gHacks technology news » mp3 files http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:24:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Mp3 Packer http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/15/mp3-packer/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/15/mp3-packer/#comments Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:34:37 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=10574 Data is usually stored efficiently in mp3 files. This means that it does not make much sense to compress mp3 files further at least if size reduction is the desired result. Compressing a standard mp3 file will usually result in a size reduction of a few Kilobytes which, even if applied to a collection of thousands of mp3 files, does not free up more than a few Megabytes of disk space. High bitrate mp3s on the other hand are not that efficient and it is possible to reduce their size by about 2-10%.

Mp3 Packer is a tool that has been specifically designed for the purpose of reducing the size of mp3 files. It can be used to process any number of mp3 files since it can process all files in a directory and even its subdirectories at once. The size reduction will not affect the quality of the mp3 files, a pure lossless size reduction so to speak.

Various output settings are available that have an impact on the newly generated files. It is possible to specify a minimum bitrate, select the output type (vbr or cbr), strip non-mp3 data from the start or end of the file, append text to the filenames, alternate broken frame behavior or super-squeeze files.

mp3 packer

The mp3 packer will process all audio files in the selected directory and display information about the size gain at the end.

Another interesting option of Mp3 Packer is the ability to create profiles. This can be useful to make sure that the mp3 files will always be packed using the exact same settings. MP3 Packer is a portable application which means it can be run without installation.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/02/15/mp3-packer/feed/ 10 ID3 Tag Remover http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/21/id3-tag-remover/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/21/id3-tag-remover/#comments Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:45:33 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=9229 There is usually no need to remove the so called ID3 tags of audio files. Actually there are only two scenarios that do make sense. The first is if you encounter lots of audio files with wrong ID3 tags and the second if you want to remove either ID3v1 or ID3v2 tags from the audio files to ensure that all use the same tagging method. ID3 tags make it possible to store meta data in audio files. Meta data includes the song title, the album and artist among other information.

ID3 Kill is a free Windows software that can recursively scan through directories and perform file operations on audio files.

Usage is pretty straightforward. You point it at a directory and check a few boxes to configure the options. It is possible to include subdirectories in the scan. The main options are to remove ID3v1 and / or ID3v2 tags from all encountered audio files.

id3 kill

Other options include to clean m3u and pls playlists, to ignore file attributes or to display a message after the run is finished.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/12/21/id3-tag-remover/feed/ 7 Toe Tag just another MP3 Tagger ? http://www.ghacks.net/2008/04/10/toe-tag-just-another-mp3-tagger/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/04/10/toe-tag-just-another-mp3-tagger/#comments Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:15:21 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=3773 I do not use a software to tag my mp3 files regularly. I’m not that of a music buff who needs his files tagged properly all the time. One reason could be the small size of my mp3 collection, another that I do not transfer mp3s that often to my mp3 player or Nokia N73 mobile phone. Toe Tag is another nicely looking mp3 tagger with an immense amount of options and functions that is pretty astonishing if you consider that the version is currently 0.1.1.0.

The interface does look a bit overladen at first. It is driven by four tabs at the top that let you transfer filenames to tags, tags to filenames, multi tag files and query the online CDDDB database for tags. The tag to filename option is very handy if the files are already properly tagged but the filenames are not in the format that you want them to be. Five Replacement shortcuts exist that can be applied, not only in this menu though. The five entries are artist, album, number, title and year. It is therefor possible to create a filename that would contain the track number, artist and title.

Other mandatory options are to replace spaces with _ and to change the capitalization of the filenames in a number of ways. Multiple files can be selected at once but it normally does not make sense to select more than one album. Toe Tag is directory driven which means that only the files of one directory are displayed at a time. If you want to change tags or filenames of your music collection you are in for some manual labor.

toe tag

The biggest missing function in my opinion is a way to automatically pull information from an online database and apply it to all of the selected mp3 files. Since this is a very early version this feature might be implemented in a later version.

Other important features are already available. Covers can be added to the files, the volume can be normalized which is a very nice feature. The tags are saved in ID3 format.

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