Editing ID3 tags
First we will be dealing with editing files one-by-one. A little further on we will be dealing
with editing several files at once, which requires a different approach.
Summary
Editing single ID3 tags
A white header of the field indicates that the data shown is the data read from the selected song.
As you start typing text into the fields or if you erase
text in the field (and therefore altering the data),
the field header turns green to indicate that the content has been altered by you.
See Entering data manually for details.
Adding data manually for a single song
If you are satisfied you need to finalise this change with the 'Change' button. If not and you
would like to see the old contents of the current selected file, you simply click on the file
in the filelist and the fields will be filled with the original data.
If you already pushed the 'Change' button and you want to go back you can use the 'Undo' button
the undo all changes made so far.
Editing multiple ID3 tags
You can use the previous approach to change any tag individually. If you have many mp3 files you
would like to change then this will give you a nervous breakdown. There is a different
approach for changing many tags for which you would only want to change one or several fields.
If you select multiple mp3's you can copy information from the first selected tag to other tags.
The information from the first selected song is presented in the fields and a checkbox for every field
becomes available to let FreeTagNavigator know which field you want to copy to other songs.
The fields which will be copied have their checkbox checked and have a green colored field header
as shown in the picture below.
Checked fields will be copied to the other selected tags
Let's see what happens in the picture above:
The Album and Track fields have their fields filled and their checkboxes checked. After hitting
the 'Change' button, all selected songs will have former mentioned fields in the tag. If they already had
a field like this it will be overwritten. If they did not have it then it will be added to the tag.
The Comment field will be copied but it's fields are empty which means that if the selected
songs have this field filled, it will now be empty. If the selected songs did not have it,
nothing will happen.
The Title, Artist, Genre and Date fields are filled but these are not selected to be copied,
which means it will leave the mentioned fields in the selected songs unharmed. If these fields
are present in the selected songs it will still be the same and if there was no data before
it will still not have any data.
If you are satisfied, you need to finalise this change with the 'Change' button. If not and you
would like to see the old contents of the current selected song, in the filelist you simply select
the same files again and all the original data will be read.
Note:
Remember that the first song selected will be used to fill the fields and therefore this will be the
information used to copy to other songs.
To automatically add data to the selected files, you click the right mouse button when it is hovering
over the filelist. You will have two options to choose from (Add and Replace), as can be seen in the
picture below. These options use the pre-set format as described earlier.
Adding data automatically
Note:
In the menu the word 'Filename' refers to the chosen pre-set format.
That means it can contain sections of directories and/or the filename itself.
See Entering data automatically for details.
If you choose to 'Add' information from the filename to the tag, the information will be extracted
and added to the fields according to the pre-set format. The fields which are not present in
the pre-set format will not be changed.
If you choose to 'Replace' information from the filename, all fields which are present in the
pre-set format are filled with the information extracted from the filename. The fields which
are not present in the pre-set format will not be changed.
Note:
When a file does not have an ID3 tag and you are adding a new ID3 tag, the file will be written
completely too. So if you are saving a huge number of files all with new tags then you may
notice a delay on older computers or on slow media such as an external drive.
Removing ID3 tags
To remove the ID3 tags completely from the mp3 file you click on the right mouse button when
the mouse cursor is hovering over the filelist.
Removing ID3 tags
When an mp3 file already contains an ID3v2 tag, it can contain a lot more than is visible for editing
in FreeTagNavigator. Changing an ID3v2 tag preserves these unknown pieces of data, if they exist.
But when you remove the tag everything will get deleted, even the unknown data.
Hint:
If you know your mp3 files are stuffed with unwanted information, first empty the tags and then
recreate the tags again. In this way you will create new, fresh ID3 tags.
Since the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags are always synchronised, both will be deleted,
if they both exist in the file.
