Tagging Media Files

Klash

The quick of it is, I need something to edit the tags of a large numbers of sound files. I've been ripping and ignoring my CDs since a bit before WMP11 came out. I used WMP10 prior to that, and loved it. It was great for quickly running through tagging stuff.

WMP11 decided to kneecap that, and wasn't very handy, so I gave up. I recently tried again, only to find out that WMP12 doesn't have any tagging capabilities at all. Instead, you get this weak little bar at the bottom of the explorer window, when selecting a file. This is not an ideal way to tag things.

So, with years of piled up CDs, I want to get this stuff tagged so I can use it on my computer, all nice and compartmentalized. WMP10 was a perfect system for this, WMP11 was too weak to bother, and WMP12 has nothing (sure, I could rollback, but my experience with rollbacks on XP weren't pleasant).

Anybody have recommendations for programs, not for converting files or playing files, but with a focus on editing tags? I was thinking Winamp, which I haven't used since 2005, so I'm uncertain if its any good these days. If it makes a difference, I'm running Win7 x64, so programs will need to compatible.

And apparently WMP11 came out in 2006. I didn't realize how long it'd been, but I'd like to wade through the forest of "Unknown - Unknown - Unknown - Etc".

Azio

PicardTagger will analyse the waveform of each song and compare it against a database, and assign the appropriate tags automatically. It has a bit of a learning curve, and it's not 100% accurate, but it will save you a lot of grief.

MP3Tag is good for manual editing of tags.

Winamp lives to this day, but it's a bit of a pig now. It ain't the Winamp you grew up with. If you're looking for a lean mean tweaker app in the spirit of Ye Olde Winamp, your best bet right now is foobar2000. Some babbies don't like it because it requires a bit of initial effort. They can cry all they want but I think it's Goddamn brilliant. And yes it has a good tag editor.

Klash

Thanks for the suggestions, Azio.

I downloaded MP3Tag, it looks like it might just about do the trick, as I like to manually tag (be sure its all to my standards and such). I'll give foobar a shot, if MP3Tag doesn't work out.

I also tried Winamp, but found it was just as ugly and compact as I remember. Not much fun to navigate.

Edit: Alright, MP3Tag is just about perfect. Three things that it doesn't do, which WMP10 used, though:

1. When you erase a song's "name"/"title" it reverts to the file name, in WMP10. This allowed me to just fly down a list hitting backspace > down arrow > backspace > down arrow > etc, as I've already changed the file names. With MP3Tag, I've got to hand-type all the names back in/copy+paste them from the file name.
2. I can't seem to move files up and down my list, making placing things in track order impossible. First I have to put the track #, then hit the sort button for track #, then hit the sort button for artist. A bit of a hassle. This is a problem WMP11 had as well, where it wouldn't let you manually move songs up and down the list via click/drag.
3. I've noticed you can move on to the next song by pressing "Enter" while tagging, but its not quite as useful for running up and down a list. In WMP10 you could select an item to edit in the list, then move to the next item in the list by pressing the up or down arrows.

Is it possible to do these things in MP3Tag? Its just a bit of convenience I'd like to have.

Azio

I honestly am not sure because I don't use MP3Tag. I would advise using Picard, because if you have a particular tagging scheme you can configure Picard to observe it. It is pretty accurate and, as I said, it will save you a lot of grief.

Klash

Picard sounds interesting. So, it basically analyzes music, figures out what it is from a database, then seeks the information?

I've opted for a bit of a loop hole, though. Its working pretty well. I'm using my virtual XP, as it has WMP9. Works just as I remember.

Again, thanks for the suggestions. MP3Tag let me get a lot of stuff done.

Azio

Picard sounds interesting. So, it basically analyzes music, figures out what it is from a database, then seeks the information?

Yeah. Then it lets you verify the tags it found. It doesn't write them until you say it's okay. It will even highlight songs that have low search "confidence" so you can make sure everything got identified correctly.

mere_immortal

Mediamonkey is excellent. It's got pretty much any tagging capability you need, can change anything else about the music you have and has a whole bunch of community addons and scripts.

The best part though is that it can auto change filenames and sort your entire collection exactly how you want. So you could have everything bunched together in your music folder and it will change the filenames to whatever you want (eg. Artist - Song) and then put them all in whatever sort of file structure you want (by artist or by first letter of artist then artist themselves etc.)