Tuesday, June 29, 2004
I have an idea...
I had an idea for a program today. It is an ID3 tag manager. I'm sure those exist already, so I shall be more specific and explain further. I have a lot of MP3s. Some of them have... less then optimal tagging and filenames, and that makes it frustrating to organize my music collection. I want a program that can help me fix that. Here's what I'm looking for:
1 - It must be open-source. This will let the program grow the fastest on the most platforms, as well as let it develop into a more robust app. Well, that, and it'll be free, which always helps.
2 - It must be able to manage a media library. I point to a root directory, and it will search from there and return a filesystem that shows all the music in the root and all subdirectories. It should be able to see MP3s, WMVs, OGGs, and any other music file you should care to want. Playlists should also be able to be created and managed with this program.
3 - It must be able to translate filenames into ID3 tags. This means you would select a directory, and it will open a table form with all the files' tag info as it stands. You can then tell it what all the tag fields are, with ability to set something for a whole column easily. The program should also be able to guess what the tag info should be, based on the filenames. You could help it along by offering the format the files are in (ie. Artist - Track Title, or Album - Artist - Track Number, for example). Case correction would also be nice. (For those that aren't aware, SnackAmp does this one pretty decently, and could be taken a look at as a reference.)
4 - Conversely, given the tag info, the program should be able to rename filenames and directories appropriately, so that you don't have a well-tagged set of files named Audiotrack-01.mp3, Audiotrack-02.mp3, etc.
5 - If you give the program a set of MP3s in a given order, the app should also be able to treat that playlist as if it were a CD and refer to CDDB to get the album information. You could then apply all this as the ID3 tag info and the filenames if desired.
6 - This should be able to plug in to Winamp and other media programs that can have 3rd party applications tie in to them.
7 - It should be well documented, easy to use, intuitive and pretty. You would think all that's obvious, but you'd be surprised.
I think that about covers it. If you know if such a program exists, please let me know. Conversely, if you just like to code and think you could make this puppy, I would be most grateful. I'm sure a lot of other people would be too.
¶ 11:30 a.m.
I had an idea for a program today. It is an ID3 tag manager. I'm sure those exist already, so I shall be more specific and explain further. I have a lot of MP3s. Some of them have... less then optimal tagging and filenames, and that makes it frustrating to organize my music collection. I want a program that can help me fix that. Here's what I'm looking for:
1 - It must be open-source. This will let the program grow the fastest on the most platforms, as well as let it develop into a more robust app. Well, that, and it'll be free, which always helps.
2 - It must be able to manage a media library. I point to a root directory, and it will search from there and return a filesystem that shows all the music in the root and all subdirectories. It should be able to see MP3s, WMVs, OGGs, and any other music file you should care to want. Playlists should also be able to be created and managed with this program.
3 - It must be able to translate filenames into ID3 tags. This means you would select a directory, and it will open a table form with all the files' tag info as it stands. You can then tell it what all the tag fields are, with ability to set something for a whole column easily. The program should also be able to guess what the tag info should be, based on the filenames. You could help it along by offering the format the files are in (ie. Artist - Track Title, or Album - Artist - Track Number, for example). Case correction would also be nice. (For those that aren't aware, SnackAmp does this one pretty decently, and could be taken a look at as a reference.)
4 - Conversely, given the tag info, the program should be able to rename filenames and directories appropriately, so that you don't have a well-tagged set of files named Audiotrack-01.mp3, Audiotrack-02.mp3, etc.
5 - If you give the program a set of MP3s in a given order, the app should also be able to treat that playlist as if it were a CD and refer to CDDB to get the album information. You could then apply all this as the ID3 tag info and the filenames if desired.
6 - This should be able to plug in to Winamp and other media programs that can have 3rd party applications tie in to them.
7 - It should be well documented, easy to use, intuitive and pretty. You would think all that's obvious, but you'd be surprised.
I think that about covers it. If you know if such a program exists, please let me know. Conversely, if you just like to code and think you could make this puppy, I would be most grateful. I'm sure a lot of other people would be too.
¶ 11:30 a.m.
