Foobar

Just load the album(s) into a playlist, select all the tracks in an album, right-click, then select Properties. If you want to automatically fill individual track fields (eg pick up the track numbers and titles from the filenames), just right-click anywhere in the blank area below the "Comment" field and select "Automatically fill values". You can also add any custom string such as "Remix" this way.

It's easier to do than to explain, and you really need to play around with it to get the result you want... once you get the hang of it you'll find there's very little you can't do tag-wise. :)
 
CaptainCrash said:
. If you want to automatically fill individual track fields (eg pick up the track numbers and titles from the filenames), just right-click anywhere in the blank area below the "Comment" field and select "Automatically fill values". You can also add any custom string such as "Remix" this way.
Click to expand...

You cant seem to edit the tracks yourself-do you have to add something to the pattern box and then foobar does it all for you? :confused:
 
Well, if you want to do it automatically, it has to find the information from somewhere it already exists.

If you had an album, say, "Murder Ballads" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and none of the tracks were tagged, but the files were named "01. Song of Joy.mp3" "02. Stagger Lee.mp3" etc, you'd do it this way:

- Select all the tracks in the album, right-click, Properties

- Enter Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds into the Artist field

- Enter 1996 into the Date field

- Enter Murder Ballads into the Album field

- Right-click below the Comment field, select "Automatically fill values" - you want Source: Filenames in the dropdown box.

- Where it says "Pattern", you'd enter %TRACKNUMBER%. %TITLE% (the area below will give you a preview)

Then hit OK (twice) and the fields should all be automagically filled. If the files themselves are named inconsistently, there's probably no way around other than to tag them individually.

If you wanted the custom string "(Remix)" to appear after each track name, you'd just enter %TRACKNUMBER&. %TITLE% (Remix) into the "Pattern" dialog box.

Alternatively, for released albums (not your own compilations), you could use the freedb plugin, or better still foo_discogs or foo_musicbrainz (if you don't want to be endlessly correcting other people's retarded spelling mistakes)... :)
 
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CaptainCrash thanks a lot, well as ive got a large number of albums I want to look the same I guess using foo_discogs or foo_musicbrainz will suit me better. Just tried downloading foo_discogs and its a zip file with a .dll in it?
 
Yes, just extract the .dll into your %Program Files%\foobar2000\components subfolder (the same goes for any other foobar2000 plugin).

You can then just right-click all the files in an album and tag them from whatever online database you're using, although with freedb they might still need a bit of manual attention depending on the accuracy of the tags.
 
CaptainCrash said:
Yes, just extract the .dll into your %Program Files%\foobar2000\components subfolder (the same goes for any other foobar2000 plugin).

You can then just right-click all the files in an album and tag them from whatever online database you're using, although with freedb they might still need a bit of manual attention depending on the accuracy of the tags.
Click to expand...

You might have misunderstood me abit. My albums have the names shown in foobar already-they just arent displayed how I would like.. 01. Artist - Track Name

Is the displayed name in foobar the same as its mp3 tag?
 
Oh, I see (I think). If the info is already in the tags, it's just a case of configuring the playlist the way you like it.

Assuming you're using the Default UI, you can already choose the fields you want displayed in the playlist by right-clicking on any column header, then "Columns" (if you want the items grouped in a particular way, eg by artist/album, you can also select from... err... "groups").

If none of the preformatted columns have the exact layout you want, you can create your own, you just go into File, Preferences, Default User Interface, Playlist View, hit the Add New Button. In Pattern, you could in your case enter %TRACKNUMBER%. %ALBUM ARTIST% - %TITLE%, give it a name of "Custom 1" or whatever, and then when you go back to the main playlist, right-click on the column headers and you'll have a new selectable column called "Custom 1", which would show in the playlist when selected, with the info in the format you've chosen.

You probably already know that you can resize all the visible columns and drag & drop them into whatever order you want.

If you look at "Title Formatting Help" under the main Help menu, you should get an idea of how the custom formatting works - it might be a bit, well, offputting at first, but it's actually not that difficult once you get your head round it (really...!), and it lets you display practically any information you want, in whatever way you want.

All of this presupposes you're using the default user interface - Columns UI is hugely more customisable (although a bit less intuitive to set up), with the downside that once you start fiddling with it you'll find hours of your life disappearing without trace...
 
Ok thanks, can I also edit the original .mp3 so that its mp3 tags display the same as foobar?

The reason I want to edit my mp3 tags is because I use iTunes aswell for my iPhone, and want to have everything the same in that too.

Appreciate the advice CC :)
 
Well, yes, when you edit the track properties in foobar2000 you're actually saving the info to the mp3 tags themselves (as well as to foobar's own internal database).

Any tags you edit in foobar2000 should be readable by other applications, with a couple of slight gotchas... foobar2000 uses ID3 version 2.4 by default, and some apps/portable players will insist on the older ID3v2.3. iTunes is OK AFAIK, but if you do get any problems you get foobar2000 to save tags as ID3v2.3 by going into File, Preferences, Advanced, Tagging, MP3, and check "ID3v2 writer compatibility mode."

Also, foobar2000 uses freeform tags which enable any custom fields to be created with any random name - this is fine for foobar2000's own use, but again they may not always be compatible with the ID3 tag specs for MP3s. As long as you stick with standard tag names which map to the ID3 specs ("album", "date" "tracknumber", "title" etc) you shouldn't have any problems though. :)

Incidentally, if you do find tagging with foobar2000 a bit of a struggle, you could take a look at Mp3tag, which is also very good - I'm a huge fan of foobar2000 but I'd be the first to admit it takes some getting used to. :)
 
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Yer couldnt get into foobar to edit my tracks really.

Giving mp3tag ago now. Do you know of the top of your head how I woudl change each .mp3 to look how I want it?
 
Well... load the tracks into Mp3Tag, fill in the tag information you want, then File, Save.

It's pretty self-explanatory, and short of physically doing it for you, I'm not sure how I can be much more help.... :)
 
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