How To: MP3Tag

[Slaughter]

PLEASE REFER TO THIS ARTICLE FOR MORE DETAILED HOW-TO WITH SCREENSHOTS







You can download the program mp3tag here: http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

This is a very basic guide to a very powerful tool. MP3Tag is capable of things that would blow your mind, but they are too in depth for this guide. This guide is for MP3 files, but it may apply to other formats as well.

First, go to Tools/Options and make sure MP3Tag is reading v1/v2/APE, only writing ID3v2.3 UTF-16 and only deleting v1/APE. While you're in the Options, you can turn on the Subfolder option under General if you want to see all your tunes at one time. Before you start tagging, you want to select all your files and go to File/Remove Tag option to remove all v1/APE tags. APE tags are for Monkey audio and even though a track can contain both ID3 v1 and v2 tags, some players have conflicts using both.

1. Open MP3Tag and select all the songs for a particular album.
2. Select TagSource from the top toolbar and select the database you would like to search for tag information. I like to use the Amazon option under freedb, but you may have to try the other options as well.
3. It will say Search By Album. Enter the artist name here and hit OK.
4. It should return all albums by that artist. Choose the the correct one and hit OK. (you can hit Preview and it will launch the Amazon page so you can double check if needed.)
5. Now you can see how it is going to tag your files. You can also choose to embed the album art if desired. Hit OK and it will tag all your files for that album.

Good luck.

Feel free to leave feedback or other helpful suggestions and I may add them to this guide. Remember, this is a basic user guide.

[Pheonix23]

i don't see how to get the mp3tag to show amazon in step 2 can you explain that cause i have mp3tag but i don't get how to embed the album pic.

[Andreas]

open the song in mp3 tag, select it, choose "tag sources" from the menu and then "amazon".

[BobbyRS]

Edit: Revized step two.

[Danbk]

At the beginning of this post, you mentioned (Slaughter) that you can do pretty much one CD at a time (yes, it’s a very basic guide I know!!). Is there an easy way to tag hundreds / thousands of files all at once or do you (I) have to do each on separately? Doing them on at a time is nuts!!! All of them are in one miscellaneous folder. Using another program easier or can I use MP3Tag? At first, I tried using Winamp 11. It came back with about 90% correct. Finding the 10% wrong ones though….

[sassafras]

Not all at once, but you can have it scan the whole folder, and then select songs or groups of songs to search and find the tags for. Tedious, but you'll only be doing it once.

[Danbk]

...that is what I was thinking of (and hoped I was wrong.) Tedious is the word though. Good thing I just bought two cases of beer and its supposed to rain all weekend.... Thanks for the help though.

[f_h_l]

can Mp3Tag show Japanese characters as name?

[BobbyRS]

From there web site:

Languages included:

[JK98]

Is there any easy way to set the Title tag equal to the filename for a folder of files using MP3Tag?

[BobbyRS]

Yeah, I believe so....... try:

1. Select the file you want to re-tag and select Convert and select Actions
2. Create a new Action Group and name it what ever you want
3. Select the create new button and select Format Value for the action type
4. Select TITLE for the Field box
5. For the Format String select > box and then Information fields, then directory
6. Ok, the rest of the way out and run the Action.

That should generate a new Title in the tag based on the folder/directory the file is located within. This should get you started in the right direction with what you are wanting to do. Good luck!

[JK98]

I tried following what you suggested. It changed the title to the word directory, not the filename of the file. I don't understand what I am doing, so giving exact instructions is important.

[BobbyRS]

You are selecting "directory" from the list, not typing it in. Anyway, how about using the Convert option of Filename - Tag. You can then select what format strings you want to use from the file names to create the tag.

[JK98]

"Anyway, how about using the Convert option of Filename - Tag."

Thank you! That works just fine! i selected all first, and it filled in the title with the filename(minus the extension) for all of them.

[BobbyRS]

Ok, much better. Sorry for the confusion.

[SarahofBorg]

I hope this works! I've been searching forever for a good tagging program. Problem is I literally have thousands of songs. WMP tagged a lot for me, but hundreds were either improperly tagged or left untagged. I already have all my songs organized by folder and filename, but that's just not what players use anymore. Damn you ID3 tags! Why can't all players just use the folder system like they used to?

[edit] It took some serious figuring out, but this is an amazing tool. It did everything I needed once I figured out how. I managed to do everything I needed in about an hour's worth of work.

PROTIP: When you're done creating an action group MAKE SURE you check off only the group you want to use. That screwed me up for a LONG time.

Now my only problem is how to replace these files on my external HD...ow my head hurts just thinking about it...

[forawesome]

Can MP3tag do the grunt work of organizing my files into folders? I'm pretty anal about keeping my tags correct (thanks to this very program), but foolishly, I've been dumping all my files into one big folder. Can mp3tag go through them all, sorting it into genre/ artist/etc, or am I gonna have to do this the hard way?

[BobbyRS]

MP3Tag is really anID3 Tag editor, not much of a File Manager. It works more with the metadata.

[forawesome]

Gotcha, that's what I was afraid of. I guess manually sorting things by genre isn't too bad... thanks!

[BobbyRS]

With ID3 tags, you can sort by Genre, Artists, Titles, Albums.... once they are tagged properly, sorting is pretty much automatic.