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Kubaton

macrumors member
Aug 11, 2013
58
5
Well, I'll give you that. If you use scripts, particularly custom scripts, MP3Tag is irreplaceable.

I stopped using these when I stopped bothering to organize my music collection's layout. This happened when I switched to using iTunes and had it set to keep the media folder organized.. At first I was very reluctant to let iTunes (or any other algorithm) touch my collection. Actually, I preferred not using iTunes at all since I was used to far superior music players like MusicBee and Foobar.

But iTunes is so well-integrated into OS X, and 3rd party music players are so low on features, that I just decided to give up and stick with iTunes. It's working pretty well surprisingly.

I let iTunes keep my music library folder organized also. I use MP3Tag to sort my albums, once matched using iTunes Match, to a backup location for archiving.
 

bruceleeperry

macrumors newbie
Dec 17, 2013
2
0
Hi, first post!
I'm looking for something like ABetterFinderRename for tags-I have around 5000 files with key information written into the title tag. This is what I want BUT this info has been written by 2 or 3 different key detection programs and I want to wipe it all and re-detect/standardize them all using one program. Wiping the key tag itself and the key info appended to the actual file name is easy, it's just the pesky title tag I need to hopefully batch remove the last few characters from. Any ideas? I've been looking for a while but no luck so far.

Thanks for any input

edit: got the basic issue solved with Yate! Super-responsive devoloper too, money well-spent, thanks.
 
Last edited:

Bild

macrumors newbie
Feb 8, 2014
1
0
It does indeed work great...and it's free!

I'm new to all this, but I've got over 5,000 songs and have been using Kid3 as my Tag editor. It works great and is intuitive. It allows for changing tags on multiple files - even across albums and artists.

Additional features: You can easily rename filenames from tags, tags from filenames, capitalize filenames and/or tags, automatically replace characters (i.e., '-' for ':') as you input and drag and drop album art - for one song or for as many songs at one time as you want - even across albums and artists. You can also add / delete / move files in the Finder and the changes will automatically, and instantly, be reflected in Kid3. Also, it appears to work just as easily with all file formats. You can also play a song within Kid3 (although it appears not to be able to play .wma files).

I wish it had a great find & replace feature, but otherwise it works great. It's very easy to use - even with large collections.

I've tried some of the other tag editors suggested here and find them to either be confusing to use or not as feature rich as Kid3.

According to Kid3: "Kid3 is an application to edit the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags in MP3 files in an efficient way. Also tags in Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, APE, MP4/AAC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio, WavPack, WMA, WAV, AIFF files and tracker modules (MOD, S3M, IT, XM) are supported. It is easy to set tags of multiple files to the same values (e.g. album, artist, year and genre in all files of the same album) and generate the tags from the file name or vice versa."

You can find it at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kid3/?source=directory.

It does indeed work great...and it's free! Thanks for the link.
 

jackbristow

macrumors newbie
Jan 22, 2014
2
0
Hi everyone - first post too! I was wondering if anyone has heard of SongKong? I've been trying it out for free but wanted to know what other people thought about it but taking the plunge and paying for it.

Any advice is appreciated! :)
 

JuliaJohnson

macrumors newbie
Feb 18, 2014
4
0
I have also been trying out the trial, it appears to do a decent job. It said it found 90% of files and trawling through the report seems to have done them right, am going to buy.
 

JuliaJohnson

macrumors newbie
Feb 18, 2014
4
0
okay from what I seen so far it seems easy enough in that you pick a folder and it does the matching, you don't have to pick anything you can just let it get on with it - though it takes a while, but it does add ALOT of info not just song title. And the other thing is that you can reorganize your files based on matches using any piece of information it finds but I've only used the preview so far so I have not done actual renames yet.

Oh and it also does delete duplicate and that worked as well
 

timpicks

macrumors newbie
Aug 12, 2013
10
0
Yate for best MP3 tagger - not even a contest

tl;dr: Yate. Best MP3 tagger ever.

Like many of you, I struggled to find a good MP3 tagger when I switched from Windows to Mac. I used the ever-popular MP3Tag on Windows for years, and although it had some "quirks" (to say the least), I learned how to work around the them.

Well let me tell you -- Yate is hands-down the best MP3 tagger on any platform, period. Within 30 minutes I was tagging faster and more efficiently than MP3Tag could ever hope to accomplish. I tried at least half a dozen Mac tagging programs, and none of them had everything you want. Yate has everything. Everything!

I'm what you'd call an "obsessive tagger". I like every MP3 to be "just so", and I hate manually editing anything. Yate takes care of this problem with its Rename and Action functions. Now I click a few buttons and everything is tagged exactly how I want it, with minimal (if any) manual intervention. It's somewhat difficult to believe it when you try it, because it *shouldn't* be this easy - yet it is. Have I mentioned yet that it also works on FLAC files?

