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ID3TagEd

The tag menus


The main window tag menus

The menus attached to the v1 or v2 main display window have a number of options common to both, but there are also some additional options specific to the v2 tag window only.

v1menu.png - 10Kb
The v1 tag menu
v2menu.png - 13Kb
The v2 tag menu

The common options

There are a number of common options, where in general the action will take place on whichever of the v1 or v2 tag is showing in the window.

Filename to tag...

This is useful in the case when an mp3 file has been produced without any tags, but the filename describes the content to some extent. Choosing this option opens a static dialogue, which will remain open if a different file is loaded. It is necessary to specify a pattern or template that ID3TagEd will use in order to take parts of the filename and place it in specified frames. A full description of this option is given here.

Edit

This option will lead to a submenu with the following choices. The actions will be applied to the v1 or v2 tag, as appropriate. In some cases, where there is a further submenu for e.g. artist, album, title, and all, clicking the parent item is the same as choosing All.

Swap artist name order

There are two submenu options - With comma, and Without comma. For example, the name John Smith could be converted to either Smith, John or simply Smith John, or conversely Smith, John could be changed to John Smith. If the name contains more than two parts, then the first part is moved to the end.

Change And to & in artist

Some people prefer & rather than And in the artist name. This option will make the change.

Swap artist/title

This does simply that - swaps the artist and title fields over (keyboard shortcut Ctrl-S)

Capitalise start of all words

This action will attempt to convert the first letter of each word to upper case, and at the same time convert all other characters to lower case. At the moment, all words are dealt with in the same way, whatever their length. The field to act on is chosen from the submenu and may be on any of Artist, Track Title, and Album Title, or on all three.

Capitalise start of first word only

This will capitalise the first character of the first word and lower case the first characters of any other words. The submenu allows the action to be performed on track title or album, or both.

Process 'The'

There are four options available.
  • Strip 'The' from the beginning of the field
  • Strip 'The' or ', The' or ',The' from the end of the field
  • Move 'The' from the beginning of the field and put ', The' on the end
  • Move ', The' and variants from the end of the field and put 'The' on the beginning

Each of the above actions can be applied for Artist, Title, or Album, or all three

The case of the characters of 'The' does not matter - any combination is dealt with, the replacement text, if any, is always 'The'.

Strip characters...

This might be useful at times. A static dialogue is opened which allows a specified number of characters to be removed from the beginning or end of the artist, album or title fields.

Clear v1/v2 tag

This will simply clear all the fields of the v1 or v2 tag ready to enter new values. (This action is duplicated by the Clear button at the foot of the dialogue). Remember that any active Lock buttons and any 'Locked' text are also cleared. To clear a single field, the standard desktop Ctrl-U may be used.

Copy v1 to v2 or Copy v2 to v1

This will copy all the details either of the v1 tag into the corresponding fields of the v2 tag, or vice versa. This option is used when the mp3 file contains only one version tag, but you wish to create the second tag using those same details.

A submenu is provided to allow the copying of individual fields, such as artist or album, rather than everything, if this is more appropriate.

Rename file from v1/v2

This allows the file to be renamed from the (edited) details in the v1 or v2 tag. The renaming will follow the style set up in the Iconbar menu -> choices dialogue. (This action is duplicated by the Rename button)

Write v1/v2 tag

This will either rewrite the tag with the amended details, or if there was no tag originally, a tag containing the new details will be added to the mp3 file. (This action is duplicated by the Write tag button)

Clear v1/v2 locks

This will unset all the lock settings, but will not alter any of the contents of the fields.

Help...

Opens the HTML manual in a browser.


Options applying to the v2 tag only

Reduce padding

There may be times when the number of padding bytes are excesive. This allows the number of padding bytes to be reduced to a value determined by the settings in Choices-v2. It will involve the whole file being rewritten, so may take a few seconds with larger mp3 files.

Other frames...

This leads to a window allowing you to show information on all the frames in the v2 tag. The information shown will depend upon the frame type - some are proprietry or user defined, and some are binary. The ID3v2 standard allows more than one instance of some frame types, and the full frame info dialogue will allow you to access these. The COMMent frame is a case in point. COMMent frames may be of any length, and this is sometimes made use of to include biographies of artists or historical comments. While these would not be displayed fully in the main window, they can be read and edited here.

Go here for a fuller description.

Diagnostics

This option has been present in development versions to help when there are problems decoding all the tag. In the release versions there are currently three options still enabled.

Extract tag

This leads to a standard Save as dialogue, allowing you to save out the v2 tag copied from the head of the mp3 file, without any audio content. This might be useful to extract a tag which is causing ID3TagEd problems. You could then send the tag to the author chris@chris-johnson.org.uk with any bug report.

Parse v2 report

ID3TagEd will try to decode the frame headers in the v2 tag (assuming it is present), writing output to a report window. The report can be saved if necessary. This may give an indication of what is wrong if ID3TagEd cannot decode a version 2 tag.

Strip v2 tag

This is only of use if a v2 tag is broken and preventing the audio from playing correctly. The tag is completely removed from the file, which is rewritten without a v2 tag.

Larr.gif - 145 bytes v2 tag edit window   |   Index  |   Keyboard short cuts Rarr.gif - 141 bytes
ID3TagEd is © Chris Johnson, 2005
Email:chris@chris-johnson.org.uk