Explorer Shell extension to display metadata

General Discussion
1

Hi all,

I am a huge music enthusiats along with computers and use both, I was looking for a tagger program with some features like FLAC support, album art and of course batch tagging and I stumbled upon this program within 20 minutes I was pleased. I also wanted something that integrated with the Windows shell (right-click editting) and literally jumped for joy when I was playing around with Mp3tag

I would like to add my suggestions for the next version or beta, so please everyone feel free to comment.
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Dear Author/creators:

Suggestions for Mp3tag v2.39 or 2.38b

Suggestion # 1 - shell popup menu - I feel this small feature should be in Mp3tag, I have seen it in two programs already and they are dbpoweramp 12 and also lightweight and pleasant the freeware audioshell, we should have the option if we want to install this shell - see preview pic of dbpoweamp's that I took (notice how dbpoweramp gives lovely advanced information such as record label and vbr settings _ v extreme)

we could also have the option of what tags to see in the popup too

Suggestion # 2 -

Input a URL to for an image - Now that we can paste album art, I would now love the abilty to input any direct image link (for example, www.mysite.com/albumartpic1.jpg) so that the program can quickly download the image, this great feature would suite nicely, this feature should too be able to: resize the image to gievn dimensions before writing as art to the file, also have a login and password filed in where if the site requires to login then user can input login and pass

see the screenshot I have taken of this program and editted to show you all what I mean
as you can see from the image that I enjoyed editting in MS Paint it would be nice, NOTE: the 'configure' button would do - login and password field, set image dimensions, rename image, internet-proxy settings. All images downloaded can download into a TEMP directory first or can download straight into the program whichever is best.

that image took me 1 hour to create edit so good luck and thank you for viewing :slight_smile:

More advanced tags and the option to show them as default - Record Label, URL, composer, disc number, ripping tool, enocoder, language, rip date, copyright - I really am interested in the 'record label' tag that can sometimes go under the tag name of 'Publisher' or simply 'Label' if they are in the program I just can';t seem to find them
see this image (same image) - http://i11.tinypic.com/5yd0diq.png

SORTED - This program just keeps getting better and better, I found it its ok - File>Options>tag panel - I could add my own default entries, including 'record label' (which is under PUBLISHER) entries FANTATSIC this is what I have always wanted to do - tank you Florian

Every feature from within this beautiful program should be kept the way it is and nothing should be taken away, I will shut up now.

5yd0diq.png672×695 73.3 KB

5yx1xjp.png921×646 33.7 KB
2

+1:
This would be a very usefull feature!
What do you think about this idea:

3

Yes but what does the author think of my overal suggestions

4

Normally, it takes a few people to agree with an idea for it to be even considered.

With that in mind, I like the suggestion of the shell popup. I use AudioShell, but it always seems to break when installing other audio based programs. Most times when I install the updates to Mp3tag, this occurs. That means I then have to re-install AudioShell.

I think it would be nice to have the shell popup as part of Mp3tag instead. If it were part of Mp3tag, I think it would be cool to have the ability to say which tags you want to display...perhaps a checkbox in the Tag Panel.

It's no skin off my back if it can't be done. Just my two cents.

Thanks,
kr

5

Exactly, thats what I would like too, I have installed audioshell after mp3tag so there was no break, I only installed AudioShell for the shellpopup but I much prefer mp3tag's tagging and would like to see a an optional shell pop up.

And regarding my other suggestion about the album art URL I think that it may take some extra testing but I have seen this feature on imageshack.us, just thought it would be nice to see similar in this program - hope Mr. Florian could have a look and make a judgement

thanks

6

I think the shell extension is not going to happen because that would require rebooting Windows after each installation that needs to add / replace / delete the respective DLL file.

In some programs it is possible to insert an URL in the "Open file" dialog and let IE download the file to the temporary Internet folder. No idea why it doesn't work with Mp3tag.

7

I still think it can happen but only as an option after install, I think it can still be an integral part of this program. What I propose isd that people can have the option top download the DLL file from this site and then in an 'tools'>'options' we can tick or untick to have it - but it would require that single extra downloaded dll to be in the installation folder (practical and very optional).

What does the author think on this, can this suggestion make the light, also anymore members views on the URL suggestion because we already have another member complaining about album art tags from a particular source --see-- here ----/t/5034/1 and /t/5037/1

The URL suggestion should be closely considered for the next release, it should not be hard to implement as we see so many of those image downloading programs like 'Neodownloader' and 'PictureRipper'

8

To further my point a little, I never installed my version of IrfanView (another fabulous multi-image viewer program), all I simply did was copy the contents of an already installed version 4.0 from my Laptop onto my other Desktop computer AND IT RAN FINE, eveen giving me the chance to add sheel extensions, see pic below, but you see it gave the user the option, just how mp3tag gave me the option to further the tag panel with more miscellaneous id3v2 :slight_smile: - option giving simple

the image is for demonstration:

4pj6zw4.jpg741×443 57.9 KB

9

A shell extension is not planned at the moment. Although I like the idea, it's a lot of work and currently not in focus of my plans with Mp3tag.

