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ID3 tag editor

WRXHokie

WRXHokie

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 12, 2005
248
167
Gotha, FL
Hey all... i've been trying to clean up my iTunes library, and i'm tired of all the the songs that are incorrectly tagged and therefore show up wrong.

I'm looking for a program that can go through my library and edit the tags correctly without me manually having to go through them one by one in iTunes.

I've done my homework and have searched the forum for similar requests and have found and tried iEatBrainz, but i've found it INCREDIBLY slow. I set it to start editing my files last nite, let it run over nite and it only got thru about 500 of my songs in about 10 hours. Way too slow for me.

Are there any alternatives that are quicker?
 
I know where you're coming from. In my iTunes library on my PC I had spent literally hours updating 'Song Info' so that when I get my MacBook (hurry up Apple) it will have all my music as it appears now and so in my Library I hit Ctrl-A and then went to Advanced and then 'Convert ID3 Tags...' and then in the pop-up box choose 'Reverse Unicode'. This changes all the ID3 tags to the Song Info that you've put in. Worked for me ;)
There were only a couple of things where it went tits up (song titles in Japanese anyone) but this was about 5 out of 1300.
Takes a while but's reasonable.
 
id3 tags

I personally don't mind editing one by one on iTunes... not the issue. what is an issue is after 100s of hours of tagging and adding artwork to files, the tags wont work on other windows based devices. Obviously iTunes just stores the info on iTunes since the original bad tags show right up again on my phone.
does anyone know how to convert the iTunes taggage into real info that can be read by ALL mp3 players
 
RHVC59 said:
The Best program for managing music is not a mac based program, but you can use it on a mac inside VMware Fusion, or parallels.... It handles large music collections and can automatically fix your tags, and has a large support network. I have a gold license. For information on this editor see
http://www.mediamonkey.com/information/free/ :D
Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more.
Mediamonkey (along with Newsleecher/Soundforge/Acid) are the only reasons I require a bootcamp partition....I'd love it if OSX versions came out then I could dump Windows completely....
 
...to query a database...like gracenote

I want to query a database, like gracenote, with a Mac OSX app to obtain missing tag info, that was stored by iTunes, but is now lost due to the corruption of the partition map on my HD.

After reading tons of posts about lost tag info for wav files, I understand that a wav file can't store all the tag info in the wav file itself. But iTunes stores it separately, due to the limitation of wav file architecture. Apparently, from a post I read a while ago, all the tags for wav files are stored in the iTunes Music Folder, and if you import the iTunes Music Folder all tags for wav files will be restored. But while I was searching for data recovery options I reinstalled my OS....so no more iTunes Music Folder. I may have this completely wrong but this is what I've gleaned from all the forums I've come across. I've tried IEatBrainz and it's painfully slow. Media Rage won't retrieve info for the huge pile of wav files I have.

I recovered all files! and all mp3, mp4, aif, etc. have their ID tags. But now the only info that is available for wav files is track # and track name....

When I import into iTunes...it looks like this:
01 Cleveland's First Face Transplant
02 EnourmousheadpinheadhearT
03 Just Eat Air
04 Kill For Kids
etc., etc.

...no artist, album, track #, disc #, etc.

In iTunes, I could go into "Get Info" and identify all tracks at once by entering Artist "Safer" Album "EnormousheadpinheadhearT" Track # . . . you get the picture. But I calculate that this will take over 500 hours. Please let there be another way. I'll dance at your wedding, for a solution to this sh*t-storm-of-a-problem.
 
You could try Musorg, I use it for editing the tags of mp3s - it can connect to Gracenote and download track details.
 
I hate to say it. But this is one area I haven't found anything that competes with Tag&Rename on the windows side. The program is 14 bucks and it is by far the best program I have used for this type of application. One of three programs I use on the windows side and the reason I purchased VMWare.

Good luck if you find something please post back because I know I have been looking but haven't found anything remotely close.
 
rhett7660 said:
I hate to say it. But this is one area I haven't found anything that competes with Tag&Rename on the windows side. The program is 14 bucks and it is by far the best program I have used for this type of application. One of three programs I use on the windows side and the reason I purchased VMWare.

Good luck if you find something please post back because I know I have been looking but haven't found anything remotely close.
Click to expand...

doesnt tag and rename not search for song info?