The developer is SUPER-responsive, is open to all suggestions for new features, and frankly should be making a mint off this product. I've NEVER spent $20 so wisely in my life.

Give it a try at http://www.2manyrobots.com. And no, I'm not being paid. I'm just passionate about GREAT software when I see it.
 

lannister80

macrumors 6502
Apr 7, 2009
490
17
Chicagoland
Copy tags from one mp3 to another?

Does anyone know of tagging software that allows you to copy tags from one mp3 to another?

I have a whole bunch of files that I'm "upgrading" from ancient 128kbps encodes to much higher quality ones, but I spent a lot of time on the original tags and it would be a pain to do it all over again.

Maybe something with two columns of files, source of tags on the left, destination of tags on the right, and you line them up in the correct order and hit a "copy" button?

I realize I could probably to this at the command line using some id3 utility + a script, but I didn't know if some handy Mac GUI app already exists that can do this. Thanks!
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,541
942
Does anyone know of tagging software that allows you to copy tags from one mp3 to another?
You might find something that would work from Doug's Applescripts for iTunes.

There are also several tagging apps out there, such as SongKong and Jaikoz, but I haven't tested them to see if they would do what you want. I find that most automatic tagging apps download tags, which don't always match my personal tagging conventions. It takes much longer, but I prefer to manually tag my songs, to meet my own preferences.
 

lannister80

macrumors 6502
Apr 7, 2009
490
17
Chicagoland
You might find something that would work from Doug's Applescripts for iTunes.

There are also several tagging apps out there, such as SongKong and Jaikoz, but I haven't tested them to see if they would do what you want. I find that most automatic tagging apps download tags, which don't always match my personal tagging conventions. It takes much longer, but I prefer to manually tag my songs, to meet my own preferences.
I ended up compiling this locally:

http://id3lib.sourceforge.net

And using the "id3cp" tool to copy the tags. I just it all up in a shell script and let it go to work.

I did have to clear the existing tag from the destination files first before copying, otherwise you'd end up with two tags on the destination file.
 

MDJCM

macrumors regular
Sep 12, 2009
191
80
UK, South
Jeez, I just tried 3 recommendations from this thread and it's tough to believe nothing matches the sheer power/flexibility of an MP3 tagger I was using on Windows 10 years ago.

Not often I come across things that Windows is better at.

Can't even remember the name of the program MP3Tag maybe. But it let user easily set templates/formulas for naming to and from the filename and it made sorting thousands of messy tracks much easier.
 

chakdey

macrumors regular
Aug 9, 2008
106
76
Those of you using YATE! when you save the updated tags in yate! in my case removing the tags, the update does not show in the files in finder. They show perfectly the the way i want within YATE. What am I missing?
 

ijabz

macrumors newbie
Feb 6, 2014
20
0
bridport, dorset
Im just guessing, but could it be your files are mp3 format and Yate has only remove the metadata from an ID3v2 tag, but left the information in an ID3v1 tag (mp3s can contain both types in one file, V2 is stored at the start of the file and V1 at the end of the file).
 

chakdey

macrumors regular
Aug 9, 2008
106
76
I see what your saying. You wouldn't happen to know how to solve this issue ..would you? I'm still messing with it maybe I'll get it.
 

wrishel

macrumors newbie
Mar 11, 2015
1
0

It seems to work well, but there is one major drawback. If you have organized your files into directories by album then renaming operations have to be done separately for each album directory.

Ideally it would offer an option to operate on multiple directories and, if the album name were changed, move the file to the correct directory using the scheme used by iTunes

----------

Jeez, I just tried 3 recommendations from this thread and it's tough to believe nothing matches the sheer power/flexibility of an MP3 tagger I was using on Windows 10 years ago.

Not often I come across things that Windows is better at.

Can't even remember the name of the program MP3Tag maybe. But it let user easily set templates/formulas for naming to and from the filename and it made sorting thousands of messy tracks much easier.

I remember that program and think I may still have it on an old Windows machine. Guess I'll have to suffer for awhile in order to get this job done.

----------

It does indeed work great...and it's free! Thanks for the link.

After reading about the bad things SourceForge is doing, incenting authors to add crapware to downloads, I have resolved never to download from it again.

I hope I can find this elsewhere.
 

MDJCM

macrumors regular
Sep 12, 2009
191
80
UK, South
[/COLOR]

After reading about the bad things SourceForge is doing, incenting authors to add crapware to downloads, I have resolved never to download from it again.

I hope I can find this elsewhere.

