MP3 Signature Re-namer?

Enforcer · Posted: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 00:31:16 Post Subject: MP3 Signature Re-namer?

I've heard out there that there exists a program that can listen to the MP3 song, and cross reference the audio signature with a site out on the Internet and be able to get the correct MP3 tagging information. Unfortunatly I haven't a clue what this is or if it even exists still or if it was just a half brained project. Obviously such a program would cost, I don't mind, my friends and I are going to take a collection to buy it if its expensive. We just have a lot of music we need to catalog and the names of the songs are jacked up.

Anyone heard of this project or know of the program?

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 12:10:55 Post Subject:

I'm not sure... I'm not sure I fully understand, either...

You want it to basically listen to the song to id it? I know several players (like even Media Player, I believe) can access the internet and get file tag data, but I'm guessing you want something other than that.

I'd be interested in seeing something on that...

**JimBowy** · Moderator Joined: 02 Aug 2003 Posts: 1627

The program you are looking for is called Music Brainz Tagger.... its a life saver!

Saves me hours of re-naming MP3s the way I like them... s#!7 it even will organize artists/albumns into different folders!!!

Check google... im lazy...

Enforcer · Posted: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 21:24:06 Post Subject:

http://www.musicbrainz.org/

This indeed looks to be it, I'm going to download and try it out. Provided it works well I'll write up a quick review if you guys want.

Spire · Posted: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 22:32:46 Post Subject:

I would love to see how it works.

Question to find out...

Can you change the format, example:

Pink floyd-Animals-Track 1.MP3 TO

Pink Floyd - Track 1.MP3

Enforcer · Posted: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 22:54:16 Post Subject:

I know I have a program that will handle that fine, and will rename the mp3 from tag to filename or vice versa in any format you want. It is the audio signature that I was looking for, I'm going to try it out now.

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:00:43 Post Subject:

I thought I had something like Easy CD Converter that also handle naming changes, but it doesn't look like it now.

Spire, maybe this is for you:

http://www.audioutilities.com/tag-rename/tag-rename.htm

Spire · Posted: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:39:05 Post Subject:

I havent looked at any of the programs that might work.

I want to rename the files themselves. Musicmatch and CDDB take care of (most) of the tag information.

I will have to play with some of the options posted here.

Enforcer · Posted: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:56:09 Post Subject:

Ok, I tried the program, heres a mini review, go easy, I'm not the reviewing type.

Installation of this program goes smooth with only one weird question. During installation the program asked me if I wanted to back up the files that are renamed and asks for a directory to store such files in case the program is un-installed and a rollback is performed. Nice feature to be honest. Once installation is done I opened up the program to be greeted by a nag screen to donate. Considering what this program can do, and is free to download and use, I donâ€™t mind this at all. Options available to customize the program include specifying a new server, setting thresholds for how similar your music is to their signature, and various tagging renaming options.Once in the program itself it prompts me to sign up on the MusicBranz site for submitting tag information. Once logged in I got to pick a directory to attempt to lookup. For a test I threw it a MP3 CD Iâ€™ve been listening to in the car recently containing 152 songs. Once the lookups start I sit back and wait for a couple minutes while it goes through all the tracks at a good pace. I am then greeted with the files in a tabbed window for what the program found, didnâ€™t find, what is still pending investigation, which ones I have saved with the new information and then the ones that experienced an error during the lookup. On the site they explain that they donâ€™t have enough RAM for the lookup server and are trying to raise funds to purchase another server as well. This became evident when on the first pass 62 of the songs experienced an error due to a busy server. I ended up doing 4 passes across the errorâ€™ed songs until they all went through. The final result in my test CD was 44 unidentified and 108 identified (71% success rate). The test was done with popular and unpopular rock, dance, and pop music. Once you are done passing through the indentification process you can proceed to actually save the files. The program will warn you about the not so similar matches, I went through and all that the program said were identified were in fact the correct ones. A little customizing in the options for the directory and renaming infrastructure and all of a sudden I had a directory completely sorted directory by artist, album, and track named how I want, with both IDv1 and IDv2 tag information correctly entered. This probably would have taken me about 2 hours to do this, it was done in 10 minutes with minimal work on my part with this program. The original music stays where it is while it makes copies of the new renamed tracks where I please.

For the tracks that do not show up, I have the option of filling in the tag information myself to submit to the site to add to the community. I also have the option of loading an audio CD, pull the info from the cddb, and upload that information along with the audio signatures to the site to add to the content available.

This program simply rocks, I will be happily making a donation of $10 for the use of this fine program, and I will welcome this program in my home. Iâ€™ll even give it a room and an allowance as long as it does its chores.

EDIT: As a side note, it is pretty easy to lookup the unidentified ones to get the right track info once you get used to looking for it. It still took less time than to actually go in myself and edit the tags (Assuming I knew all the info)

Enforcer · Posted: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:57:56 Post Subject:

Tagscanner 4.8 is available from download.com.

I've used this program and it renames really well with many options.