I downloaded MP3tag but have no idea how to use it?

[MichaelD]

I downloaded MP3tag. It looks to be a very powerful program; the problem is that I have no idea how to start using it. 😱

I have almost 6,000 MP3s and the problem is that over the years I've used five different naming conventions when I ripped them. Now WMP just can't seem to get them all catalogued correctly in the library...so I want to rename them all to ONE naming format:

Artist AlbumName Track# TrackName Length BitRate Genre

Can someone walk me thru how to do this? I have backups of my music, so I'm not worried about hosing the copy on my PC.

Thanks very much for any help you can provide!!

 

[Nohr]

If your MP3s are already tagged correctly this is simple to do.

1) Load the MP3s in mp3tag.
2) Select them all in mp3tag with CTRL-A.
3) Go to the Convert menu, then "Tag - Filename".
4) Use variables to name the files based on the tags. The Help button shows all the variables you can use.

To do what you're wanting you'd use the following:
%artist% %album% %track% %title% %_length% %_bitrate% %genre%

You can also add punctuation like dashes, parentheses & underscores and whatnot if you like.
For example:
(%track%) %artist% - %title%
would produce
(1) Unknown Artist - Song Title.mp3

 

[MichaelD]

Hi Nohr; thanks much for the detailed reply. :thumbsup:

I'm not home right now, so i can't test it out.

My concern is that my MP3s have all different tags and they are not in the same order. For example:

Black Sabbath Paranoid 1. Paranoid.mp3
1) Led Zeppelin Kashmir Wonton Song 256KB/s mp3
Some Girls Rolling Stones 1.Before They Make Me Run 1980

^^Like that. All the songs have tags, but they're all mixed up. Is there a way to standardize it? If you already told me, I apologize for my ignorance. 😱

 

[MrChad]

Different tags (as in ID3 tags) or different file names? Different file names aren't a problem because the program will read the embedded ID3 tags and rename the files to the same format.

 

[abaez]

Yea, if you have proper id3 tags the renaming will be a snap. If you don't, well good luck.

 

[MichaelD]

I honestly have no idea if I have "proper ID3 tags" or not. I've been using MP3s for almost as long as they've been around, but I'm not a super-software-sleuth...or whatever.

I'm home now and will try the instructions Nohr gave me, above. Will edit this post and report results.

*edit*
Crap. (Kind of says it all, huh?) I guess I don't have "all proper ID3 tags" since the test files shows some weird stuff.

Manually renaming everything would take weeks...and I don't have all the original CDs with me; they are in storage. So I can't re-rip everything (nor would I!). I have to think on this one. 😕

 

[bwatson283]

If you dont know, why did you download it?

 

[theprodigalrebel]

I think I used that program before. Don't remember it since I switched to MediaMonkey for all music duties. Very intuitive, very fast and excellent for media playback (all DRM-free formats, including FLAC). Batch-renaming is pretty easy too. Select all the files, choose auto-organize files and use wild cards. For eg. <Artist> - <Track #> - <Title> (or any way you like)

Of course, it works if you have all the ID Tags set up right. If you don't, you can always infer ID tags from the file name. Then again, this works assuming all the filenames follow the same pattern.

Either way, MediaMonkey or MP3tag, you will have to select files manually and set at least the Artist/Album/Title tracks manually to get much use out of the tools.