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The Foxpop Masstagging Guide
How-to with screenshots for automated id3 masstagging with foobar2000.
Nov 2006
Rearrange the Right Click menu
I organized to the top-root part of the Right Click Menu the most important items. Works great both in the Album List pop-up window and in the Playlist window.
Change the Context Menu in Preferences - drag items to the top.
The right click context menu reorganized, with most used scripts on top.
Create custom buttons for the tagging features
These most used features can have buttons (on top, next to play). However, can be accessed only in the Playlist window.
Click Add, Change... to make buttons.
Pay attention to select Current playlist selection for the new button.
Associate audio file extensions with foobar2000
foobar2000 0.8.3 associated itself with audio formats (mp3, ogg, wav, etc.) during installation. In foobar2000 0.9.x, this has to bet set afterwards in Preferences:
File\Preferences\File types
Directory context menus is my favorite - when I right click a folder in Windows Explorer or Total Commander, there is Enque in foobar2000 and Play in foobar2000. This way, I launch music play from Explorer, as I select all the albums I want to listen to with the Insert key, then right click and Enque in foobar2000.
(In Total Commander, you have to turn on Windows style context menus:
Configuration\Options\Operation\Mouse selection mode\Left mouse button (Windows standard))
Control the use of ID3V2 and ID3V1, APE and MP4 tags
File\Preferences\Advanced\Tagging - you can turn off ID3v1 tags, etc.
To play .ac3 files you need this plugin
Browse to kode54.foobar2000.org, get foo_ac3.zip, decompress and copy to "ac:\Program files\foobar2000\components\" .
For MKV with ac3, browse to dl.matroska.org/downloads/foobar2000/ and get foo_packet_decoder_ac3.
For other formats, see the foobar2000 manuals list here.
When foo_run is installed, you can directly search in Google from both in the Album List and Playlist windows. Download and install foo_run from here. Then
Google search is already included, but my foo_run version (0.3.2) it cannot handle spaces with the default setup (Natalie Cole is submitted only as Natalie). You have to change %artist% into "$replace(%artist%,' ','+')". This submits Natalie Cole as "Natalie Cole".
Because of accented characters (Hungarian), instead of UTF-8 I rather use Windows-1250 encoding.
Label: Google Artist
Service properties: http://www.google.com/search?ie=windows-1250&q="$replace(%artist%,' ','+')"
Label: Google Artist + Title
Service properties: http://www.google.com/search?q="$replace(%artist%,' ','+')"+"$replace(%title%,' ','+')". &ie=windows-1250
Label: Google Music Artist + Album
Service properties: http://www.google.com/musicsearch?q="$replace(%artist%,' ','+')"+"$replace(%album%,' ','+')"&ie=windows-1250
Label: Google Artist + Discography
Service properties: http://www.google.com/search?q="$replace(%artist%,' ','+')"+discography&ie=windows-1250
foo_run setup for Google Search. Note that the default settings (foo_run 0.3.2) needs to be corrected!
Launch a Google Music search from the Album List window with foo_run.
More about foobar2000
If you want to learn more about foobar2000, I suggest to read:
foobar2000 Manual - start with First steps with foobar2000 and FAQ.
Nero - Back up mp3 collections on DVD
The ISO format has the problem of limited length of file paths. Therefore I use UDF 2.01 and I can have as long file paths as I want. UDF is a standardized format and backwards compatible (UDF 2.50 and 2.60 are XBOX formats and are incompatible with Windows XP). Most Desktop DVD readers use some kind of UDF by default. In Nero:
Quick txt list of albums
I keep the music in folders named "artist - album". To generate a quick list in a .txt file of my collection, I use the folders.bat batch file. It outputs the whole list into folders.txt. See my previous article on this topic: deepfolders.
Album Art and Cover Scans
Amazon.com is a great place to look up CD covers. Click on the image for a larger version, then right click\Save as... to save into the album folder. I usually name pictures as cover.jpg, but front.jpg, back.jpg and folder.jpg are also sensible alternatives.
Otherwise, you can mass download CD covers, when artist and album tags are correct. There is AlbumArtAggregator (uses Amazon, Cover Downloader (works with Walmart.com Buy.com Amazon.com and iTunes Music Store).
See this manual for a quick guide: foobar2000 Manual - Album Art.
It's great to see all my collection getting populated with all those nice CD covers with Album Art Aggregator...
Songbird
Here's a project I like a lot. This app is still in super-beta, but already looks good. It's a music player being built on the Firefox platform. It also works well with properly tagged music... :-) www.songbirdnest.com
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Last edited on 14-Jan-2007.
(c) Imre Oliver Kozak and @Foxpop.
