[headchange4u]

I have a large collection of music stored on my PC. The files are stored in folders with the artist's name and a sub-folder with the name of the album. Since I have started using my iPod I have found that quite a few of my mp3 files are not tagged correctly. Some have no artist/album tags at all. It's kinda frustrating when you put songs on your player and the tags are messed up.

Since I have everything organized into folders I know what songs I am playing when using my PC, but I would like to go through my entire music collection and get the files correctly tagged so my iPod will be organized.

It's hard to use something like iTunes or Windows Media Player because there are a lot of "unknown" artists and albums showing up. If all you have is a buch of track names jumbled together its hard to figure out who is who. That's why I want to edit tags from within their folders.

I am looking for a heavy-duty tag editor. It would be nice to have something that would integrate into the Windows shell (right click menu) so I could go through folder by folder and fix my tags from inside the folder . I don't know if anything like that even exists. I would also like to find something that will allow me to mass edit tracks that contain to much information. For example if I have a track that is named:

Thievery Corporation-Mirror Conspiracy-1)Treasures

Each track on this album contains "Thievery Corporation-Mirror Conspiracy*" in the track name and you can't see what the track name in the iPod menu because the name is to long. I would want it changed to something like:

1) Treasures

Every application I have tried you have to go in and manually edit each individual track name to remove the unwanted text. This will take WAY to much time. I would also be nice to be able to pull information from the freedb database and apply it to tracks that are missing tag information like artist and album title.

What tag editors do you guys use?

 

[Ayreonaut]

Freedb masstagger is an included general component of Foobar2000

You can get the data from freedb
or
You can select a group of files on the playlist and manually change the tags en masse
or
You can set it to guess tags from the filenames. For example if I had a file named:
"Ayreon, Into the Electric Castle, 02, Isis and Osiris.mp3" I could set it up to automatically guess the artist, album, track, and title fields from the file name. Cool huh?

 

[Helter Skelter]

I'll second Foobar's tagging capabilities.

 

[doctafonk]

I normally use Tag & Rename or MP3TS. Both very powerfull (mp3ts especially) and quite easy to use.

 

[dulath]

I use Mp3tag and enjoy it immensely. Easily converts from tags to file name or file name to tags using definable string varliables. Has plenty of other features.

 

[Sisyphos]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dulath I use Mp3tag and enjoy it immensely. Easily converts from tags to file name or file name to tags using definable string varliables. Has plenty of other features.

Yes, I second this recommendation of Mp3tag. But I use it only for re-tagging, for the case that Freedb gives different names for the same artists and therefore causes some confusion in the album list, i.e. 'Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' and 'Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds'. Anyway I tried different tagging-programs and ended up with this one, though I have to admit that I never tried Foobar itself for re-tagging.

 

[Edwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ayreonaut Freedb masstagger is an included general component of Foobar2000

Yes, but make sure you have the complete album with the songs in order.
Select all the songs, right click and select freedb -> get tags. If you get an error, make sure you have a working freedb server selected in the preferences.

-Ed

 

[headchange4u]

Thanks for the suggestions. I will start researching some of the programs you guys mentioned.

A google search turned up a program called FixTunes . This sounds like it may be sorta what I am looking for. Here's some features:

Quote:

FixTunes makes editting your songs tags incredibly easy. FixTunes will automatically download song information from an online database so you don't have to type anything. If you prefer the hands-on approach, FixTunes makes manually updating your songs easy as well. You can type in the information you want directly or you can search the music database from within the FixTunes program. Searching the database makes it easy to browse directly to the correct artist / album / song combination - even if you aren't sure what they are supposed to be. FixTunes will read and save both ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags to your MP3 song files - including artist, album, title, track, year genre, comments and album cover art. FixTunes will automatically download the album cover art images for your songs from the Internet and add them to your files. Many music programs (including iTunes) will display the album cover art image of the currently playing song if the image has been saved inside the file's ID3 tags. In addition to the traditional "list" view of your music library, FixTunes allows you to browse your music by album cover. Album art is organized by Artist, Genre or Year allowing you to quickly scan your music collection. Using FixTunes, you can easily organize thousands of music files into folders on your hard drive. FixTunes will ask you how you want your files names (for example: "Artist Name - Song Title (Track Number).mp3" and what type of folder structure you want to organize the files into (for example: "Music Folder \ Artist Name \ Album \ file"). All you have to do is answer a few questions and FixTunes takes care of the rest. FixTunes will also detect duplicate files and move the duplicate with the lower file size to a special duplicates directory that you can go through at your leisure. Automated Organization How long would it take you to manually go through all of your music and type in the correct information? With FixTunes, your entire music collection can be fixed and organized with just a few clicks. Here's how it works: * Step 1: FixTunes scans your computer / music folder(s) and finds your music files. * Step 2: With two clicks, you tell FixTunes to begin looking the correct information for your music files from the online database. * Step 3: Once the correct information has been downloaded, you simply tell FixTunes (with one click) to fix and organize your music files. The correct information is added, album art is downloaded, folders are created and organized, duplicates are removed and files are rename - all while you do something else (like sleep...). In addition to the correct tag data, FixTunes also downloads additional information about your songs and albums. From within the program, you have one-click access to a variety of sources including Google searches, Amazon.com catalog information, artist biographical information from Wikipedia and Amazon.com similar albums lists. FixTunes will also display details on the current album directly in the programs interface: Artist, label, year, genres and track listings (so you can easily see which tracks you have and which you don't).

Has anyone ever tried this software?

Foobar sounds like it may work also, but I am trying to avoid installing another media player. I already have WinAmp, Windows Media Player, iTunes, and VLC Media Player installed. I want something strictly for editing ID3 tags.

 

[headchange4u]

Update:

I have tried a couple of the programs that were listed above.

The first one I tried was MP3TS. It was a pretty nice. It did intergrate into the Windows shell, but it only renames the tracks from the right click menu. You can't edit tags from the right click menu, only change the naming format (album name/artist name/track name to track name only). The interface is a little cluttered and confusing and I don't see any way to apply freedb information to unknown tracks.

I also installed Foorbar2000 and tried it. I don't like Foobar. It 's way to complicated to set up and use. The sound quality was not any better than Winamp. After I managed to get the interface set up (took me about 20 mins) I tried the masstagger. It worked fine on my first unknown album. It pulled the info from freedb and filled everything in correctly, but I have tried several other unknow albums since then and it won't work. I keep getting a error (yes I have tried several different freedb servers with no luck).

 

[hippojam]

why is it that itunes can't be a good id3 tag editor as well? seems kind of stupid to have multiple programs for these tasks. but itunes is pretty confusing regarding what it does with id3 tags and what's simply just the itunes database.

anyone have any insight into why it works the way it does?

 

[CJC252]

MP3Tag or the built-in foobar masstagger, depending on what I'm tagging.

 

[Zoe]

Yes, there are lots of tag editors on the net, and it's very difficult to say which one is the best. As for me, recently I googled a good site where some nice collection of such applications can be found. I decided in favour of mp3Tag Pro. And it has already paid off because of its performance.