Tag is a small tool to work with tags in various compressed audio formats.
Main features:
* Support for multiple standards:
- ID3v1.x
- ID3v2.x (reading and removing)
- APE v1.0
- APE v2.0
- Vorbis comments
- FLAC comments
- Lyrics3 v2.0.
* View tags
* Generate tags from filenames
* Modify tag values manually
* Set tag values from the contents of a text file
* Tag files with information read from CDDB files
* Copy tags from one file to another
* Convert tags to different format
* Remove tags
* Rename files based on tag information
* Move files to directories generated from tag values
* Generate Winamp playlists (optionally with AlbumList extensions and playing times)
* Generate text files with information about tracks and album (format customizable)
* Decode files and name output using tag information
* Test mode that shows what would happen without actually doing anything to files
Tag is released as freeware. Use at your own risk.
Copyright (c) 2002-2003 Case,
case@mobiili.net,
http://www.ca5e.tk/ID3v2 support with id3lib,
http://id3lib.sourceforge.net/--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Installation:
-------------
Uncompress Tag to any directory. For easiest use I recommend including that
directory in PATH or uncompressing Tag to Windows directory.
Usage:
------
Tag is a command line tool, meaning that you have to type all the commands from
Command Prompt in Windows. If you are not familiar with Command Prompt you should
take a look at the great Frontend made by Speek.
You can download the Frontend from
http://home.wanadoo.nl/~w.speek/tag.htm.
To use tag from command line type:
Tag [options] <filenames / directories / @file_with_parameters>
[] means that options are optional, they are not needed
<> means that filenames / directories / @file_with_parameters are required
There are several options, to view basic options just execute Tag without any
parameters:
Tag
To view every option use parameter --help:
Tag --help
Different options are explained later in this readme.
Filenames and directories can contain wildcards '*' and '?'.
file_with_parameters is a text file that contains all the parameters you would
pass to Tag from command line.
For example *.* means every file in current directory, *.mp3 means every .mp3
file in current directory, a*.* means any file starting with 'a' in current
directory, a?.* means any file that has two characters in it's name and starts
with 'a'.
Tag also supports wildcards in directory names, for example:
*\*.mp3
means any file with extension .mp3 in all subdirectories of current directory.
If Tag gets directory name as parameter it will search all files in in.
Other basic option regarding directories and file searching is --recursive, it
tells Tag to search files also from all subdirectories. For example command:
Tag "C:\My Music\*.mp3" --recursive
will search all .mp3 files in "C:\My Music" and in all of it's subdirectories.
Filename can also be M3U playlist, Tag will then read filenames from it.
To learn more about features of Tag you can add option --test to command line
and no files will get modified.
Viewing tags:
-------------
Default mode of operation is to display contents of tags and with MP3s, MPCs and
Oggs also some information about the files.
To view this information simply call Tag with filenames as parameter. For example:
Tag *.*
will display tags of all supported files in current directory.
Tagging:
--------
You have five ways to tag your files:
1. Let Tag guess the values for you from filename
2. Tell Tag how your files are named and it will generate values
3. Manually enter tag values
4. Combination of all of the above
5. Read tag information from tag.ini file or CDDB file
Method one is easiest but it requires that your files are named using one of the
standard naming schemes. Currently Tag recognizes about 50 different schemes, so
most probably it will work.
You can test if it will work for you by using following command in the directory with
files to be tagged:
Tag --auto --test *.*
This will view tag values that would have been guessed by Tag. If you see text
"generated from name" on the screen and tag values are correct you know that guessing
works with your filenames.
To actually write the tags remove the parameter --test and use:
Tag --auto *.*
If automatic mode didn't view correct information on your files you can manually
specify the scheme used in your filenames.
Scheme is the way filenames are constructed, telling which part of the name (or directory)
corresponds to what information. This is told by using identifiers and separators, possible
identifiers are:
T = Title
A = Artist
L = Album
N = Track number
Y = Year
G = Genre
C = Comment
X = text to be disrecarded
All other text is considered as separator. For example the scheme for file
Red Hot Chili Peppers - 01 - Around The World.mp3
is
A - N - T
You don't need to worry about the filename extension, it will be automatically
ignored.
