.R.I.T.

 

When FLAC files are tagged this way with multiple artists, the artist tag is treated as a list and all artist are recognized individually. However, it seems like Emby can only read the first ARTIST tag from MP3 files. This means that any featured artists do not get indexed, and any MP3s they are tagged on will NOT show up on under the "appears on" section for the artist page.

 image.thumb.png.746d7e9c916741a9a0e035baed8d62e5.png

 

Here are the tags viewed in Mp3tag:

image.thumb.png.3189345c09443d76f24c8af02d1cf545.png

Edited by rumzieee
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Happy2Play

Would have to see what ffprobe is seeing, but could have something to do with the delimiter "\\"

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ginjaninja
1 hour ago, rumzieee said:

Emby is not properly reading all ARTIST tags for MP3 files. FLAC files are okay, seems to be only MP3 files.

Not sure what causes this, but I tag MP3 and FLAC files the same in mp3tag and MusicBee, with an ARTIST tag for each artist on the track:

Title: Believe ft. Big KRIT (DatPiff Exclusive)

Album: Before The Box

Album Artist: David Banner

Artist: David Banner

Artist: Big K.R.I.T.

 

When FLAC files are tagged this way with multiple artists, the artist tag is treated as a list and all artist are recognized individually. However, it seems like Emby can only read the first ARTIST tag from MP3 files. This means that any featured artists do not get indexed, and any MP3s they are tagged on will NOT show up on under the "appears on" section for the artist page.

 image.thumb.png.746d7e9c916741a9a0e035baed8d62e5.png

 

Here are the tags viewed in Mp3tag:

image.thumb.png.3189345c09443d76f24c8af02d1cf545.png

do you have  id3v2.4 tags present?

\\ in mp3tag for id3v2.4 tags.. results in proper id3v2.4 multivalue separator which emby (ffprobe) does not support afaik

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rumzieee

As far as I can see, I do not have any id3v2.4 tags, mp3tag and musicbee are both configured to use id3v2.3 tags:

image.png.2ec8db54e2850e7cd97dd88ba3dd85a2.png

image.png.8def385439c70d623511a50fa8ddc177.png

image.thumb.png.87fc04c298a2841e2e7c9b23e8c9e90c.png

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Happy2Play

Need to see what ffprobe sees.

ffprobe -i file:"/some/file/here" -threads 0 -v info -print_format json

 

Spoiler

Y:\Emby-Server\system>ffprobe -i file:"\\HOMESERVER\Music\Blake Shelton\All About Tonight (2010)\Blake Shelton - 04 - Draggin' the River.flac" -threads 0 -v info -print_format json
ffprobe version 4.3.0-emby_2021_02_27-g8f222573e9+634 Copyright (c) 2007-2021 the FFmpeg developers and softworkz for Emby LLC
  built with gcc 9.2.0 (Rev2, Built by MSYS2 project)
{
Input #0, flac, from 'file:\\HOMESERVER\Music\Blake Shelton\All About Tonight (2010)\Blake Shelton - 04 - Draggin' the River.flac':
  Metadata:
    GENRE           : Pop
    COMMENT         : This is the next Six Pak studio album from Blake Shelton!
    ALBUM ARTIST    : Blake Shelton
    TITLE           : Draggin' the River
    RELEASECOUNTRY  : US
    TOTALDISCS      : 1
    LABEL           : Reprise Records
    TOTALTRACKS     : 6
    MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMARTISTID: 2ad66473-ccb3-41d2-8756-b56680cdfe62
    disc            : 1
    TRACKTOTAL      : 6
    MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASETRACKID: 1234281f-d575-33ba-838f-e704ab2fbf2c
    ASIN            : B003TTZT5K
    ALBUMARTISTSORT : Shelton, Blake
    ORIGINALDATE    : 2010-08-10
    SCRIPT          : Latn
    MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID: 5587b7a3-024c-3f19-9990-c8258e67559a
    RELEASESTATUS   : official
    album_artist    : Blake Shelton
    ACOUSTID_ID     : 7f94df4e-4aee-4a0b-a1b8-6ed0fe7b7c73
    CATALOGNUMBER   : 524497-2
    ALBUM           : All About Tonight
    MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID: 2ad66473-ccb3-41d2-8756-b56680cdfe62;4eca1aa0-c79f-481b-af8a-4a2d6c41aa5c
    MEDIA           : CD
    RELEASETYPE     : ep
    ARTIST          : Blake Shelton feat. Miranda Lambert
    MUSICBRAINZ_RELEASEGROUPID: 6ed0a5e6-5e60-41f9-8b95-3ba459faf4b0
    DISCTOTAL       : 1
    BARCODE         : 093624965527
    MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID: 564a9882-8f7c-4027-bce1-fcf82bdaa650
    ARTISTSORT      : Shelton, Blake feat. Lambert, Miranda
    ARTISTS         : Blake Shelton;Miranda Lambert
    DATE            : 2010-08-10
    ORGANIZATION    : Warner Nashville
    track           : 4
  Duration: 00:03:47.33, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 950 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: flac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16
    Stream #0:1: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 500x500 [SAR 1:1 DAR 1:1], 90k tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc (attached pic)
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)

