Recently, i just switched over from windows. I used to use mp3tag to organize my mp3 files. What's the best software for mac to organize my files?
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At the top of my head, iTunes or Songbird
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Raymond Luxury-Yacht Notebook Consultant
iTunes is pretty efficient in editing mp3 info; just select as many tracks as you like, and hit Command-i. This opens the 'information' pane, where you can easily edit the information; for single tracks or whole batches.
Once you set the various 'categories' right; iTunes is also great for organizing the tracks in various groupings. -
Right now, I don't use iTunes to manage my music. I know
huh? !?!?! I just don't. And I have over 25 gigs of the stuff. I was looking for an id3 tag editor and I found some shareware called id3 editor. I tried it but I'm not sure I'm quite ready to PAY for something that comes free with the OS but I just don't want to "import" all my music into iTunes. I guess I have a few questions. Let's say I import all my mp3's into iTunes but I tell it to leave them on the network drive where I keep them. If I edit the id3 tags, will iTunes save them back there or will it make shadow copies on my Macbook with the changed tags? If I hook up an ipod, will itunes try to cram all 20+gig of my music onto the thing or will it allow me to pick and choose? I would imagine all this is pretty seamless, or iTunes couldn't enjoy the command of the music market but I'd rather ask before I dig in and try it for myself. Hopefully I can avoid some stupid newbie mistakes I might make based on my assumptions about how iTunes does things.
I imported all my photos to iPhoto. I now have 2 sets of 26 gigs of photos. This is because I missed an obscure setting to tell iPhoto not to copy files when it imports photos. So when I set up my wife's machine, I found and used this setting. But wait. Now I find out that if you don't let iPhoto copy the photos when it imports them, some things don't work well like the iphoto screensavers. So before I let itunes get it's paws on my music I thought I'd ask. At $15 US, Id3 editor isn't that expensive, but I really should exhaust all free options before I pay for something. -
r0k, you can stop iTunes from making duplicates this way:
Go to iTunes-Preferences-Import, then untick the box that says "Copy files to my itunes folder".
I share my bootcamped Zune software's music folder with the Mac's iTunes (not effecient, but it works) -
I vote for iTunes.
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Ok, I enabled itunes. The only stuff in there was about 50 npr podcasts and some mp3's I had imported a year ago. So I started importing my music. The first folder I dragged in was fine. I decided to drag in a series of folders with about 600 songs. I started a new playlist and dragged in my new stuff. Did it go to the playlist I had active when I dragged it in? Heck no. It went to my main list so everything is mixed in with songs I've had in there for over a year. Yuck. Then I wanted to do batch id3 tag edits. Nope. Nada. Once they were dragged in, I could not organize them based on where I have 'em on the hard drive. Now they are in alphabetical order. Worse yet, they are mixed in with the stuff I want to keep so I can't simply select all, delete and reimport. I guess I will wind up registering that id3 tag editing shareware. When dealing with hundreds or thousands of songs at one time, itunes doesn't make it easy.
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I looked around, and never found anything which comes anywhere near apps like Mp3tag and EasyTAG when it comes to both changing tags and file names. I use Darwine (an application which lets you run some Windows applications in OSX), and while I couldn't get easyTag to work right (font problems), Mp3tag works beautifully.
It is a bit of an ugly solution, but for a simple and (for me) rarely used application, I don't mind.
Check it out:
http://www.kronenberg.org/darwine/
Good ID3 mp3 editor for mac?
Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by bp08, Sep 5, 2008.