Don't you just hate editing ID3 tags? Well, I did.
I haven't yet seen a program that had enough intelligence and automation in it. I don't want to have to use "copy-paste" 15 times in a row, or spend 15 minutes copying track titles by hand. There are some GUI programs that try to make life easier, but choosing from / setting a predefined set of options doesn't give enough flexibility, imho.
This is more like what I wanted:
id3 -2 -a "Some Artist" -n %1 -t %2 -l "Some Album" "*. *.mp3"
Oh well...
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license
squell@goth.net
Synopsis
id3 [-v] [-M] [-12] [-d] [-t title] [-a artist] [-l album] [-n tracknr] [-y year] [-g genre] [-c comment] [-f template] [-q format] [-m] [-D file] [-R] [-s size] [-E] [-u] [-rFRAME] [-wFRAME data] "filespec"Description
id3 mass tagger is a tool for manipulating id3 and id3v2 tags in multi- ple files. It can generate tag fields from the filename and other vari- ables, and/or rename files, using an intuitive syntax. id3 currently supports the old-style ID3 tags (ID3 v1.1), Lyrics3 tags (Lyrics3 v2.0), and the more complicated ID3v2 (ID3 v2.2.0, v2.3.0) format. This also means use is pretty much limited to audio files which use these formats, e.g, MPEG-1 Layer III.Examples
Here are some examples of using id3:
Fore more information, consult the documentation.
- id3 -a "Stallman" -t "Free Software Song" fs_song.mp3"
- Add a simple tag to a file.
- id3 -d *.mp3
- Removes all ID3v1 tags from all mp3's
- id3 -g "psych rock" *.mp3
- Sets genre to "Psychedelic Rock" all mp3's
- id3 -2 -1 -u "*.mp3"
- Copy ID3v2 tag to ID3v1 tag in all files.
- id3 -a "TAFKAT" -n "%1" -t "%+2" "*. *.mp3"
- Update tag fields similar to this;
id3 -a "TAFKAT" -n "01" -t "My Song" "01. my_song.mp3"
id3 -a "TAFKAT" -n "02" -t "Untitled" "02. untitled.mp3"
- id3 -2 -f "%a - %t.mp3" blaet.mp3
- Rename file to a standard "Artist - Title" format, using ID3v2 values.
- id3 -g "alt rock" -a "The Author" -l %1 -n %2 -t %3 "Author - */(*) *.mp3"
- Process multiple directories at once.
- id3 -g "alt rock" -a "The Author" -m "Author - %l/(%n) %t.mp3"
- Shorthand for the previous example.
- id3 -a %t -t %a "*.mp3"
- Swap artist and title fields in all mp3's.
- id3 -D source.mp3 -1 -2 dest.mp3
- Copy ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags of source.mp3 to dest.mp3
- id3 -D source.mp3 -1u -2u dest.mp3
- As above, but only replaces the non-standard or blank fields in dest.mp3 by data from source.mp3.
- id3 -2 -rAPIC -s 0 *.mp3
- Removes embedded images and padding from all mp3's.
- id3 -2 -rAPIC -s 0 -R "*.mp3" "/my documents"
- As above, but works recursively on all mp3's in the directory tree starting at /my documents
- id3 -2 -q "%| %a - %|Untitled|t || %t || %1 |?" "*.mp3"
- Generate a playlist, using the best possible text
- id3 -2 -c "Was: %_f" -f "%|Unknown|a - %|Untitled (%#x)|t.mp3" "*.mp3"
- Advanced rename. Saves previous filename in the comment field, and renames files without proper tags to;
- Unknown - Untitled (01).mp3
- Unknown - Untitled (02).mp3
- ... etc
Version History
0.78 21.mar.2006 Lyrics3 support, added -E, minor enhancements
0.77 2.feb.2006 added ID3v2 v2.2 (iTunes default) and Unicode support,
added -M (preserve file time) and -D (copy tags between files)0.76 21.jul.2005 added -m, -R, fixed some ID3v2 rejections 0.75 03.feb.2005 file renaming, reading data from tags 0.74 25.jun.2004 bugfixes, improvements 0.73 27.may.2004 (incomplete) user locale support 0.72 28.jan.2004 directory searching, minor improvements 0.71 23.oct.2003 improved interface, optimizations 0.70 07.aug.2003 fixes problems with ID3v2 tags 0.60 11.jul.2003 initial public release
Developer Notes
Like some programs, this too grew out of a program with an ad-hoc design, slapped together to scratch a need. Besides its obvious purpose, this has also become an exercise in writing a fully portable program, trying out C++ design techniques, etc.If you like this program, you can help by preparing binary packages, or by trying to build it on an uncommon system. If you're interested, or have already been doing this, please drop me a message!
Bugs
ID3v2.2 tags (the format iTunes likes to write) cannot be processed by id3 versions prior to 0.77. ID3v2.4 tags are still rejected.
Download
ID3 mass tagger uses the package name id3mtag in package distributions to avoid confusion with other programs.
filename size version notes id3-0.78.tar.gz 63kb C++ source (*nix format) id3-078s.zip 86kb C++ source id3-078w.zip 87kb Win32 console binary gcc 3.4.5 / MinGW id3-078d.zip 126kb 32bit DOS binary gcc 4.0.1 / DJGPP id3mtag_0.78_i386.deb 73kb i386 GNU/Linux binary gcc 4.0.3 / Debian (unofficial) id3mtag-0.78.shar 2kb FreeBSD port files previous release id3-0.77.tar.gz 59kb C++ source (*nix format) id3-077s.zip 79kb C++ source id3-077w.zip 79kb Win32 console binary gcc 3.4.5 / MinGW id3-077d.zip 119kb 32bit DOS binary gcc 4.0.1 / DJGPP id3mtag_0.77_i386.deb 67kb i386 GNU/Linux binary gcc 3.3.5 / Debian (unofficial) id3mtag-0.77.shar 2kb FreeBSD port files
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
accompanying file `COPYING' for more details.
Copyright
© squell 2003-2006. All rights reserved.This program may be used freely, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
For the actual licensing conditions you should read the file 'COPYING', which should be accompanying the files you receive.