ID3 tags

GWC Community GWC Hive Mind
#1

So, I’ll begin.

As most of you know I consider myself an Itunes/Ipod geek. I have one area of knowledge tho that has remained elusive, which is ID3 tags. I have the option of converting all my files to ID3 v1 to 2.4…and don’t know what the benefit would be.

Sure, I have read up on ID3 tags and understand the fundamental differences…what I don’t understand is if I should convert my entire library to ID2.4, or specifically, WHY I would do so. Will it improve something? Will read times increase? Will new functionality surface, or is this something that will have no impact on me?

#2

I would definitely do it. There are several differences between ID3v1 and ID3v2. One of them is that there are many more parameters supported, so you can put much more specific information about each track in the tag. The big difference though is the ability to embed cover art in each track. Being that you’re an iPod geek, particularly if you own an iPod Touch or iPhone, this comes in handy. If you don’t embed the art in the tracks, then the Touch and iPhone get their information from iTunes’ caches, which are notorious for becoming corrupted. This really messes with cover flow, because you could have tracks that have lost their art, or have another album’s cover art on them, etc.

One other thing… iTunes will download cover art for a lot of albums for you, but it does not embed the cover art by default. The best way of ensuring that the art is embedded is to go to the cover art box in the lower left of iTunes, right click the image, then click “Copy”. Then, highlight the whole album, right-click it, and select “Get Info”. You can then right click inside the “Artwork” box and paste the image, and click “OK” to save the changes.

Oh, and while iTunes’ ID3 tag editor is pretty good, if you’re looking for an alternative then try MP3Tag. It’s for Windows, but if you’re on Mac or Linux it can be installed using Wine, if you’re up to it.

#3

Thanks, that’s what I need to know. I am surprised I can’t add the field “ID Tag” in iTunes, I guess I am going to have to perform a blanket conversion of 10,000 songs (annoying from a maintenance standpoint…in 3 months I’ll have to do it again as my library changes).

Do you have a thought about this?

#4

Do you mean adding a column to view the version of the ID3 tag along with the Artist, Title, etc? If you’re looking for something that does this, then you should check out that MP3Tag program I posted about above. It has such a column in its interface, and tracks are sortable by any of the column headings so you could order them by ID3 tag version and know just which tracks to modify. MP3Tag will by default save in ID3 v2.3 (I believe), so highlighting tracks without an MP3Tag (or ones with ID3 v1 tags) and clicking the Save button should automatically convert the tag to ID3v2.

One thing to watch out for, before you go saving any changes, is the values in the Artist, Title, etc. boxes on the left side of the MP3Tag window. If you’re doing a bulk conversion of several hundred tracks, you want to make sure that the values in each of these boxes are set to “Keep” (this option can be selected from a drop-down menu). I’ve found that sometimes, when holding down Ctrl or Shift and selecting a number of tracks, sometimes the boxes on the left are populated with the information from the last track clicked. You don’t want to go updating a few hundred tracks and name them all the same, that would be a nightmare to fix later on. Not that I know from experience, or anything… :wink:

Oh, one other thing… Do you have your iTunes automatically keep your files organized by the ID3 tags? The option for this is called “Keep iTunes Music Folder organized”, and it’s in the “Advanced” area in the preferences (at least on iTunes for Mac OS). Just to be safe, I would delete everything from your iTunes music library (making sure not to answer “Yes” when it asks you if you want to move the songs to the Trash), and then reimport your library once you’re done editing the tags. The only reason I say this is because I don’t know what effect editing the tags will have on your iTunes library. It might just edit the files back with the information from your library (artist names, song titles, etc.), negating all the work you just did modifying the tags! That would be pretty frustrating.