}

Spoiler

Y:\Emby-Server\system>ffprobe -i file:"\\HOMESERVER\Music\John Coltrane\The Cats [2006]\John Coltrane, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Burrell & Idrees Sulieman - 01 - Minor Mishap.mp3" -threads 0 -v info -print_format json
ffprobe version 4.3.0-emby_2021_02_27-g8f222573e9+634 Copyright (c) 2007-2021 the FFmpeg developers and softworkz for Emby LLC
  built with gcc 9.2.0 (Rev2, Built by MSYS2 project)
{
[mp3 @ 000001a5adf8f540] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
Input #0, mp3, from 'file:\\HOMESERVER\Music\John Coltrane\The Cats [2006]\John Coltrane, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Burrell & Idrees Sulieman - 01 - Minor Mishap.mp3':
  Metadata:
    album           : The Cats
    artist          : John Coltrane;Tommy Flanagan;Kenny Burrell;Idrees Sulieman
    album_artist    : John Coltrane;Tommy Flanagan;Kenny Burrell;Idrees Sulieman
    MusicBrainz Album Release Country: JP
    disc            : 1/1
    genre           : Jazz
    TMED            : CD
    TORY            : 1959
    publisher       : New Jazz
    title           : Minor Mishap
    track           : 1/5
    MusicBrainz Album Status: official
    artist-sort     : Coltrane, John, Flanagan, Tommy, Burrell, Kenny & Sulieman, Idrees
    TSO2            : Coltrane, John, Flanagan, Tommy, Burrell, Kenny & Sulieman, Idrees
    SCRIPT          : Latn
    Acoustid Id     : aa67ef1f-1955-49f2-a56e-503546368897
    MusicBrainz Album Type: album
    MusicBrainz Album Artist Id: b625448e-bf4a-41c3-a421-72ad46cdb831/c39a1eeb-e646-43e9-b984-4ffdc92b0241/a85b66d2-34df-4d5a-8c0d-d585b8a14ce1/055d4c59-357c-4afa-a130-0b90d9ec208a
    MusicBrainz Artist Id: b625448e-bf4a-41c3-a421-72ad46cdb831/c39a1eeb-e646-43e9-b984-4ffdc92b0241/a85b66d2-34df-4d5a-8c0d-d585b8a14ce1/055d4c59-357c-4afa-a130-0b90d9ec208a
    ASIN            : B000000Y4T
    CATALOGNUMBER   : VICJ-41640
    Artists         : John Coltrane/Tommy Flanagan/Kenny Burrell/Idrees Sulieman
    MusicBrainz Release Track Id: 15dcab3a-147d-3ec5-bdb8-690b25cb6cc3
    MusicBrainz Release Group Id: 3c426105-e67d-4774-8a02-5abc93fc92ad
    MusicBrainz Album Id: 465cd6fc-2839-42ae-96eb-a514e556b9f5
    date            : 2006-07-26
  Duration: 00:07:26.45, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 160 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 160 kb/s
    Stream #0:1: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj420p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 301x300 [SAR 1:1 DAR 301:300], 90k tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc (attached pic)
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)

}

 

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rumzieee

Thanks. Here is the ffprobe output.