RHVC59 said:
The Best program for managing music is not a mac based program, but you can use it on a mac inside VMware Fusion, or parallels.... It handles large music collections and can automatically fix your tags, and has a large support network. I have a gold license. For information on this editor see
http://www.mediamonkey.com/information/free/ :D
Click to expand...

this program looks good, whats with the gold version?
 
spacemanps said:
doesnt tag and rename not search for song info?



This program looks good, whats with the gold version?
Click to expand...

The gold version gives you some advanced features and faster CD burning, etc. I also got the lifetime license which was well worth the extra cash, basically it was $40 vs $20.:) I bought mine with version 1.5 and with the lifetime option, it is still good for each new version... I sure wish I had a gold license for Photoshop..
 
spacemanps said:
with the regular version, is there any limitations on how many songs i can fix..?
Click to expand...

Nope just need to do a few things manually...

Features in both versions
Audio / Music Manager (for Rock, Classical, Audiobooks, etc.)
Audio Player & leveler (MP3, AAC, OGG, WMA, FLAC etc.) + DSP Effects
Podcatcher
Auto-DJ & secure Party Mode
CD Ripper & Audio Converter: Encode MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC
Auto Renamer / File Organizer
Auto Tag Editor with Album Art Lookup
Find Duplicate Tracks and Missing Tags
Playlist Manager (auto music mixes)
Generate reports and statistics
Customization via addons and plug-ins
iPod and MP3 Player Synchronization
Integrated CD/DVD Burner (Audio & Data) Up to 4x

Gold Version has these features
Integrated CD/DVD Burner (Audio & Data) Up to 48x
File Monitor (automatically updates library)
Support for Multiple Collections (e.g. Rock & Classical)
On-the-fly Audio Conversion and Leveling for Syncs and Burns
Advanced Searches and AutoPlaylists
Unlimited MP3 encoding
Virtual CD / Previews & Sleep Timer
Automatic library organizer (as a background process)
High-speed conversion / leveling on multi-core systems
 
Stuff and Stuff said:
I want to query a database, like gracenote, with a Mac OSX app to obtain missing tag info, that was stored by iTunes, but is now lost due to the corruption of the partition map on my HD.

After reading tons of posts about lost tag info for wav files, I understand that a wav file can't store all the tag info in the wav file itself. But iTunes stores it separately, due to the limitation of wav file architecture. Apparently, from a post I read a while ago, all the tags for wav files are stored in the iTunes Music Folder, and if you import the iTunes Music Folder all tags for wav files will be restored. But while I was searching for data recovery options I reinstalled my OS....so no more iTunes Music Folder. I may have this completely wrong but this is what I've gleaned from all the forums I've come across. I've tried IEatBrainz and it's painfully slow. Media Rage won't retrieve info for the huge pile of wav files I have.

I recovered all files! and all mp3, mp4, aif, etc. have their ID tags. But now the only info that is available for wav files is track # and track name....

When I import into iTunes...it looks like this:
01 Cleveland's First Face Transplant
02 EnourmousheadpinheadhearT
03 Just Eat Air
04 Kill For Kids
etc., etc.

...no artist, album, track #, disc #, etc.

In iTunes, I could go into "Get Info" and identify all tracks at once by entering Artist "Safer" Album "EnormousheadpinheadhearT" Track # . . . you get the picture. But I calculate that this will take over 500 hours. Please let there be another way. I'll dance at your wedding, for a solution to this *****-storm-of-a-problem.
Click to expand...

Why has nobody recommended MusicBrainz Picard? (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Picard) Sometimes it has some problems recognizing your songs but you can also do some stuff manually which is still faster than editing it via iTunes. There are some plugins available too that are really great.

It similar to iEatBrainz though but I never found it to be to slow. iEatBrainz was discontinued so maybe it uses a slower engine.
 
Last edited:
Are there any free ID3 tag editors that allow you to batch edit the tags for multiple tracks and also change the filenames based on the trackname and track number?
 
alas, all of the good programs for auto tag editing are for windows..
magic mp3 tagger is useful, discovers missing info automatically.
also, there is a freeware app called taghycardia - does "quick and dirty" auto mp3 tagging, searches online for missing data, corrects many itunes-related tag faults. i use it all the time.
 
So, what's everyone using now for their ID3 tagging needs? I've looked at some of the stuff in the thread, but a lot of it is pretty old. So, any more recent software that people are finding useful?
 
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