Fix those MP3 tags!

If you’re an MP3 collector like me, with lots of tracks, it really gets on your nerve to try to get all the track info correct, and the CD covers embedded in the songs so they show up on iTunes properly. When you have a huge library of songs, it’s almost impossible to do it manually.

But you don’t have to. People have designed good software to take care of it for you. This article covers two such programs.

I especially like Fixtunes, even though it crashes a lot. It’s going through my tracks, adding all the info that’s missing plus, it finds the cover art in most cases. even obscure stuff like 1930s jazz tracks I have. Toren also pointed out a great site to find the covers it can’t find.

Sloth Radio has a search engine for album covers that is very extensive. I was looking for Al Hirt, for example, and it had 10 pages of results! I hope to have all my tracks in order very soon.

FixTunes has been quite stable for me, although I have issues with the way it works. (Why can’t I force selection of a cover?  Why, why, why?)
I mentioned this next trick to Jim, but since it is far from obvious I wanted pass it along to others.  If you are manually adding cover art to files that FixTunes doesn’t find a cover for (I use Tag&Rename;), iTunes will not recognize them, because it just has to do things it’s own way, like a lot of Apple software (FixTunes is designed to play nice with iTunes).
Here’s the trick.  Once you have added those files to your library:

1. Select all the files.
2. Right click on them and select “Get Info” - this will open the iTunes multi file tag editor.
3. Don’t check any checkboxes or change anything - just press the “OK” button - iTunes will reread the tags from all selected files after this.

And you’re done.

Posted by  on  10/05  at  01:50 AM

I have 2.5 gigs of ram in my computer, but I think it was a memory problem because I was running a lot of programs when it was running. I have been running it this morning with no problems because I don’t have those other programs open (FTP, text editor, multiple browser tabs, windows explorer).

Posted by  on  10/05  at  10:56 AM

Um, don’t you mean Windows Exploder?

Posted by Macker  on  10/05  at  08:11 PM

I really didn’t find any of these programs useful to me.

First, you have limited trial runs with most of them and frankly I’m not in a mood or financial worry-free state to buy another program!  A lot of them were also buggy and one imported the WRONG version of “Kingdom Come” (a lousy comedy album) instead of the audio adaptation of the comic.

(Yes, I have the KC audio adaptation in iTunes.  Long story short, I hooked up a boombox to my old videocard and imported the cassette tapes onto my hard drive.  Then, I cut up the audio in CD tracks, created my own CDs, and later mp3s for iTunes.  I also created custom labels for the CD with Alex Ross artwork for a variety of sources onlline and in a Wizard special magazine.)

I ended up scanning in program notebooks for my Japanese soundtracks (it’s hard for English programs to deal with Kanji by and large) that I have in iTunes and looking up the other few albums I have (English) with Google and Amazon.

A bit more time, yes, but otherwise fool-proof and costing me only time.

P.S.—With scans, you pretty much can scan as high as you want on the CD booklets but I don’t think above 300dpi makes much sense.  Reduce the image to 305X305 pixels but keep the same dpi.

Online, look for images above 300X300…  Most cover art on Amazon is above 400X400 if you click on “larger art” to see CD covers.

Of course, nobody says you HAVE to use the real cover art.  Any square image will do and you can be more creative or import other images for homebrew CD/mp3 lists.

Posted by  on  10/05  at  10:15 PM

Thanks for the review James.  Our developers are working on making the process of fixing your music as smooth as possible, so that’s frustrating that you’re dealing with a crash.  Our forum is the best place to write about any problems you’re running into so that we can tell you how to get it functioning properly or get it fixed for you as soon as possible.

Posted by FixTunes  on  10/06  at  09:34 AM

I have thousands of songs that need art (hundreds now that I got fix tunes).

What you do with Fix Tunes is set the accuracy to 65% or higher if you want to avoid mis-tags. I made the mistake of lowering it and a few songs got mis-tagged. But that problem is easy to correct. It did not do that to too many files.

Posted by  on  10/06  at  09:39 AM

Well, George, sometimes the best things in life aren’t free.  You just spent money to go to a comics convention, so you know that to be true….