Input #0, mp3, from 'file:1-13 Believe ft. Big KRIT (DatPiff Exclusive).mp3':
  Metadata:
    TMED            : Digital Media
    SCRIPT          : Latn
    originalyear    : 2016
    MusicBrainz Album Status: official
    MusicBrainz Album Release Country: XW
    MusicBrainz Album Type: album/mixtape/street
    Acoustid Id     : febab634-8463-465b-92ef-5b14d2390aa6
    album           : Before The Box
    artist          : David Banner
    comment         : Downloaded from DatPiff.com
    genre           : Hip-Hop
    title           : Believe ft. Big KRIT (DatPiff Exclusive)
    track           : 13/16
    disc            : 1/1
    DISPLAY ARTIST  : David Banner; Big K.R.I.T.
    TORY            : 2016
    album_artist    : David Banner
    date            : 2016-03-09
  Duration: 00:03:48.78, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 163 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 160 kb/s
    Stream #0:1: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj444p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 600x600 [SAR 300:300 DAR 1:1], 90k tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc (attached pic)
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)
    Stream #0:2: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj444p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 600x600 [SAR 300:300 DAR 1:1], 90k tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc (attached pic)
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)

}

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Happy2Play
2 minutes ago, rumzieee said:

Thanks. Here is the ffprobe output.

Input #0, mp3, from 'file:1-13 Believe ft. Big KRIT (DatPiff Exclusive).mp3':
  Metadata:
    TMED            : Digital Media
    SCRIPT          : Latn
    originalyear    : 2016
    MusicBrainz Album Status: official
    MusicBrainz Album Release Country: XW
    MusicBrainz Album Type: album/mixtape/street
    Acoustid Id     : febab634-8463-465b-92ef-5b14d2390aa6
    album           : Before The Box
    artist          : David Banner
    comment         : Downloaded from DatPiff.com
    genre           : Hip-Hop
    title           : Believe ft. Big KRIT (DatPiff Exclusive)
    track           : 13/16
    disc            : 1/1
    DISPLAY ARTIST  : David Banner; Big K.R.I.T.
    TORY            : 2016
    album_artist    : David Banner
    date            : 2016-03-09
  Duration: 00:03:48.78, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 163 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 160 kb/s
    Stream #0:1: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj444p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 600x600 [SAR 300:300 DAR 1:1], 90k tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc (attached pic)
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)
    Stream #0:2: Video: mjpeg (Baseline), yuvj444p(pc, bt470bg/unknown/unknown), 600x600 [SAR 300:300 DAR 1:1], 90k tbr, 90k tbn, 90k tbc (attached pic)
    Metadata:
      comment         : Cover (front)

}

As you can see only one Artist is shown per FFPROBE (the utility Emby uses to read files information). Every tagging software does it a little differently so it is really hard to say, but you will want delimited ARTIST or ARTISTS (as I showed in two examples above).

 

 

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rumzieee

Thanks, I'm sad that neither MusicBee nor Mp3tag is reading/writing these tags correctly. Both of them show delimited artist tags and are missing display artist tags.

Are you familiar with a tagging program that is known to work properly?

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Deathsquirrel
2 hours ago, rumzieee said:

Thanks, I'm sad that neither MusicBee nor Mp3tag is reading/writing these tags correctly. Both of them show delimited artist tags and are missing display artist tags.

Are you familiar with a tagging program that is known to work properly?

I use MP3tag for this successfully.  Here's an example:

image.thumb.png.8de4a1dd2e12ce210c9c2cd48529ef49.png

And here's that same track in Emby:

image.thumb.png.55c89ec3175689ab0487192541c7c861.png

Each artist tagged in the Artist value is shown separately and links the the Artist record which then correctly shows what albums that artist contributed to.

I see you've also used MP3tag so I have to agree with cayar's suggestion that there may be more than one set of tags in the files.

 

 

Edited by Deathsquirrel
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ginjaninja
10 hours ago, rumzieee said:

Thanks, I'm sad that neither MusicBee nor Mp3tag is reading/writing these tags correctly. Both of them show delimited artist tags and are missing display artist tags.

Are you familiar with a tagging program that is known to work properly?

I think ffprobe reads flacs and mp3s differently, which is why the example above with \\ in mp3tag in flac may be working...

the "solution" is almost certainly not to use "\\" separator in mp3 in mp3tag (which i am guessing even in non id3v2.4 is confusing ffprobe).

I have used ';' separator (and others have used  '/' separator) for years with id3v2.3 in mp3tag and its fine for Emby, the issue is wether you need other devices/apps to understand the separator (need to choose one thats compatible with all).