Scheme can also be used with directories, for example if our example file was
Californication\Red Hot Chili Peppers - 01 - Around The World.mp3
we can get the Album name with scheme
L\A - N - T
If your filenames have more information just add new identifiers and Tag will use
the text in your tags. If there is some text in the middle of the name that you do
not want to store in tags you can use identifier X to mark it. For example
C:\My Music\Rock\Full Albums\The Beatles\White Album\11. Blackbird.mp3
has text "Full Albums" after genre Rock, and we want to ignore that text. Scheme is
G\X\A\L\N. T
Hopefully you now understand how schemes are constructed. You can now tag your files
with command:
Tag --auto --scheme <scheme> <files>
If you first want to see what the resulting tags would be like, add parameter --test:
Tag --test --auto --scheme <scheme> <files>
If you don't want to use automatic tag generation you can of course also enter all
information manually. There are easy-to-use switches to enter standard fields and
a general switch to enter any field to tags.
Easy switches are:
--artist <x> : artist is <x>
--title <x> : title is <x>
--album <x> : album is <x>
--track <x> : track number is <x>
--comment <x> : comment is <x>
--genre <x> : genre is <x>
--year <x> : year is <x>
General switch is:
-t "item=x" : item is x
Multiple calls to any of these switches are possible.
These switches can also be used when automatic tag generation is used, user entered
values will always override generated values.
To tag using tag.ini or CDDB file as source your files need to be in the same
directory with the source text files. And their names must be in form "TrackNN.XXX",
NN being the track number and XXX one of the supported file extensions.
After that simply call Tag with text file as parameter, for example:
Tag *.
will search all files without extension and if they are CDDB files it will tag
tracks with the information from the file.
You can also use:
- f "item=x" : item will be set to the text contained within the external file x
This may be useful for storing cuesheet information in an APEv2 tag, for example:
Tag -f "cuesheet=X:\CDImage.ape.cue" CDImage.ape
but can be used to store any text in any tag.
NB: The text contained in the file is stored, not the file itself.
Renaming:
---------
Tag allows fast mass renaming of files to match naming scheme you specify. You
can also move the files to subdirectories according to your scheme.
The renaming can be done by using tags already in your files, or if the files
don't have tags they can be renamed based on the scheme of original names.
To rename using tags you need to tell Tag the new scheme you want with parameter
--scheme. Let's assume our file
Red Hot Chili Peppers - 01 - Around The World.mp3
has correct tags and we want to rename it to be
01. Around The World.mp3
New name uses scheme "N. T" so we call Tag with command:
Tag --rentag --scheme "N. T" <files>
To rename files without using tags option --scheme specifies scheme of old names.
If it is not specified Tag will try to autodetect it.
Parameter --rentag <newscheme> is used to specify the new scheme of files. The
command to rename our example file
Red Hot Chili Peppers - 01 - Around The World.mp3
to
01. Around The World.mp3
without using tags would be:
Tag --scheme "A - N - T" --rentag "N. T" <files>
or since the above example would be autodetected you can simply call:
Tag --rentag "N. T" <files>
If you also want to move the files to subdirectories use option --move. To move
our example file to subdirectory Californication we would add "L\" in front of
the new scheme and add option --move to command line. So with our example file
the command would be:
Tag --rentag --scheme "L\N. T" --move <files>
or without using tags:
Tag --rename "L\N. T" --move <files>
Generating Playlists:
---------------------
Tag can generate playlists for your tracks, naming the lists by the name of the
directory files are in, by scheme "Album artist - Album title", or use the name
you specify.
Playlists have playing times, Winamp's display title and AlbumList extensions by
default, but if wanted they can also contain only filenames.
By default playlists are sorted by track number, but they can also be sorted by
duration: track duration
size: filesize
name: name with full path
path: only file path
basename: filename without path
extension: file extension
attrib: file attributes
time_access: time file was last accessed
time_create: time file was created
time, date: time file was last modified
bitrate: bitrate of file
channels: audio channels in file
samplerate: samplerate of file
format: audio format
<x>: any item <x> in tag (artist, title, track, comment, genre, year...)
Sorting order can also be reversed.
You can tell Tag to write only one playlist of all files or to write multiple
playlists, one to every directory with files.
Tag will try to automatically detect album artist and album title from tags, but
those can also be given with parameters --a-artist and --a-title.
Sorting options are given with parameter --sort, and if you want to sort by multiple
properties add new properties with parameter --sort+.
Playlist options:
--playlist : generate one playlist per directory
--oneplaylist : generate one playlist from all files
--playlists : generate one playlist per album in current directory
--a-artist <x> : set album artist to <x>
--a-title <x> : set album title to <x>
--onlyfiles : writes only filenames in playlist, no extra information
--dirname : use directory name for playlist naming
--plname <name> : use <name> as playlist name.
