[mythtv-users] mythmusic, id3, vorbiscomment, and why easytag is your friend

[thor]

Lots of (very useful) patches/cvs-updates have been making the rounds in an 
attempt to deal with mp3 and ogg file tagging.

For the completely uninformed, both mp3 and ogg format audio files can embed 
information about a recording within the compressed audio file itself. By 
setting metadata information like artist, album, track name, track number, 
etc., an end user can help inform player applications regarding the data 
required to categorize available content. One can also emphatically delineate 
metadata by imposing a directory structure along the lines of 
artist/album/song.

So what happens when you've spent the last 5 years building a huge directory 
tree and you find an application (such as, by default, mythmusic) that 
thrives on tags? Alternatively, what if you have a mess of audio tracks that 
you have haphazardly collected over the years and want to finally combine 
into a canonical database of your audio content?

Two (concatenated) words: easytag (http://easytag.sourceforge.net)

It does mp3 id3 tags. It does vorbis comments. When it says it has changed a 
tag, that #$!@ing  tag has actually changed. It can recursively descend 
directory structures and intelligently assign tags based on position. It's 
GUI based, with a great GTK tree widget for navigating quickly. It's the kind 
of software that Apple spends a lot of money developing in order to be able 
to show the world that good (end user) software is software that is just 
plain obvious.

If you're using myth, if it's connected to your stereo, and if you're thinking 
about how to organize audio content, you want it. Kudos to Jerome Couderc for 
having written such a great program.


- thor

(Disclaimer: I have no direct connection to easytag and/or Jerome Couderc. I 
do, however, rather like francophones, and this may have biased my position)