[lug] audio questions

[David Morris]

On Thu, May 08, 2008 at 04:03:59PM -0600, dio2002 at indra.com wrote:
> assuming you have a bunch (a crapload) of MP3 files
> already on disk, can  tools like amrok be used in "bash
> script" mode to mass id3 (re)tag the  existing file
> collection to speed up the ops?  i'm thinking if the files
> were organized in artist and album directories and the
> file names were  equivalent to track names, this could be
> scripted to put the info in  there.  does amrok make this
> easy?

The best tool I've found for mass changes to ID3 tags is to
use the application 'quodlibet'.  As a player it nice, but
not spectacular.....however it has the most powerful tool
I've yet seen for making changes to ID3 tags, including the
ability to use regular expressions.  Equally useful for
renaming files based on ID3 tags (again, including regular
expression support).

If you have a consistent file naming convention, you set the
pattern for how to decode tags, kick it off, and let it run
until complete.  If you have a large number of files,
consider doing them in batches because updates to the GUI
will be faster, and thus the overall task will take less
time.....or look around for a command-line script using the
'ex falso' library.

Just be prepared to wait a LONG time to make changes if you
have a huge library....Its designed for flexibility, NOT
speed when changing tags on 60+ GB of mp3/ogg format files!

The actual engine for tagging is called 'ex falso' which is
a separate library....might be used in other applications,
I've never checked.

--David