flumps.org - MP3 Tagging tools

MP3 Tagging tools
Back to the front door...

So, I have been slowly migrating all of my CDs in to MP3s (not going to argue on FLAC vs MP3 - it's an educated personal choice) but I also have an existing MP3 collection from the CDs I had already ripped. When either ripping or tagging I ran into a couple of problem I couldn't find tools to solve, so I wrote them myself.

I have written two tools, mp3view and mp3gain, as well as an addon for Replay Gain v0.4 on OSX.

Replay Gain OSX addon - copy APE tags to ID3v2 tags

Download: ZIP archive containing patch and full code

I found Replay Gain v0.4 for OSX to be particular useful when tagging MP3s on OSX, to add replay gain tags to the files.

But the binary included only seems to work for adding the replay gain information into APE tags. I also require them in ID3v2 tags for backward compatibilty so have written an addon in PERL to read the APE information and add it to the ID3v2 tags.

You will need the following (assuming you have installed Replay Gain v0.4 for OSX first):

PERL v5.10.0+
PERL libraries:
- MP3::Tag - installable from CPAN.
- Audio::ApeTag by Jeremy Evans - manually installable from here.

To install Audio::ApeTag (which I host on my site and not direct from Jeremy's GitHub page, because his implementation is a top level library rather than one under Audio and goes against the norm), simply unzip the archive linked above and run the following within the unzipped directory:

 perl Makefile.pl
 make
 make test
 make install

make install will prompt you for your password to install this using sudo. Your account must have admin rights.

You have the option to either apply the patch files or copy across the full code to the Replay Gain install. Before completing the following, ensure Replay Gain is closed and not running. Within the unzipped archive directory...

Patching method:

 sudo patch -b /Applications/ReplayGain\ Scan.app/Contents/Resources/script ./ReplayGain\ Scan/script.patch
 sudo patch -b /Applications/ReplayGain\ Scan.app/Contents/Resources/tag-files-with-rg.sh ./ReplayGain\ Scan/tag-files-with-rg.sh.patch
 sudo cp ./rgape2id3v2.pl /Applications/ReplayGain\ Scan.app/Contents/Resources
 sudo patch -b /Applications/ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan.app/Contents/Resources/script ./ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan/script.patch
 sudo patch -b /Applications/ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan.app/Contents/Resources/tag-files-with-rg.sh ./ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan/tag-files-with-rg.sh.patch
 sudo cp ./rgape2id3v2.pl /Applications/ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan.app/Contents/Resources

Full code copy:

 sudo cp /Applications/ReplayGain\ Scan.app/Contents/Resources/script /Applications/ReplayGain\ Scan.app/Contents/Resources/script.orig
 sudo cp /Applications/ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan.app/Contents/Resources/script /Applications/ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan.app/Contents/Resources/script.orig
 sudo cp ./ReplayGain\ Scan/script /Applications/ReplayGain\ Scan.app/Contents/Resources
 sudo cp ./ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan/script /Applications/ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan.app/Contents/Resources
 sudo cp /Applications/ReplayGain\ Scan.app/Contents/Resources/tag-files-with-rg.sh /Applications/ReplayGain\ Scan.app/Contents/Resources/tag-files-with-rg.sh.orig
 sudo cp /Applications/ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan.app/Contents/Resources/tag-files-with-rg.sh /Applications/ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan.app/Contents/Resources/tag-files-with-rg.sh.orig
 sudo cp ./ReplayGain\ Scan/tag-files-with-rg.sh /Applications/ReplayGain\ Scan.app/Contents/Resources
 sudo cp ./ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan/tag-files-with-rg.sh /Applications/ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan.app/Contents/Resources
 sudo cp ./ReplayGain\ Scan/rgape2id3v2.pl /Applications/ReplayGain\ Scan.app/Contents/Resources
 sudo cp ./ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan/rgape2id3v2.pl /Applications/ReplayGain\ Full\ Rescan.app/Contents/Resources

Open Replay Gain, drag a MP3 or a folder containing MP3s to the application, wait for scanning to complete (if necessary) and watch it execute the PERL script to copy the replay gain tags from the APE frames to the ID3v2 frames.

mp3view

Download: mp3view2.pl - rename it from TXT to PL.

Unlike a lot of people, I strangely like to have my individual non-mixed tracks located in one flat folder and any mixes (such as Ministry Of Sound mix albums, etc...) go into another folder sorted by Albums in separate folders. I also embed all of my MP3s with the album art from the album it is from so they are fully portable across a multi-tude of systems.

Therefore, I want my original system kept as is for me, but software like Windows Media Center annoyingly requires you to have it structured in the 'Album Artist -> Album' directory structure with the album art stored as 'Folder.jpg'.

