-Brading Software Message Board
+--Forum: Mp3/Tag Studio Support and Bug Reports
+---Topic: how do i change genres for all files in dir? started by ricmoe
Posted by: ricmoe on Oct. 20 2005,18:18
I am in the process of cleaning up all of my mp3s and here is what i am doing.
1. rename/refile all mp3s according to artist and title format: '<artist>/<artist> - <title>.mp3'
2. delete all ID tags
3. create ID tags based on filenames using mp3/tag studio
So what I want to do now is to edit the tags for all files within each folder and put them into their correct genres. So I would have something like:
directory - Rush
files within dir: - Rush - 2112.mp3
files within dir: - Rush - yyz.mp3
directory - Alabama
files within dir: Alabama - whatever.mp3
files within dir: Alabama - whatnot.mp3
I want to be able to right click on the folder and choose 'change all ID tags in this folder to XXX genre' (Rock for Rush and Country for Alabama)
Can this program do something like this without it being a pain in the ass?
Posted by: noddy on Oct. 20 2005,21:39
It can do it, but you will have to do each folder one at a time, obviously.
Use the "mass set tags/flags" tool.
Uncheck any fields you don't want to fill to all files.
Check the "genre" field and select "Rock".
Make sure in the explorer tree on the left that you're looking at the "Rush" folder, and click "Execute". All files in the Rush folder will be given the rock genre tag.
Then, personally, I'd go through all your artist name folders that you want to be designated as "Rock" and click on execute for each folder. Otherwise, you're going to be changing the genre value for every folder as you work through all your folders, and you'll find yourself constantly switching between the same 2 or 3 genres all the time.
Still, workflow is a matter of personal taste/opinion.
You've found the best MP3 tagger on the planet, so good luck! If you get stuck, holler.
Posted by: ricmoe on Oct. 21 2005,16:30
Is there any way to create a macro for each genre and add them to the explorer shell so that i can just use windows explorer and then right click each folder and apply the genre?
Posted by: noddy on Oct. 21 2005,23:59
Yes, you could do it via Windows Explorer, but it would actually be less fiddly doing it within MP3TS.
If you created a bunch of macros, one for each genre, you could then work your way down through all your folders with just 2 button clicks... one to select the folder, and one to run the macro.
To do it in Windows Explorer, you would have to right click each folder name, then work your way through the flyout menus to get to the macro name, then click it.
Posted by: Magnus Brading on Oct. 22 2005,00:02
Sure, you can create macros of practically any operation that you can perform inside the program GUI. Simply press the macro record button, perform a mass set tags operation with whatever genre you want, then press the stop button for the macro recording and name the macro whatever you like, e.g. "Set genre XXX". All recorded macros will appear in the shell extension menu, ready for you to use.
Posted by: Magnus Brading on Oct. 22 2005,00:03
Hehe, two replies at the same time.
Posted by: noddy on Oct. 22 2005,14:21
Hey, I just noticed my upgraded status to "Board veteran"! That must have kicked in at 70 posts, did it, Magnus?
Posted by: Magnus Brading on Oct. 22 2005,17:40
Yep, that's correct, congrats on your promotion.
Posted by: noddy on Oct. 23 2005,00:58
Glad you got the spelling right, and not "bored veteran"!
Posted by: ricmoe on Oct. 24 2005,16:57
Is there a way to automatically figure out from the artist what genre it belongs in? I am lookling for a tool that can use the free CDDBs out there to automatically update the tag with the correct genre for the artist.
So I would run it against the following directoy strucute and it would lookup 'Rush' and then update the tags for the files in the directory with the 'Rock' genre or whatever it finds.
<root directory>
<directory> - Rush
files within dir: - Rush - 2112.mp3
files within dir: - Rush - yyz.mp3
and it would update the files in the alabama directory with the 'country' genre.
<directory> - Alabama
files within dir: Alabama - whatever.mp3
files within dir: Alabama - whatnot.mp3
Posted by: Magnus Brading on Oct. 24 2005,18:37
One way would be to use e.g. the direct rename tool with the "casefix and replace" utility, and then add replacements like "artistnamehere" --> "artistnamehere - genrenamehere". After the renaming, do a tag from name operation to get the genre name into the tag, and then finally restore the filenames to the original format. Make it into a macro and you can do it all with a single click of a button too.
Posted by: ricmoe on Oct. 24 2005,21:29
But how do i get the genre in the first place. The tags do not include the genre type.
Posted by: Magnus Brading on Oct. 24 2005,22:10
Ah, sorry, I missed the CDDB part. Mp3/Tag Studio does not have CDDB support, so you would have to download that data from somewhere else first.
Posted by: ricmoe on Oct. 25 2005,15:48
Any idea on what tool i might use? I would prefer a unix command line tool that I would use to lookup the <artist> against a CDDB (freedb.org) and get back the <genre> for that artist. Then I would move the directory for the artist to a directy scheme based on genre. Then I would use MP3/tag to update the genre tag for all the files in that directory.
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