Foobar2000:Components/Masstagger (foo masstag)
| foo_masstag | |
|---|---|
 foobar2000 component | |
| Developer(s) | Official |
| Release information | |
| Stable release | 1.6 |
| foobar2000 compatibility | |
| Minimum version | 0.9.4.x |
| UI module(s) | N/A |
| Additional information | |
| Use | Tagging |
| License | - |
| View all components | |
Masstagger
Masstagger is an advanced tool for editing the information of tags in multiple files. Note: It's not available as part of the post-0.95 installers. It is still however available from the official components page.
The Masstagger component is no longer under active development - most of its functionality has been split between the File Operations component (included with foobar2000 0.9.5 and newer), the Properties dialog and the Quick Tagger component.
Masstagger's main limitation is lack of the ability to preview results of tag processing operations before writing new tags to your files. The Properties dialog on the other hand lets you see new tag contents first so any mistakes are easily corrected without having to backup your tags/files or verify whether you're getting correct results on a smaller sample first.
Available actions
Add value
Adds desired tag field and sets it to whatever you enter in the masstagger input window.
Auto track number
This gives the track number according to the order of the files in the selection.
Copy value
Copies one tag field to another.
Format value from other fields
This is where it becomes interesting. This option lets you enter a specific title formatting pattern for any tag field you wish to edit or create.
Note that when using complex formatting patterns I would recommend to first format a temporary %temp% tag with the desired pattern and then copy that one into the value that you wish. Afterwards you can remove the temp value. When processing a large batch of files you could probably just do a test run on one of the files and then do the rest in one go. Think about what you are doing beforehand though. After all I don't want to be held responsible for messing up anyones music collection.
I will explain how to create formatting strings for different situations further down .
Guess values from filename
Guesses values from filename and lets you enter a certain formatting pattern for it. For example if your files are named artist - album_title.
Enter
%artist% - %album%_%title%
as formatting pattern.
Guess values from other fields
Guesses values from other tags and lets you enter a certain fromatting pattern for it. For example if your files are tagged artist / title in the title field.
Input data (one line per track)
Enter the data for each song with the pattern indicated, line by line, (one line per song as it is said). Don't worry about the length, the lines could be very long (only adds a vertical scroll bar if it is too long).
Remove all fields
Removes all tag fields (who would have guessed)
Remove all except for...
Does just as it says, removes all values and lets you specify wich ones not to remove in a second field in the following pattern ie.:
%artist%;%title%;etc
Remove field
Removes desired tag field.
Set value
Sets desired tag field (artist, album,custom,etc) to whatever you enter in the masstagger input window.
Split multiple artist field
Note that it is possible to perform several of these actions at once and in that case the order of those actions can be very important. So removing field A before copying it to field B is probably a bad Idea and should be performed the other way around, etc.
Writing format strings for the masstager
Extracting Information from Relative File Paths:
As suggested I have included a small section on how to extract different values from their relative file paths. To do so I will use the following example path to extract information from
...\Genre\Artist\Album[Date]\01_Title.mpc
sets title:
%_filename% returns title as 01_Title.mpc and
$puts(char,_)$puts(tag,%_filename%) $puts(spacer,$strchr($get(tag),$get(char))) $trim($right($get(tag),$sub($len($get(tag)),$get(spacer)))) returns title as Title.mpc
sets album:
$directory(%_path%,1) returns title as Album[Date]
$puts(char,'[')$puts(tag,$directory(%_path%,1)) $puts(spacer,$strchr($get(tag),$get(char))) $trim($left($get(tag),$sub($get(spacer),1)))
returns album as Album
NOTE: that the [ is quotes as '[' , the reason for this is for it to be recognized as a character and not as a command syntax, you will probably have to ommit the quotation marks for most other characters.
sets artist:
$directory(%_path%,2) returns artist as Artist
sets genre:
$directory(%_path%,3) returns genre as Genre
sets tracknumber:
$num($left(%_filename%,2),2) returns tracknumber as 01
Obviously a lot more is possible, but then this was just supposed to be a short introduction. I would say simply copy a few of your files, and play around with it.
The Rename Files Dialog
The rename files dialog enables you to automatically rename your files according to your metadata tags in an automated way. You will first need to select all the tracks you want to rename and then right click and select: Masstagger/rename files.
Select in the masstagger dialog which output directory you mant to use and wether to generate subdirectories according to the / \ characters. I will give a few examples for renaming strings below.
Examples:
To rename your files to "tracknumber_title.ext (i.e. 08_The Glass Bead Game.mpc)" you will need to enter the following syntax in the Output file name format field
%tracknumber%_%title%
No need to create subdirectories in this case.
To rename your files to "/artist - album/title.ext (i.e. Thievery Corporation - Sounds of the Thievery Hi-Fi/08_The Glass Bead Game.mpc) and create the appropriate subdirectories you will need the following syntax
/%artist% - %album%/%tracknumber%_%title%
In this case make sure the "create subdirectories" checkbox is ticked.
To rename your files to "/artist/album/tracknumber_title.ext (i.e.: /Thievery Corporation/Sounds of the Thievery Hi-Fi/08_The Glass Bead Game.mpc) use the following syntax
/%artst%/%album%/%tracknumber%_%title%
In case you generally make use of "album artist" tags (or anything similar) for various albums files you can replace %artist% with
$if2(%album artist%,%artist%)
in any of the above strings.
Note:
One reason why it is convenient to use the masstaggers rename files function is that this way Foobar2000's Media Library will automatically get updated to the current changes.
Links
This page is based on picmixer's Unofficial masstagger guide on the foobar2000 forum.
You can find a tutorial with videos here Unofficial masstagger tutorial