I will not be ranting about how rubbish that required structure is on a technical level; I have got over that now :). But instead, I wrote a PERL script that runs on my Linux NAS that does the following:

Only runs on Linux - if anyone wants to code link support in for Windows / NTFS partitions, please go ahead and mail back the changes.
Scans a directory (--mp3dir) (recursion is optional using --recursive) for MP3s / M3U playlists and creates softlinks pointing back to the original files under the 'Album Artist\Album' folder structure within --linksdir.
The embedded album art is then checked across the album being processed to ensure it is the same - if not, a Warning is output leaving you to fix it. The embedded album art is created as 'Folder.jpg' for Windows Media Center.
If you want it to delete soft links for tracks / directories that no longer exist in --linksdir (i.e. if you have moved / renamed the original file), you can use --delnonexists.
On the off chance you want the --linksdir within the directory structure of --mp3dir, you can use --excludemp3dir to ensure the --linksdir isn't double scanned.
For the first run, I strongly recommend not using the --createlinks switch so you can view any errors you may get.
You need to have the library MP3::Tag installed for this to run - you can get this from CPAN.

This is what I use - have it configured in Cron to run daily. Takes about 1 hour to process and shortcut 15000 MP3s. I then have iTunes, MediaMonkey, Windows Media Center, etc... to read / update it's library from the Samba share pointing to /c/Music/View

mp3view2.pl --delnonexists --createlinks --mp3dir=/c/Music --linksdir=/c/Music/View --recursive --excludemp3dir=/c/Music/View 2>&1 > /var/log/mp3view.log

Here's the usage information:

 mp3view2.pl [--debug] --mp3dir= --linksdir= [--createlinks] [--delnonexists] [--skiperrs]|--help

 --createlinks         ** PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS ON THE FIRST RUN - without **
                       ** it, we will show you tracks that don't have ID3v2 **
                       ** tags or don't have the AlbumArtist tag populated. **
                       **                                                   **
                       ** Creates folders / links in --linksdir from MP3s   **
                       ** found in --mp3dir. Any action that would have     **
                       ** occurred is displayed on STDOUT prefixed by       **
                       ** *ACTION*. This information is automatically       **
                       ** included if you run with the --debug option.      **

 --debug               Displays debug processing information

 --delnonexists        If tracks have been removed / renamed, then links in the
                       folder structure that point to MP3s that are not present
                       in --mp3dir, are removed.
 --excludemp3dir       If you have used the --recursive option and have dirs
                       within the location specified in --mp3dir, you can add
                       directories under it to an exclude list where we will
                       not process any MP3s found.

 --help                Displays this help information

 --linksdir=<path>     Output folders for artists and albums including soft
                       links to the actual tracks will be written here.

 --mp3dir=<path>       Script will search  for MP3s to create the links
                       to represent a flat MP3 collection in a folder structure
                       that Media Center et al. can understand. To specify
                       multiple directories, separate them with a : (colon)
                       The Location where the links / folders are written to
                       is set by --linksdir option.
                       ** THIS MUST BE A FULL RELATIVE PATH **

 --recreate            Can only be used with --createlinks. This will remove
                       any existing links and recreate them.

 --recursive           Use this option if you want us to recursively look for
                       MP3s within the directories specified in --mp3dir

 --skiperrs            If there are any errors with creating directories /
                       links, then do not stop processing.

mp3gain

Download: mp3gain.pl - rename it from TXT to PL.
Download: metamp3.exe v0.92 beta 5 - required tool for this to work; install in the same directory as the PERL script.

When I am ripping my tracks from CD, I don't want the original tracks changed when it comes to the volume gain. However, I like the gain information to be written to the MP3s within the tags leaving it to the player to adjust the volume dynamically.

The tool I found most useful for this is metamp3.exe by Tycho. However, for it to write the Album Gain tag, you needed to supply the individual tracks that make up that album on the command line. This was something I wasn't willing to do manually and also wanted to have the gain tags written across multiple albums. Hence, I wrote this PERL script!

Only runs on Windows - if anyone finds a similar tool to metamp3.exe that runs on Linux, please go ahead and mail back the changes.
Scans a directory (--directory) for MP3s and executes the metamp3.exe tool to add the Track and Album Gain tags to the MP3s per album.
It requires the 'Album Artist' and 'Album' tags to be populated for this to work.
By default, it will only scan --directory for files that need updating - useful for checking what does need updating and whether the correct ID3v2 tags are present for metamp3.exe to be successful. To ensure the tracks have the tags applied, use the --update switch.
You need to have the library MP3::Tag installed for this to run - you can get this from CPAN.
! WARNING ! metamp3.exe cannot handle European special characters like á, ç, é, ö, etc... You will need to update ANY tags that contain these characters after running.

Here's the usage information:

 mp3gain.pl [--debug] [--directory=] [--rescan] [--update]|--help

 --debug               Displays debug processing information
 --directory=<path>    Script will search  for MP3s to analyse their
                       volume gain information. By default, we use the current
                       directory
 --help                Displays this help information
 --rescan              If volume gain information is found, instead of skipping
                       the tracks, they will have the tag information deleted
                       before scanning / updates take place (it's a limitation
                       in metamp3.exe unfortunately)
 --update              Updates the MP3s with volume gain information if it
                       is found to be missing or inconsistent within the
                       MP3s. It will also set Album Gain details for tracks.