076 - Three Apps to add album art to mp3 files
written by JCPMA Nov.17.2010.
I have a handful of untagged mp3 music that I wanted to add jpgs to. I don't use ITunes player. WindowsMediaPlayer doesn't seem to help (nor do I trust it completely). And, I did not feel like installing a music-player for such a minor reason.
The ideal application of course, would require no installation and be easy to use. Three such programs are listed below. (Other notes: all three programs have an internet database feature for tagging!; They can support retention of original file modification dates.)
Broken tags?: The strangest thing is that after my initial tagging, Windows Media Player (WMP) would recognize all my mp3s and play back the album art, but Windows 7 OS would only display some of the mp3 icons with art, others without, in the file folder. (Is this a Windows quirk?)
This article by Richard Farrar is a great educational piece on mp3 art tagging: http://www.richardfarrar.com/embedding-album-art-in-mp3-files/ The standards in art embedding for mp3s is using formats of .jpg or .png. It involves the ID3v2 tag. The BBC embeds 300x300pixel sized images in their mp3 podcasts.
TagScanner by Sergey Serkov is a user-friendly full featured music file tagger. The one I used was version 5.1.593 (Oct.or Nov.2010). Download the portable version in a zip package. It works for Windows2000 to Win7, and is about 2 MB in size. http://www.xdlab.ru/en/download.htm
I lucked out and found this program Media Tagger v. 1.35 at The Portable Freeware Collection: http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=141 It is a small, 1.2 MB tagger, that works even on older computers like Win98 and WinXP. The programmer is Ladislav Dufek and his website is http://www.mediatagger.zde.cz It is quite versatile and has a simple interface.
The third app MP3Tag ( http://www.mp3tag.de/en/ ) requires installation, but the author suggests a method to make it portable: http://forums.mp3tag.de/index.php?showtopic=976&view=findpost&p=23162
(I used Universal-extractor 1.6 app (learn more at http://Portablefreeware.com or http://www.legroom.net/), to extract the contents of the setup installer to an empty folder; This method isn't sanctioned by MP3Tag but so far MP3Tag has worked well)
The MP3Tag setup installer is about the 2.5 MB; The portable product (that you make yourself) is about 6.5 MB.
The version of MP3Tag I used is 2.46a for Windows XP-Win7.
Windows2000 users need to use version 2.39
Windows95 to Windows ME users need to use version 2.32a
A note about the pseudo broken tags in Windows 7. This is what really prompted me to write about art tagging. I didn't understand why Windows couldn't see the jpgs, even though WMP could see them. I have used tags on older machines and older tag makers with no problems. My theory on this is the encoding format.
· This may involve the program setting of "retain file modification times." This feature lets you edit the tag info without changing the last modified/last saved date of your mp3 file. So, if you created an mp3 in June2010, and you altered the tag info in August2010, clicking on the mp3 file will still show that the mp3 was modified in June. (I had this setting activated and Windows7 was able to see some of the mp3s as being embeded with art.)
· I don't know if this phenonmenon has to do with the tag ?text? encoding setting. Windows 7 may be unable to see tags encoded in unicode. In the programs' options menu, choose to use ID3v2 tag and choose the encoding format of "Ansi or Iso8859, or Western Iso", something along those lines. (I don't think you get this choice with Media Tagger 1.35.) Avoid the formats which say "unicode or UTF-8 or UTF-16 etc."
(LATE ENTRY. Nov.21.2010)--Please disregard the above paragraph about unicode. I just tried to tag my second set of mp3s & changing the unicode setting to non-unicode did NOT have an effect on making the jpg art visible in Windows7. I turned off the setting for "retain file's last modification date" in the program MP3Tag, and this made all the jpgs embeded in the file, appear in Windows7. I wonder why Windows was only able to see some of the files with art (as discussed above)?
· MP3Tag v2.46a can show a music file's tag version. It appears, that Windows7 likes tags which are ID3v2.3 but not ID3v2.4. ID3v2.4 is encoded in UTF-8 according to MP3Tag. If practical, I suggest you use ID3v2.3 only and avoid tagging with ID3v1. (SUMMARY: Windows7 is incompatible with ID3v2.4; Is that because the version is different (than 2.3) or is it because version 2.4 is encoded in UTF-8?)
Conclusion - to have Windows7 be compatible with mp3 tags (in decreasing order of likelihood):
A. deactivate tagger's setting of "retain file last modification date"
B. use ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1 encoding or ID3v2.3 UTF-16 encoding. (Both these result in an mp3 file where the jpg art is visible in Windows7 AND WMP; the version of WMP I currently have is 12.076. The setting ID3v2.4 UTF-8 will NOT show album art in Win7 or WMP! I just confirmed these statements!)
C. To be on conservative side, use ID3v2.3 settings of ANSI or ISO-8859 (ie non-unicode) where able.
(If any of the above is incorrect, please leave a comment below.)
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http://i55.tinypic.com/2i94ebb.jpg hotlink
Other Links
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Mark O'Neill writes about an app to clear or wipe clean the mp3 tags: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/remove-mp3-id3-music-tags-with-id3-tag-remover/ It is made by Headstrong.de called ID3Kill version 1.4. It refers to link http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/21/id3-tag-remover/ This app looks interesting.
Jojoyee at Gizmo's Freeware, reviews some mp3 tag editors: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-mp3-tag-editor.htm
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