Oh I didn't know SourceForge was going downhill, good to know
 

Sarah L

macrumors member
Oct 22, 2014
40
2
France
Hi,
After reading this thread I downloaded Tag Editor this afternoon and imported my itunes media files to it. I then 'fixed' all I wanted to fix (adding Album names, and ensuring 'title' & 'artist' were in the right columns etc) and then hit 'save'.

However, I've obviously missed something because when I go back to I-tunes nothing's fixed.

Can anyone tell me what I need to do to apply the changes within i-tunes?
 

mic j

macrumors 68030
Mar 15, 2012
2,663
156
Hi,
After reading this thread I downloaded Tag Editor this afternoon and imported my itunes media files to it. I then 'fixed' all I wanted to fix (adding Album names, and ensuring 'title' & 'artist' were in the right columns etc) and then hit 'save'.

However, I've obviously missed something because when I go back to I-tunes nothing's fixed.

Can anyone tell me what I need to do to apply the changes within i-tunes?
Delete all the tracks in your iTunes library. Then add them all back. (You could also open them individually, using Get Info, but that would be a real pain if you have a lot of them.)

I guess I should add some explanation. With the tag editors that I am aware of, and I have not used the one you just used, they change the file metadata only. The iTunes database imports that metadata when you add a track. Now that you have changed the metadata in the file, you need to get that new metadata in the iTunes database.
 

Sarah L

macrumors member
Oct 22, 2014
40
2
France
Thanks for your mega-quick reply :)
WOW - delete them all?

OK - how do I do that? (I really need a "mac for dumbos" book, I'm quite new to it and the storage system is so different to windows I'm constantly worried I'll delete something forever)

Do I go through 'finder'? If so, what's the difference in name between the i-tunes folder (where the files are untouched) and the Tag editor file (where they're fixed). When I hit 'save' in Tag Editor it never asked for a new folder name.

I've got about 1100 songs.
 

mic j

macrumors 68030
Mar 15, 2012
2,663
156
Thanks for your mega-quick reply :)
WOW - delete them all?

OK - how do I do that? (I really need a "mac for dumbos" book, I'm quite new to it and the storage system is so different to windows I'm constantly worried I'll delete something forever)

Do I go through 'finder'? If so, what's the difference in name between the i-tunes folder (where the files are untouched) and the Tag editor file (where they're fixed). When I hit 'save' in Tag Editor it never asked for a new folder name.

I've got about 1100 songs.
Open iTunes. Select "Music" top left. Make sure you are using the "Songs" view, top right (as opposed to "Albums" view. Click on the 1st song in the list. Scroll to the bottom of the list and Shift click on the last track. That should highlight all the tracks in your music library. (Note: make sure you are only selecting music tracks not radio stations, music videos, etc) Hit Delete. It should ask you if you want to delete the songs; you will click Yes. It will then ask you if you want to delete the music files as well; you will click No. (Note: that point is very important!!! You do not want to delete your files only the contents of the iTunes database). When you click No, your iTunes library will not have any music tracks.

Now go to the File pull-down and select Add to Library... Navigate to your music folders, select all the ones you want to add back and click ok. Your library with repopulate with all of your music files. Select a track that you have modified with the updated metadata. Do a "Command I" (which is the shortcut for Get Info) and you can verify that the new metadata has been loaded.

That's it. It really won't take long to add the 1100 songs back in to the database.

Let me know if you have a problem. JUST DON'T delete any of your actual music files and nothing done, can't be undone if there is a problem. Good luck.
 

afterhours

macrumors member
Nov 24, 2004
38
9
Thanks for your mega-quick reply :)
WOW - delete them all?

OK - how do I do that? (I really need a "mac for dumbos" book, I'm quite new to it and the storage system is so different to windows I'm constantly worried I'll delete something forever)

Do I go through 'finder'? If so, what's the difference in name between the i-tunes folder (where the files are untouched) and the Tag editor file (where they're fixed). When I hit 'save' in Tag Editor it never asked for a new folder name.

I've got about 1100 songs.


That seems a bit extreme. He may be right, but I've found with movies and TV shows, the meta data isn't updated in the iTunes database after I've made metatag edits to the files in the iTunes folder unless I then go back into iTunes, select the show of interest and Get Info on it (Command-I within iTunes). At that point, what is displayed in iTunes then updates visually. Maybe it works the same way with the Music folder items. Delete and reimport? I doubt it. But I haven't tested this idea with music.

Note: I don't actually do ANYTHING within the iTunes Get Info window -- only view the file, select the next one, and next one… and click on Cancel in the end. All data, including the parts that are not editable within iTunes such as MPAA rating, populates from what I added with my tag editor of choice (Subler).
 
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