MP3Tags

[DoctorJellybean]

I found this very useful article by Steve re MP3Tag Actions:

 

My question is this: Is it possible to create an action to read both the Title and Artist from the Filename? An example: if the filename is Blondie - Heart Of Glass, then the Title is Heart Of Glass and the Artist Blondie.

 

 

[Steve]

Alright man. Welcome to the forum.

 

It is possible to do that. Create a new action and select "Guess values" from the drop-down list, then in the "Source format" field type in the following: -

 

%_filename%

 

In the "Guessing pattern" field, type this in: -

 

%artist% - %title%

 

Or, if you want to write the artist's name to the Album Artist field rather than the Artist field, type this in instead: -

 

%albumartist% - %title%

 

The best way to approach tagging overall is to create multiple actions in one action group. For example, here's the action group I use the most: -

 

http://i.imgur.com/5zsjnxL.jpg

 

So by clicking on the Action menu and selecting that action group, it will automatically do the following: -

 

Replace all instances of "Feat." and "Feat" with "ft."

Write the artist and album title info to the tag using the folder name

Write the track number and track title info to the tag using the file name

Copy the artist field to the album artist field

Replace any double apostrophes with quotation marks

Tag the genre as Hip-Hop

Tag the year as 2014

Embed the folder.jpg file into each track

 

Obviously, not all the music I tag is hip-hop released in 2014, but I chose the most used choices there. You can manually change the release date and genre if you need to, or, if the release year and/or genre is in the file or folder name somewhere, you can create an action to tag them automatically.

 

If you have your file names in ARTIST - SONG TITLE format, obviously you can create your own variation on the above, or you can create multiple action groups depending on the naming scheme, then run which ever is appropriate. It massively cuts down on the time it takes to tag music.

 

Oh yeah, you probably know this already, but make sure you properly use the Artist and Album Artist fields if you want your music to display properly in music players. In most cases, the Artist and Album Artist are the same, for instance if you were tagging Blondie's Parallel Lines LP, they would be the same. It's pretty much only compilations where the Artist and Album Artist fields would be different as you'd put "Various Artists" for the album artist and the actual individual artists' names in each Artist field. That's why I have an action that copies the contents of the Artist field to the Album Artist field as the vast majority of the albums I tag are not compilations.

[DoctorJellybean]

Thank you for the fast reply!

 

I'm in the process of ripping my tapes and CD's to put the tracks on a USB drive for the car. Your original article and the above info will be of great help, thank you. Since the car stereo displays track title and artist, that is all I really need. However, I'll save the other info as well to make it complete.

 

Pity car stereos don't use (as far as I know) ReplayGain so that I don't have to adjust the volume for each track, but that's another topic.

Edited March 16, 2014 by DoctorJellybean

[Steve]

I don't know if there are any car stereos that support ReplayGain, but this might be an alternative: -

 

http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/