To copy a picture from a website you can just try to drag and drop it from your web browser.

Please use image attachments if you want to share large pictures.

10

Well your the author it is up to you, I use AudioShell's shell display so it is OK, just thought that it would be cool to add into mp3tag so I can uninstall audioshell, it is fine :slight_smile:

btw yes in future I will use attachments for large images.

btw again - two question I have to ask.

  1. What is your opininon on the URL downloader idea

  2. Can you give me some idea of your future plans for mp3tag, I am very interested

11

Really? Well, I doubt that.

You can load and unload shell extensions without rebooting. After unloading a shell extension the dll isn't locked anymore and you can replace it. You can do that with many locked files, use "regsvr32.exe /u" on it and move/delete/rename/overwrite it.

On topic: Well, I like the idea of having such a shell extension. But I don't see the point why it has to be done by Florian. There are already shell extensions in existence that do that, no need to re-invent the wheel. Only thing I can think of that might be of interest is integrating Mp3Tag functionality into the Windows Explorer or generally havin this kind of shell extension as a "goodie" in the Mp3Tag package.

12

Are you sure about that? While I never coded shell extension myself, all shell extensions used by third party programs that I encountered were removed after a reboot or at least after manually killing all instances of explorer.exe. regsvr32 /u does unregister, but explorer.exe still keeps the file into memory.

13

Well, try it out yourself. I'm very sure that there are shell extensions that only require being unregistered to be "detached" from the Explorer and for the corresponding DLL file to be unlocked. Because I have compiled (not coded tho :stuck_out_tongue:) and used such extensions myself. When I can do it manually without a reboot, I don't see any reason why an installer cannot do it, too.

But still, you are quite right, there may be some cases were it is impossible remove extensions from the memory and thus unlock the files. Yet I don't know the exact reasons why this is the case. I solely speak from my own user experiences and I have seen both cases. Some program components definitely need a reboot or at least a re-login of the user so that they become totally visible... some extensions that deal with icons for example. It happened a lot of times that only after a reboot the correct icons for specific filetypes were shown after I have installed some software (e.g. graphic tool suites).

When you have the more than one explorer process enabled, then it may help to exit one of them, usually the one with the higher PID is the one that locks file type based shell extensions, so the famous "exit all program windows except this one (installer)" makes sense in this case. I have successfully deleted a DLL that was still locked after unregistering it. I had to close all Window Explorer processes (the root explorer.exe - i.e. windows shell - wasn't the one locking it). After unregistering the DLL all newly openend Window Explorer windows didn't load and lock the DLL anymore and I could delete it.

So my guess is that the above is only possible when you have "Launch folder windows in seperate process" enabled, but by default this is not the case, hence the main explorer.exe has to be restarted for some shell extensions to be removed... while this explains the reason why you have to restart after a uninstalling a program, it doesn't explain why you have to restart after an installation of some programs. My guess: probably for the icons to be refreshed or because some components are/can only be started during windows startup or user login.

If you want to experiment a little with shell extensions then I can recommend ShellExView to you: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html You'll be surprised how many of them exist and usually you can deactivate all of them. :smiley: While this program doesn't allow you to de-install them (regsvr32.exe /u) it gives you the path to the file, with which you can test such an de-installation. Also try to just disable an item and then deleting the file (but make a backup), it should work, too, which means the file can be replaced or removed, EDIT: here the same thing applies as with the manual unregistering... you have to close all explorer windows afterwards for it to work, or rather all processes that might have the file locked... I'm not sure whether this is the case always, or only for some shell extensions, I have seen both cases therefor I guess it's either up to the developer to write a "clean" implementation that issues the explorer to let it off the hook or it depends on the functionality of the extension.

My careful conclusion is: For sure, it is possible to write a shell extension for integration it into the Mp3Tag installer package that doesn't need a reboot after installation/removal. But certain features of such a shell extension might also require this nevertheless. And unfortunately I don't know which one this might be.

14

I would also love to see a shell extension included with Mp3tag. I currently use the dbpoweramp one and love it, but it has at least one problem - it can't read the tags from many types of audio files.

For my needs, I have no need for the ability to edit tags from Windows Explorer. I would like read-only capability in the same manner that the dbpoweramp extensions operate - via mouseover.

15

I have made a web sources script "from URL" to download an image to the tag, it's here:
/t/2706/1
The only downside is that the image is loaded twice.