--slashes : use slashes '/' instead of backslashes '\' in playlists
--nospaces : replaces space by underscore in names of written files
--sort <by> : sort playlist only by <x>
--sort+ <x> : add new playlist sorting property <x>
--sortdesc : sort in descending order
Example to write one big playlist of all .mp3 files and sort the playlist by
path and by track number:
Tag --oneplaylist --sort path --sort+ track --recursive *.mp3
Removing tags:
--------------
You can remove all supported tags from files and with ID3v2 version also just
ID3v2 tags.
To remove all tags use command:
Tag --remove <files>
and to remove only ID3v2 tags:
Tag --removeid3v2 <files>
All options:
------------
--title <value> : set title to <value>
--artist <value> : set artist to <value>
--album <value> : set album to <value>
--year <value> : set year to <value>
--comment <value> : set comment to <value>
--track <value> : set track number to <value>
--genre <value> : set genre to <value>
Tag fields can also be set with:
-t <item=x> : set tag item <item> to value <x>
-f <item=x> : set tag item <item> from content of file <x>
-u <item=x> : set tag item <item> to value <x> (x is UTF-8 coded)
--help : show full help
--hideinfo : don't display file information
--hidetags : don't display tags
--hidenames : don't display filenames
--simple : use simple tag display format
--recursive : search files recursively in all subdirectories
--fromfile <file> : copy tag information from <file>
--allow <item=x> : allow access to files with specified properties only
--auto : generate tags from filenames
--scheme <scheme> : specify file structure scheme (ie. L/A - N - T)
--autoscheme : select automatically best scheme from list of schemes
--nomagic : use plain schemes, disable extra automations
--chreplace : use character replacing when tagging
--rentag : rename files to match scheme, filename from tag data
--rename <scheme> : rename files to <scheme>, filename generated from old name
--move : when renaming move files to subdirectories
--overwrite : overwrite existing files when renaming
--trackinc : use incremental track numbering
--caps : capitalize words
--Caps : capitalize only first word
--lower : convert all characters to lower case
--upper : convert all characters to upper case
--tcaps <item> : capitalize words in tag field <item>
--tCaps <item> : capitalize only first word in tag field <item>
--tlower <item> : convert all characters to lower case in tag field <item>
--tupper <item> : convert all characters to upper case in tag field <item>
--nozero : ignore leading zeros on track numbers
--zeropad : add trailing zero to track number if missing
--commafix : fix comma separated artist field (x, the -> the x)
--spacefix : replaces underscore (_) and %20 with space
--itemfix : fix item names in APE v1.0/2.0 tags
--umlfix : fix umlauts (ae -> ä, oe -> ö, ue -> ü)
--swapta : swap title <--> artist
--remove : remove all tags
--removeid3v2 : remove only ID3v2 tags
--removeid3v2u : remove only unnecessary ID3v2 tags (fields fit in ID3v1)
--playlist : generate one playlist per directory
--oneplaylist : generate one playlist from all files
--playlists : generate one playlist per album in current directory
--a-artist <x> : set album artist to <x>
--a-title <x> : set album title to <x>
--onlyfiles : writes only filenames in playlist, no extra information
--dirname : use directory name for playlist naming
--plname <name> : use <name> as playlist name.
--slashes : use slashes '/' instead of backslashes '\' in playlists
--nospaces : replaces space by underscore in names of written files
--sort <by> : sort playlist only by <x>
--sort+ <x> : add new playlist sorting property <x>
--sortdesc : sort in descending order
--newdate : don't keep files original date/time
--oldtype : use old tag format
--ape2 : default to APE v2.0
--force <tag> : force use of selected tag type
--extid3 : extend over long title field into comment field with id3
--nocheck : don't check file extension
--test : test mode, no files will be modified
--tofile <scheme> : save screen output to file, name generated from <scheme>
--tofileext <ext> : use extension <ext> instead of .txt
--tofilen <name> : save screen output to file <name>
--nfo <file> : generate .nfo file and save to <file>
--listdefaults : view default settings
--listexceptions : view list of exceptions in capitalize function
--listgenres : view list of possible ID3v1 tag genres
--listpresets : view list of defined presets
--decode : use external decoder and use <scheme> to name output
--acculen : display length more accurately
--ansioutput : don't convert output to OEM codepage
--<number> : use predefined preset <number>
[Download] If you've reached this line. Yeeeha, you damn like to read
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