One advantage of Embys support for and preference for artistS tag is that you can keep "banda\\bandb" in artist tag (which your other apps may like) and copy programatically/automatically as "banda;bandb" in artistS tag for full multiartist support (without impinging on other apps)

PS theres a tag column in main view in mp3tag which can be exposed which will say for sure what tag versions are present.

Edited by ginjaninja
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rumzieee

Thanks for your helpful replies.

@ginjaninja I feel the need to clarify on the \\ separator. The characters "\\" do not exist in any of the tag values. This is just the way that Mp3tag shows that there are multiple values for this tag name. This is displayed differently in each program, like in MusicBee this is displayed with "; ". But again, none of these characters actually exist within the tag values. See my screen shot in the 4th comment on this thread for a visual explanation of the tags.

@Deathsquirrel I see that for your example, those are FLAC files. I never have this issue for FLAC files, only MP3 files. Could you possibly send a screenshot of what your settings in Mp3tag look like under Tools > Options > Tags > Mpeg? I have a screenshot of mine in the 4th comment on this thread. If you have any MP3s that are tagged with multiple artists, I would like to see how those are shown on your end as well.

I made sure that the MP3s I am tagging ONLY have ID3v2.3 tags (there were some old ID3.1 and APE tags, but I made sure to remove them). Still, ffprobe does not see more than the first artist tagged on the file:

image.thumb.png.49e59ad9ce95eba2b15c70fe2e08bfab.png

 

Input #0, mp3, from 'file:1-13 Believe ft. Big KRIT (DatPiff Exclusive).mp3':
  Metadata:
    album           : Before The Box
    artist          : David Banner
    album_artist    : David Banner
    disc            : 1/1
    genre           : Hip-Hop
    TMED            : Digital Media
    TORY            : 2016
    title           : Believe ft. Big KRIT (DatPiff Exclusive)
    track           : 13/16
    Acoustid Id     : febab634-8463-465b-92ef-5b14d2390aa6
    SCRIPT          : Latn
    originalyear    : 2016
    MusicBrainz Album Status: official
    MusicBrainz Album Release Country: XW
    date            : 2016-03-09
  Duration: 00:03:48.75, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 160 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 160 kb/s

}

 

Not sure if this helps, but I ran this MP3 through foobar2000 and converted it to FLAC while keeping the original tags. Upon inspection in MusicBee, the tags went from ID3v2.3 to Vorbis Comments (Mp3tag just shows FLAC for the tag type/version). When I run ffprobe on the converted FLAC file, all artists show up properly:

Input #0, flac, from 'file:Before The Box - Believe ft. Big KRIT (DatPiff Exclusive).flac':
  Metadata:
    Acoustid Id     : febab634-8463-465b-92ef-5b14d2390aa6
    album           : Before The Box
    album_artist    : David Banner
    artist          : David Banner;Big K.R.I.T.
    date            : 2016-03-09
    disc            : 1
    genre           : Hip-Hop
    media type      : Digital Media
    original release date: 2016
    originalyear    : 2016
    SCRIPT          : Latn
    title           : Believe ft. Big KRIT (DatPiff Exclusive)
    DISCTOTAL       : 1
    TRACKTOTAL      : 16
    track           : 13
  Duration: 00:03:48.74, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1149 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: flac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16

}

Edited by rumzieee
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Deathsquirrel
6 hours ago, ginjaninja said:

the "solution" is almost certainly not to use "\\" separator in mp3 in mp3tag (which i am guessing even in non id3v2.4 is confusing ffprobe).

FYI for anyone working on tags, \\ in MP3Tag tells it to insert a NULL between two blocks of text in a tag.  A null character is the separator for ID3v2.4.  As far as I'm aware, you shouldn't use that string with any other tag versions.  Earlier ID3 releases used other separators, each of which had problems because that character was sometimes used in band names.

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  • Solution
Deathsquirrel
2 hours ago, rumzieee said:

@Deathsquirrel I see that for your example, those are FLAC files. I never have this issue for FLAC files, only MP3 files. Could you possibly send a screenshot of what your settings in Mp3tag look like under Tools > Options > Tags > Mpeg? I have a screenshot of mine in the 4th comment on this thread. If you have any MP3s that are tagged with multiple artists, I would like to see how those are shown on your end as well.

I made sure that the MP3s I am tagging ONLY have ID3v2.3 tags (there were some old ID3.1 and APE tags, but I made sure to remove them). Still, ffprobe does not see more than the first artist tagged on the file:

If your tags are ID3v2.3, you shouldn't be using the \\ separator in MP3 tag as far as I'm aware.  The standard separator for ID3v2.3 is /.  Obviously this breaks band names like AC/DC but Emby has rules for processing those exceptions.

