Copy tags in a batch?

[pietzcker]

Dear forum,

this is my first post (even though I'm a dbPowerAmp user since V11), and I'm not sure that this is the right place to ask, so I'd be glad for any pointers in a better direction.

I have a "legacy" problem.

I have ripped (most of) my CD collection years ago for my trusty, old, heavy Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. This player and the ripping software that came with it only support the tags for track number, track title, album title, artist and genre.

However, I've always wanted to include composer info, too, so I have misappropriated the Genre tag as a Composer tag.

Now I will surely someday move to a different MP3 player - which will support the Composer tag. Is there a way to move the contents of the Genre tag to the Composer tag batch-like? Preferably while converting them from WMA (yes, I know, sorry) to MP3...?

Any ideas and help are much appreciated.

Thanks,
Tim

[Spoon]

Re: Copy tags in a batch?

You can do it without converting, use the [ID Tag Update] utility codec and map Genre >> Composer, try on a few files before all, with perhaps Batch Converter.

[Teknojnky]

Re: Copy tags in a batch?

I am not sure what you think you will gain by converting from wma to mp3, but you will definately lose quality. If you do convert, you would do well to save the original wma files until your sure you will be satisfied with the quality of the transcoded mp3 files.

All that said, your far better off re-ripping from the orginal cds, especially if you use dbpa ripper which will help ensure you have high quality rips and current metadata.

[pietzcker]

Re: Copy tags in a batch?

Excellent! Thanks to both of you! I have put quite a lot of work into my ID tags (lots of classical music where whatever CDDB delivered was mostly unusable - either because Every Word Was Capitalized (which looks stupid on Allegro Vivace Con Fuoco) or tags were in English when the original music had German, French or Italian movement descriptions). And since for example the iPod won't play WMA files, that looked like the best possible option (WMA 160 kbps to MP3 192 or 256 kbps and hope for the best). But perhaps it would really be best to re-rip the CDs...sigh...

[Teknojnky]

Re: Copy tags in a batch?

If you re-rip and want to keep tags, you might look at mediamonkey, there is a script (advanced duplicate find & fix) which can copy/paste any/chosen metadata (from supported fields) and optionally delete the old files if you choose to. I use it extensively when I re-rip a cd to lossless to replace my mp3 originals, tho mostly for keeping playcounts/ratings more than the other metadata which I tag from musicbrainz anyway.

To be clear, it is best to do the copy/paste on an individual album basis at a time, but its relatively quick and easy. You could do it on more than one, but all the tracks would have to match up exactly in the same order from and to.

I think also that foobar can copy/paste tags but I haven't used it for that purpose so I don't know if it is any better or worse.

[pietzcker]

Re: Copy tags in a batch?

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out!

[moley6knipe]

Re: Copy tags in a batch?

www.mp3tag.de/en is really good for tag copying. You simply right-click, and cut copy and paste as you need (don't close mp3tag between copy and paste actions, just open a new dir). It takes care of mapping tags from one format to another automatically, and you've got an Undo. Free, too.