Programmatically setting MP3 tags?

I did some searching on the forums and didn't quite get the answer I was looking for.

Is there away to programatically change MP3 tag information for selected file(s)?

I mean, I could use a CLI tool, but I'd rather keep it Dopus native.

Sorry if I missed the answer to this in my search :slight_smile:

The section in the manual entitled Programmatic setting of Metadata may be relevant.

fantabulous ... Thanks for the pointer ... Looking at it now. :slight_smile:

Hmmm.... coverart doesn't seem to want to set - no matter where I put the image:

"coverart:3,/mypictures/psrcover.jpg"

I also tried:

"coverart:3,c:\psrcover.jpg"

Yet, once set - it doesn't appear in the MetaPane under cover art.

I also sent an email in - setting the RELEASE date appears to have a bug. If you set the release date (either in the Metapane or programatically), it always reverts back ONE day. So if I put a release date of 10/23/2012, when I APPLY it, it reverts to 10/22/2012.

Thoughts?

What's the full command that you are trying?

SetAttr META "album:Passenger Seat radio Season 5" "albumartist:Shane R. Monroe" "artist:Shane R. Monroe" "coverart:3,/mypictures/psrcover.jpg" "origartist:Shane R. Monroe" "releasedate:{dlgstring|Release Date}" "authorurl:http://passengerseatradio.monroeworld.com" "composers:Shane R. Monroe" "encoder:Shane R. Monroe" "genre:Vocal" "year:2012" "comment:{dlgstring|Topics}" "tags:comedy;vocal;social;commentary;editorial" "title:Passenger Seat Radio"

Some follow up ...

I exported the image out of an existing MP3 - and it failed to put the extension on it; I presumed it was JPG - but it was PNG. So THAT might be a bug too.

So I changed it to PNG - tried a PNG as the coverart - no go.

Converted the PNG to JPG; tried THAT as the coverart - no go.

Tried to resize the image to 300x300 (which seems to be a recommended size) - also no go.

I tried JUST changing the coverart - no other changes. Still no go. :frowning:

Ok there seems to be an error in the example in the manual; instead of a comma separating the type from the filename it should be a colon.

I can't reproduce the release date thing here, it seems to set it reliably to the entered date.

WHOO HOO! The Colon fixed my issue. Sweet!

... for those following the thread, Jon also determined the date issue is dealing with UTC/timezone stuff. More to come (I'm not crazy - that's the important part) :slight_smile:

To continue on setting MP3 tags (for instance, the artist tag), the manual says "Multiple artists can be separated with semi-colons." However, DOpus transforms semicolons into slashes and that's not mentioned. Okay, that might be compatible with Windows Media Player, but it's not compatible with other players or software, such as foobar2000 and Tag&Rename.

However, if DOpus leaves semicolons as they are, it's still compatible with Windows Media Player and the other players, too. Could you switch to real semicolons?

/ is (unfortunately) the separator for multiple artists as per the ID3 specification. Some software ignores it, some doesn't, some uses heuristics to decide when to ignore it (basically to fix "AC/DC" as a band name), all making things even worse because the standard now isn't a standard and the same tag will look different in different things.

One trick, which may work depending on where (and with which fonts) the tags will be displayed, is to use the Unicode division character instead of the slash character. For example, AC∕DC will work in an ID3 tag (and also a filename) while AC/DC will not.