That said, I just did some testing with strictly v2.4 tags and using NULL as a separator doesn't work in MP3s.  I'm assuming it's a bug in ffprobe.  I don't have many albums in MP3 since the only ones I did were ripped a long time ago and the original CDs were lost so I can't rerip them until I buy new copies.  That said, I found one that had both multiple artists on some tracks and multiple genres to use in testing.  Here's what I did:

  1. Load the album in Picard, stripping all tags but v2.4 and save
  2. Open the album in MP3Tag, confirming it showed only v2.4 tags
  3. Updated the tag data for Artist and Genre to use NULL (using the \\ character string in MP3Tag) for multiple Artist and Genre values and saved the changes
  4. Copy the edited tracks into Emby and performed a library scan.  The results matched yours.  Only one genre and artist was shown.
  5. Returned to MP3tag and updated the tag data for Artist and Genre to use ; as the separator and saved the changes.  This isn't the current standard but it's common and I know Emby understands it.
  6. Copy the edited tracks into Emby and performed a library scan.  The results are now correct.  The album lists multiple genres and the tracks with multiple artists showed those artists as expected.

So, short version, FFProbe appears to be incapable of processing the NULL separator used in ID3v2.4 tags in MP3 files, so use some other separator at this time.

Finally, since you asked, here are my settings for MP3tag for the tests described above:

image.thumb.png.fe63d8114c180d9a1ee66e760f800998.png

Edited by Deathsquirrel
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rumzieee

You are exactly right. I merged all my duplicate ARTIST tags into a single tag using ";" as the value separator, both in ID3 version 2.3 and 2.4. This did not index well in MusicBee but Emby was properly able to index each artist separately. It's unfortunate that ffprobe does not support NULL separators, or likewise that MusicBee indexing does not support ";" or "/" separators. Turns out is does, I just needed to rescan an reopen the program.

image.png.fa12c61899adedd4edc663f9535fda9a.png

FLAC files have fully support NULL separators in most every program I've used including Emby. It would make more sense if ffprobe was updated to support NULL in ID3 tags for MP3s. Seems like that would set a universal separator standard between ID3/VORBIS. I would hate to have to tag my MP3s differently than FLAC files, even if it could be done in batch it could end up being a lot of work

 

Edited by rumzieee
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Deathsquirrel
17 minutes ago, rumzieee said:

You are exactly right. I merged all my duplicate ARTIST tags into a single tag using ";" as the value separator, both in ID3 version 2.3 and 2.4. This did not index well in MusicBee but Emby was properly able to index each artist separately. It's unfortunate that ffprobe does not support NULL separators, or likewise that MusicBee indexing does not support ";" or "/" separators.

image.png.fa12c61899adedd4edc663f9535fda9a.png

FLAC files have fully support NULL separators in most every program I've used including Emby. It would make more sense if ffprobe was updated to support NULL in ID3 tags for MP3s. Seems like that would set a universal separator standard between ID3/VORBIS. I would hate to have to tag my MP3s differently than FLAC files, even if it could be done in batch it could end up being a lot of work

 

I just checked and there have been bugs open on this in FFMPEG since at least 3 years ago.  The parser the tool uses terminates reading the tag when it hits the null character.  So known issue and has been known a while.

I don't use MusicBee but if it doesn't parse a / as a valid separator in ID3v2.3, that would also be a bug.  That's the correct separator for that version of the standard.

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rumzieee

Thanks for finding that out.

Instead of holding my breath for an ffprobe update, I made a flow within Mp3tag that changes all tag versions to ID3v2 and replaces NULL separators with "; " This makes the artist indexing work correctly in both MusicBee and Emby:

1. Go to Tools > Options > Tags > Mpeg. Select the following options in each section:

  • READ: All
  • WRITE: ID3v2
  • REMOVE: ID3v1 and APE (leave ID3v2 unchecked)

2. Load MP3 files in Mp3tag. Select all then CTRL + S to save (which will save any existing tags from other tagging standards to ID3v2)

3. Select all files again, then CTRL + R to remove all tags. This will remove all tags except ID3v2, as configured in step 1.

4. Use the "Merge duplicate fields" function to replace the NULL separator with "; " or "/".

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