|
 TagScanner is my favorite. It supports basic tags such as artist, album, title, track, year and genre, and extended tags including composer, grouping, BPM (beats per minute), etc. Lyrics are shown below the album cover.
Files can be renamed with Music Renamer and tags can be generated from file names.
TagScanner with its Tag Processor allows you to preview tags and cover arts from online databases before saving them into MP3 files.
However, it does not come with a normal windows menu. You may need to spend some time to get yourself familiarized with its user interface.
|
 Mp3tag will be a good choice if you prefer user interface with a normal windows menu. Mp3tag has an advantage for its simple and clean design with a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit tags of MP3 files.
Basic tags are shown in a customizable front panel. Extended tags are shown in a separate window for all existing tags stored in your MP3 files. If a tag for lyrics or other info does not exist, it can be added, or if a tag is repeated, it can be removed easily.
Mp3tag allows you to rename files based on the tag information, import or export tag information and create playlists. It supports online Amazon, freedb or other database lookups, allowing you to auto tag and embed multiple images for album covers.
It also has a powerful Web Sources Framework, allowing you to get album info from additional online databases including MusicBrainz.com. The latest web sources are available from Mp3tag Forums at Web Sources Archive. Download the ones you need, extract them to your Mp3tag data folder in order to gain access to more online databases for auto tagging.
|
 MPTagThat is a relatively new and OpenSource MP3 tag editor. The program not only features tag editing, but also includes extra functions such as audio playback, ripping, converting and burning music files.
In respect of tagging, it allows auto tag from file names or the internet as well as identifying files. More over, auto tagging of lyrics and album arts from the internet are found to be very useful even though retrieving cover art takes a while.
Other features of the program include organising or renaming files based on tag information, case conversion, removing tags, execute scripts, etc.
The program is still under active development and has the potential to improve in quality although it might experience some handling errors in the current version under review.
|
|
MusicBrainz Picard adopts a different way of updating tags via its online database.
Unlike most other tag editors, it identifies track information by comparing a unique digital thumbprint to the information in the MusicBrainz database. Once the tracks are best matched, you can save their respective tag information into selected MP3 files.
Similar to Mp3tag, details' checking of a selected file allows listing of all existing tags including lyrics for editing. For a tag which does not exist, you can add it.
But for the version under review, cover arts are not allowed to edit except for updating from online databases.
|
|
 Unlike the above, The GodFather is a tag editor with a built-in library to organise MP3 files based on tag info. The program will scan your MP3 folders and automatically suggest the files to rename.
Under its library tab, it allows you to edit and show up to 4 pictures per album stored in MP3 files. Moreover, the "Search lyrics using Google" function gets you the results in a Google search page or the web page showing lyrics of the selected file. This expedites the search for lyrics but you need to copy and save them to the tag manually, not so efficient as MPTagThat.
In additon to manual editing of tags, it provides auto tagging via online databases such as freedb, Allmusic and Amazon. However, All Music Guide is disabled due to possible terms of service violation, and the built-in Amazon search seems to retrieve tag info less successfully than other selected tag editors. Another drawback is that this program has no Unicode support.
|
|
Subscribe to our 
Go straight to the Quick Selection Guide
5.1.551 
Unrestricted freeware 
Win 2000 to Win 7 
Portable version available
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Are you using "MP3 tag" and "MP3 files" in your reviews as generic terms for all music file formats? The intro starts with "MP3 has become the most common audio format for playback, storage and transfer of music", but there are several other music file formats besides .mp3 and its not made clear anywhere in these reviews which file extensions or tag formats these products support.
I know from looking at the homepage for AudioShell which formats it supports, at it would be helpful if these reviews made it clear which formats are supported.
AudioShell supported files and tags formats:
mp3 (all ID3 tag versions)
wma, asf and wmv (including DRM protected files)
Apple iTunes and iPod aac (m4a, m4b, m4v and m4p) and mp4 files
ogg, flac (vorbis comment tags)
mpc, mp+ (APE/APEv2 tags)
monkey's audio (APE/APEv2 tags)
wav pack (APE/APEv2 tags)
optim frog (APE/APEv2 tags)
wav (ID3v2 tag in 'tag ' RIFF chunk)
Thanks for your valuable comments. You're right that this review focuses on tagging of mp3 files, as the title of the review implies.
Certainly other than the popular mp3 formats, there're other audio formats some tag editors support as well.
I'll add this related info in the Quick Selection Guide Section soon.
Sweet. Thank you for doing that.
I'm sure others will find it helpful also.
There are no other reviews covering tags for other formats and the audio editor review doesn't cover tags at all.
I have far more wma files than mp3 files and many of my tags are a mess. I'm looking for freeware that will help me edit those wma tags and this will certainly help.
(I can't be the only one on that boat)
Has anyone got/seen a 'How To' for TagScanner, namely how do you go from looking at the albums in the "Tag Processor" to having that data in/on my mp3s. I can't seem to figure it out... Any tips?
Under the Tag Processor, select a search term on an mp3 file and choose the best search result, click "Save" button at the bottom. This will save the tag info into the mp3 file.
A click on the "?" beneath the "Tag Processor" will show up the help file.
Hope this is of help.
There used to be a program called Moodlogic that scanned your music and actually listened to each song, then researched and found the correct tag information in public databases. That program is not available anymore. Is there another program that does that? Another program similar to Moodlogic?
MusicBrainz, or MetatOgger might be your answers :D.
Anupam Shriwatri
MetatOGGer is a way better program and can do everything automatically. It's really incredible. Believe me I've tried both tagscanner and MetatOGGer.
FreewareGenius.com introduced me to it.
I read about it too, but the downside is that it requires .NET 3.5 to run. That's why I have not given it a try, but I intend to, since it looks good.
