5punk

After having a huge tidy up on my machine, I decided to sort out my MP3's as well.

This was a huge task, and I needed something that can download album cover art for all the MP3's, and a program that allowed me to mass edit MP3 Tag Info quickly and easily.

What I found is the following, and I highly recommend the cover art downloader

If you know of any more useful MP3 related pieces of software, please post some here.

Album Cover Art Downloader v1.60
Tag & Rename 3.1.7

http://www.id3-tagit.de/ - Best id3 tagger. FACT.

I've used http://www.mp3tag.de with some success. I will check out Berkie's link as it looks similar to MP3tag.

Album Cover Art is great, btw. It's the only program I know of. THere are a lot of my albums that it can get covers for, but it's about 1-2%.

I used one called The Godfather, that works fine, and it has a cool name.

There was a really useful tool I used a while ago that matches the volume levels on all your mp3's, can't remember what it's called though

mrbobbins wrote: There was a really useful tool I used a while ago that matches the volume levels on all your mp3's, can't remember what it's called though

you better had boy! i could do with one of those. its amazing how i have never come accross heard or bothered to look for any of this shit before, i have over 2,000 mp3's and as you can imagine they are called all sorts of random things. what a great idea

ypu might want to stay away from those kinds of programs because they can make your mp3s noisy and staticy...

Worked fine for me!,

*remembers*

http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/

You can just try a scan first to see how different the levels are, and you can set what level you want them to be. Why not try a few at random and see if it affects the quality?

huzzah nice one dude!

Can someone explain to me why so few people just use windows media player?

It downloads tags/album covers for you, it does batch editing of tags, it organises all your stuff in an easy to browse library thing, theres a billion skins out there so you can pretty much get it to look however you like. So why do people still insist on using winAmp and the rest? Is it just some geeky anti-microsoft thing, or is there an actual reason?

Its just that I use media player, and cant see anything wrong with it. If there is, I'd like someone to tell me what that is, so I can change if i need to. If i dont need to, im damned if im going to change just because everyone else is.


This post was brought to you by a cookie fueled sugar high, and the letter M

Yup, Windows Media Player sorts them into categories "they" see fit, so you could have 2 bands you'd categorise as indie, and they could go into rock & indie for example.

Also, you need an MP3 tag editor to amend the information for albums you "found on the floor", otherwise if it just has a folder name to work from, it's not clever enough to work out the artist/album and song names.

If you already have the tag info like...

Artist : Kaiser Chiefs
Album : Employment
Title : I predict a riot

Then it can find it straight away and sort it, but otherwise it can be a bit shit, especially with new albums that have just been released, or stuff that isn't very popular.

Also you are sending info' to Microsoft about the music you have "found on the floor", and it all depends if you're bothered about them knowing that or not.

What it really comes down to is that people who rip MP3's are uttelry lazy, and don't rename them in a standard that everyone uses.

Since Napster was closed, nobody has a clue how you should name files, which is a shame, as people used to have to name the files appropriately for others to know what they are to download them.

Basically internet users are a messy bunch of fuckers, and nobody seems to care about MP3's being named to a set standard.

That's why it's taken me the best part of 50Hrs to go through every one of my tracks and edit them to a set standard.

WMP's library management in v.10 is much better, but pretty much every player out there still does a better job. I use WMP for video, but for audio it's not that good. They just make it a hassle to use most of the time.

I've used Winamp for years, because I didn't like the old Windows media players, probably stuck with it because I like the media browser and am familiar with it.

The new windows one has improved but I guess I still use Winamp cos I have done for ages, plus it doesn't do anything wrong so I stick with it.

Which is probably the same reason you use media player!!

First off, wouldnt nicking info about what we are listening to without telling us that they are doing it be a massive invasion of privacy? And as MS has got into fairly hot water over similar things happening in a version of IE (eons ago), I rather suspect they wouldn't do it again. Even is they were doing this, who cares? Theres no definitive way of them proving that the MP3's i have on my computer are not stuff i have ripped myself from albums that i legally own. As they are providing the tools with Media Player to do this very job, they cant really complain about me doing it, can they?

On a more "on topic" note: So its basically the tag downloading thing that people dont like? And if so, I could get that program berk pointed out and remain with media player (which im pretty used to now) without missing out?

EDIT: pretty much, bobbins. I just want to make sure that my sticking with Media player isnt making me miss out on grat things

Joose wrote:EDIT: pretty much, bobbins. I just want to make sure that my
sticking with Media player isnt making me miss out on grat things

well, you're not missing anything, but it's still crap.

deject wrote: well, you're not missing anything, but it's still crap.

See, this is what i dont understand. Ok, so the updating the tags thing is a bit rubbish, but fixable with 3rd party software. So *why* is it crap?

And if these other programs are so much better, how come you all use these extra programs as well?

Im not meaning to sound as aggressive as this is coming out, im just confuddled

And now on the comedown from a big sugar high. Need more cookies!

It's not just the tag handling. Like I said the database itself is just plain stupid. Sure they actually made it usable in verson 10 but it's still just a pain in the ass to use. Compare that to iTunes or Winamp that can create any kind of list you want. Both have easily searchable databases that present data usably. Navigating WMP is hell.

I'm not saying WMP doesn't do anything, I'm saying it doesn't do it well.

Right, I think there is only one simple way i can get this straight in my head. Im going to download em all and have a play.

Joose wrote:Right, I think there is only one simple way i can get this straight in my head. Im going to download em all and have a play.

lol