Hi, Mr. FixTunes!  Why can’t I force selection of a cover?  (^_^)

Posted by  on  10/06  at  07:52 PM

Yeah, amen on that, Toren.

Still, I wasn’t satisified by the selections made by the programs I tested.  A high number of the covers chosen were still wrong.  I had to correct album art on at least 40 tracks.

I don’t have as much stuff as some of you do in mp3 format and I mainly download this stuff to the iPod after processing in iTunes.  IPods as far as I know don’t display album covers.

I’m okay with searching out covers on Amazon or scanning in the Japanese covers.  I just didn’t find anything that automated the process reliable enough to keep.

Besides, I like having more control over things.  Giving all that control to machines kind of unnerves me!


P.S.—This will probably be the first and last time I go to that comic con in town.  I have a number of minor complaints about the small size of the event but my main thing is this: in an age of computers, why do I have to be carrying around several hundred dollars in a wallet to buy anything there?  Seriously, there were no credit card readers at the event!  All transactions had to be cash! 

I didn’t go to buy anything (I was there strictly for autographs and to talk to someone about a possible career opportunity)  but I was surprised by that lack of technology.  I could speculate a lot more but I have suspicions about taxes…  I think it’s inexcusable not having card readers there.

Posted by  on  10/06  at  08:20 PM

George, my iPod nano displays covers, in very nice color.  Actually, it’s the only reason I bothered to add them.  It was kind of annoying to see the default large musical note constantly displayed.  But it was more for fun that for any justifiable reason.
My “hit rate” with FixTunes was about 95%+, which I found pretty impressive.

Based on my experience as a dealer at cons, I’ll bet the main reason a lot of folks don’t have credit card readers is that the convention centers charge obscene amounts of money for a phone hookup.  And cons have, over the years, started treating dealers as suckers to be fleeced rather than a significant reason people come to the con.  I quit going to San Diego with a booth when they tripled their rates over two years.  This meant I would have had to pay for the honor of having a sales booth and selling thousands of comics over the course of the con.  Forget it—I dumped the booth and spent my time hanging out with my pals and talking to the fans at the Dark Horse booth.

Posted by  on  10/06  at  10:08 PM

Okey-doke.

Gonna have to look at the iPod manual, then!  I’ve got an 80GB iPod Classic which beats most other models handily (still wishing for a widescreen—lucky Nano guys got a widescreen this year!).

Hate the fact that I have to read an instruction manual for the iPod on the computer.  Sometimes the environmental lobby and cheapness of companies burns me up.  I DO NOT like to be forced to read on monitor screens.  Hardcopy is preferable!

Too bad about the phone hookups.  Talk about a scam!  Bad that the convention center is working against its best interests in the long run.  However, as someone who doesn’t like carrying around tons of cash, I still prefer the debit card option.

Posted by  on  10/06  at  10:56 PM

Toren,
FixTunes always tries to find the original album a song appeared on.
This means that if a song is listed in iTunes as being from a
compilation, Best Of, or Greatest Hits album, there is a good chance
that FixTunes will change the song’s album to be the name of the
original album it first appeared on.  If you do not want this to
happen, do this:
1) Create a playlist in iTunes called “Compiliations” and add all the
songs to it that are from compilations and whose albums you do not
want to change
2) In FixTunes, go to the Options screen and select your new playlist
from the list of playlist.  This tells FixTunes to only fix the songs
in that playlist for now.
3) Also uncheck the “Album” detail.  This tell’s FixTunes to leave the
album field in those songs unchanged when fixing them.
4) Click Save and then fix your songs (either one-by-one or automatically)
5) Don’t forget to reset the Options before trying to fix other songs
in your library.

You can also just switch an album in iTunes if you’re not happy with a selection that FixTunes made.

I hope that helps.

Posted by FixTunes  on  10/07  at  05:28 AM

I have a question. You said to report problems at the forum, but I don’t see any forum link on the Fixtunes website. Not on the support page, either.

Posted by  on  10/07  at  09:57 AM

On the support page link you will click on the picture that looks like the version you are using, so either the mac or pc version, and you will follow the steps to begin posting in the forum.

Posted by FixTunes  on  10/07  at  10:24 AM
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