I'm trying to find a way to permanently tag about 300 albums I have ripped as FLAC files. About 10% of these albums have missing information, including missing track numbers, which are painful to add in by hand.
Is there a way to tag these files in MC so that the tag information is attached to the original audio files, as opposed to stored in the MC library and thus not readable by other applications?
I just made the mistake of retagged a huge number of Apple Lossless files in MC, and then discovered that the tag information does not carry over to the iPod or to the Squeezebox.
I only have sanity to do this one more time...
PS: If MC isn't ideal, can someone recommend another app that will work for tagging FLAC?
So far, I've tagged about 15,000 FLAC files in MC 11. MC 11 has very good support for editing the basic set of standard tags and the best support I've seen for editing adanced and custom tags.
Step 0: Be sure that you have both the FLAC encoder and Decoder installed. (Tools/Plugin Manager. Look at the Encoder and Input plugins.) Search this forum and the 3rd party plugins forum for info on getting the current FLAC plugins.
Step 1: Create a library if you don't have one. I usually import files into a work library and when I have the files tagged, I import them into my permanent library. It is much easier to edit a group of files in a small work library than when they are in a large library with thousands of other files.
Step 2: Check the database fields in the library (Tools/Options/Library). You want all the tags you are interested in present as library fields. You also want the "Store in File Tags checkbox checked for the fields of interest. Click the Edit button to the right of the list of fields to see the properties of each database field. Click on the Add button to add fields to the database. (This database is different for each librqary so you will have to do this step for the work library and the permanent library.
Step 3: Tell MC to write library field changes back to the music files. (Tools/Options/General/Update Tags when file info changes)
Step 4: Import your FLAC files into a MC library. (Tools/Import Media)
Step 5: Edit your tags.You can customize the file list to show the fields you are interest in (Right Click on a line in the file list and choose Customize Current View). You can change the sort order of the list by clicking on the field display name at the top of a column.
Sometimes it helps to sort on the file name. Sometimes it is useful to sort on a Tag you want to set like track number. Then you can scroll to find an missing values that need attention.
You can edit a field value for a single file in the file list or you can set a field value for a number of files in the Tag Info window to the left of the file list. (If it isn't visible, Right Click on a line in the file list and choose Tag Info.)
If your FLAC files are in folders with useful charaqcteristics (Album or Artist for example), you might import one folder at a time, edit those files and then remove them from the work directory.
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Your editing changes will be copied back to the FLAC files as you edit (If you followed Step 3.) For FLAC files, updating the files is quite quick. It is much slower for MP3 files.
The FLAC plugins for MC 11 seem to work well in general. I did find that FLAC files made by a beta version of EAC were not recognized. I have not followed up on that problem.
I didn't know how much detail you needed. I Hope this helps.
Bill