For more than 30 years,I have filled my own musical database on Excel.
Over these years, I have also developed a lot of macros to simplify my life while updating with new discs.
And when you search a litlle bit, Excel has a lot of hidden functions which allows me to make my main audio player! And it also allows to interact directly with others applications (Explorer, CDex and, so, Mp3Tag...).
25 years ago, I have started my huge audio library (more than 3000 CDs) onto mp3 files with the scanned art covers. But I didn't take care of tagging my files. What an error!!!
Obviously, there are drastic rules to organize the ten thousand of folders and files but when I attend to tag them I didn't want to do it by myself and one by one (folder or file).
Mp3Tag was the best tool I found because of the "Import Tags from Text Files" option but this didn't help to much for integrating cover on-the-fly...
But as I've said before Excel is a fantastic software (and I'm not paid by M$) and it took me a few week to create an interface to automate the tagging of my files without any effort...
And it works fine as you can see on this small demo on:video (Sorry for the bad quality due to the 3Mb restriction)
In this video all the mp3 are in a different folder but share the same cover art...
I believe that it may interest some users (after searching on this forum).
If so, I could take some time during my holidays to adapt my tool to a more generic file organisation that anyone can use...
Just let me know...
thank you for sharing, maybe you can explain it a bit more.
Yes please,I am also interested in a few more details.
Especially:
What exactly can you do in Excel that is not possible in mp3tag?
What can you do more easily in Excel than directly in Mp3tag?
Thanks for your comments.
What exactly can you do in Excel that is not possible in mp3tag?
The main issue with mp3tag is that you can't batch the process for adding cover to audio files. You have to do it one by one and it takes a few seconds...
This is not an option when you have around 50000 mp3 in your library (and 30000 jpg for the covers)
With my tool, you don't need to use any explorer to find the files to use
Yes please,I am also interested in a few more details.
My database in Excel is simply structured :
- Name / Title / Track Number / Album / Year
- and a few flags to avoid duplicates
With these datas, the full paths for the audio and cover files can be calculated.
The main trick I've found is to affect the cover file path to a "ghost" tag (which is a tag that I don't need). This helps to use "Import cover art from file" in action type
My macro will generate a text file (mp3.txt) that will contains all tag datas (according to a defined format string)
mp3.txt is in a full text format and not a converted file from Excel "Save as..." because the track numbers like "2-15" are often converted into date format like "15-feb"...
So when I want to tag some new files :
- I select the concerned rows in Excel and run the macro
- For each row, it adds the required datas (included paths) to mp3.txt
- For each row, it adds the corresponding audio file directly in the mp3tag list
- When finished, mp3tag uses the mp3.txt file with the "Text File -> Tag" option with the defined format string (This is also automatic as Excel can send keys to mp3tag)
- So, all files are now tagged and cover paths are now in a tag for every audio file
- Then, I run the action "Cover" with "Import cover art from file" in action type
- and everything is done in a few seconds...
Not really correct.
MP3tag can import pictures from the file system with
- fully qualified filenames,
- partially qualified filenames,
- filenames with wildcards,
- filenames generated from tag data
- filenames adapted with scripting functions.
I would assume that this should cater for more or less most of the cover files.
MP3tag supports user-defined fields, so if you need additional data, like e.g. a special filename for a picture file, you can save it there. But I doubt that import/exporting of cover files will happen very often in the lifetime of a file. But you would not have to mis-use a tag field just to get the cover filename but you could create a dedicated field.
THis means that the detour via Excel is not necessary. On the contrary.
Most of the trouble that you have with the export of data from Excel with
would simply not occur as you stay within MP3tag.
If you have questions about a specific function or solution of a problem, please open a dedicated thread for that.
You can run a single "Import Cover from File" action that will process all selected files with one click. If that isn't "batch processing" then I don't know what is.
You already have your cover paths stored "in a tag for every audio file". That means that you can include those paths in your Import Cover action. Let's say that the cover tag is named "CoverPath" and that it stores full paths. The format string can be as simple as this one: %coverpath%
Here is a screen shot of an Import Cover action showing this approach:
In my tests this simple syntax worked as expected. Just substitute your own tag name.