Anupam Shriwatri
Another good app is Abander Tag Control. It's full featured but a little slow.
Abander Tag Control is not freeware.
"I have recently downloaded some mp3 files which play fine on my computer, but when I copy them to a flash drive, or burn them to a cd they don't play in my car player- which is set up for both flash drive and mp3 cd playing."
Hi. The post below was mine, I didn't mean to post it anonymously, sorry!
I have to say that, as a seasoned veteran of mp3 taggers, and using them very frequently MpTagThat is definitely the one.
I used to use a trio of programs (MediaMonkey, Tagscanner and even the old, apparently unsupported but exceptionally useful Media Tagger) in order to achieve everything I wanted. MpTagthat, however, does everything I want and more, it actually has the feel of a program designed by someone who actually tags mp3's often.
It doesn't suffer as much from the same non standard design flaws as Tagscanner, tho it can take a tiny bit too long to familiarise yourself with it. It is far more useful and has more features than Mp3Tag. It is far more intuitive than Picard and it's success at identifying tracks is uncanny.
It can, although exceptionally rarely bomb, perhaps twice in couple of weeks of intensive testing and there are tiny little quirks, like being unable to rename directories from the program itself, but overall, and I don't say this lately, it's even better than the over-rated Mp3 Tag Pro...
mp3tag editor is better than tagscanner
I use mp3Tag Pro and it's the best tag editor for me. It's not free but there is a basic freeware version for 30 days floating around somewhere. Moreover, you may visit www.mymusictools.com you can find many useful programs.
Can anybody recommend a good tag editor that can handle cyrillic (Russian) character encoding of titles?
I guess most of taggers work well with it.
For example TagScanner is developing by a russian programmer and consequently there's no any problem with cyrillic.
A new tagger just hit the marked: MPTagThat
More: http://www.team-mediaportal.com/news/global/mptagthat_-_the_mediaportal_...
Thanks. I will follow your link.
TagScanner can't handle multiple tags, works better in native explorer. I don't understand why it's that good.???????
Most MP3 tag editors allow editing multiple tags. Such as TagScanner or Mp3tag, highlight multiple files in the list, edit relevant tags and save them, you should then have the same tags updated in the selected files.
Hope the above helps.
TagScanner is very good!
It's look cool and full!
I need some help and am not sure what the problem is. I have recently downloaded some mp3 files which play fine on my computer, but when I copy them to a flash drive, or burn them to a cd they don't play in my car player- which is set up for both flash drive and mp3 cd playing.
Any ideas?
Try converting them to .wav and back to .mp3 (NCH wavepad is super form batch convertions), that helped when I had a similar problem
Aimp 2 have good tag editor and some other tool , so check it out ...
Its fast and easy tag editor
I recommend you an another beautiful sound free software, MP3Gain. MP3Gain analyzes mp3 files to determine how loud they sound to the human ear. It can then adjust the mp3 files so that they all have the same loudness without any quality loss.
This is probably a good candidate for Best Free Audio Editing Software.
TagScanner is certainly powerful, but its non-standard interface is incredibly frustrating. Far-be-it from me to suggest Windows is itself the best model for a UI, but at least it provides a standard and there's nothing in the way that TagScanner works that needs/justifies such a complete departure from the basic Windows standard, and the TagScanner UI is very far from intuitive to me (based on almost 30 years of using a wide variety of UIs).
Totally agree with the above comment. If you want a quick easy to use utility, I'd probably steer clear of TagScanner. The interface takes quite a bit of getting used to but having said that once you do, the program certainly appears to have all the bells and whistles.
What about The GodFather. I have been using it for a long time and found that its very powerful tag editor.
:)
Good suggestion. It has been updated in the review. Thanks.
If you're not intimidated by its interface, I haven't yet found anything more powerful than MP3BookHelper. It appears that it's no longer in development and lacks synchronization with online databases, but for mass tagging using regular expressions and the like, it works marvelously.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=57079
Thanks for the helpful info. It has been included for review.
Jojoyee....you should check out File Renamer Basic.
http://www.sherrodcomputers.com/products_FileRenamer.cfm
Yes, it is quite a good software designed more towards file renaming. I notice that it is being reviewed under the category of "Best Free File Rename Utility".
It has a built-in ID3 Tag editor, but its functions are quite limited as compared to other software designed more solely for editing tags.
Tag & Rename is a great one as well!
This has been excluded as it is not a freeware.
Another good one which I use is Audioshell, which lets you edit the ID3 tags from the properties pages of the files - no need to start up another program! You can add cover art, plus all the usual ones and you can do multiple ones by choosing multiple ones and doing the group properties. Well worth it.
Usman
Yes, I tried this software sometime ago. As it has added more features supporting cover arts and lyrics, it will be included for next review soon. Many thanks for the update.
Just recently switched from MP3 Tag Tools to TagScanner - All I can say is WOW!
I really like MP3Tag but have had trouble with tagging ogg vorbis files (does not do album art). TagScanner handles them very well and runs clean as a portable app, but is taking a while to get used to.
You should take a look at ID3-TagIT as well http://www.id3-tagit.de/
Very good.
Pat
I did use this tag editor sometime ago. It will be included in the next review. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for the list! But don't forget EasyTAG:
http://easytag.sourceforge.net/
It's free and OpenSource.
Good info. It will be evaluated in the next review.
What about Picard or media monkey? I use these as well as MP3 tag tools
Yes, Picard is one of the best tools if you have a large amount of MP3s to tag. It can fetch the info bases on a song's "fingerprint", so if you haven't got a clue what the MP3's info is all about it's one of the best!
Thanks for the good suggestion. It will be included in the next review soon.
Post new comment