'JB.Id3Editor' is a cross-platform command line tool that provides ID3 tag modifications for one or multiple files, the later optionally in a high-performance, parallel way.
I a personal itch to scratch and because the area of existing ID3 tag manipulation tools out there is basically a minefield of overpriced ad- & malware while at the same time crash-alicious and user-experience wise abominations of tools, I decided to write my own. This one performs only a limited set of functionalities but it does it well, fast and reliable.
My specific use-case grew out of a frustration with my car's entertainment system - the Audi MMI (Multi Media Interface) has a tendency to fallback to a visually questionable (IMHO) set of cover art in case your file(s) do a) not come with an embedded cover art and b) provide a Genre ID3 tag. Audi, while making really nice cars (again - IMHO), chose default cover art that looks, to me, visually displeasing up to disturbing (who wants to see heavly sweating, half-naked men?).
Your mileage may vary or your use-case may be different, but this tool right here allows, among other things, to write a calm, neutral default cover art to file(s) and thereby overriding Audi MMI's choice. All good again.
As the License states, this tool is provided without warranty of any kind. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. This may or may not damage and destroy everything, leave your computer and file(s) unusable. It should not, but it may. If you encounter any problems, you've been warned.
None. This tool is provided free-of-charge. To be clear here: I spent time creating it, you are using it - I don't owe you anything. I may change it however and whenever I want to. However, if you find a bug or miss a feature, you're very welcome to fork this repository, fix it and send over a pull-request.
You are very welcome to hire me.
Head over to Releases, download the latest version and unzip the .zip file. It'll contain, among other file(s) and folder(s) to operate, a 'JB.Id3Editor.exe' file - that's the .exe you'll be using.
This tool is written in .Net 4.5 and is full Mono compatible (tried it with 4.2.x) and therefore runs (tested) on Windows, Mac OS X as well as (probably, untested) on Linux as long as you have a .Net 4.5 runtime on your system.
- the
--targetpathparameter does not work properly if the specified path has a trailing\. This is stupid, but a known bug of the Command Line Parser Library.- Known Workaround a): specify the
--targetpathparameter without a trailing\or - Known Workaround b): specify the
--targetpathparameter as the very last parameter
- Known Workaround a): specify the
This tool currently provides the following commands and options which may or may not grow in the future:
clearcovers Clears all existing album cover(s) from target file(s).
writecovers Writes album cover(s) to target file(s) as specified in
.ini(s).
help Display more information on a specific command.
version Display version information.
Please note: all commands and options are case-sensitive!
The clearcovers command allows the tool to clear all existing cover art (front and back) in the target file(s). This scans all specified file(s) for existing cover art and if one or more were found, removes them. Simple as that. The command's options look like this:
--targetpath Required. Path to target file or directory.
--recursive (Default: false) If --targetpath is a Directory,
enabling --recursive will traverse into
sub-directories, too.
--searchfilter (Default: *.mp3) If --targetpath is a Directory,
this will be used to find the corresponding
file(s) to process.
--maxdegreeofparallelism (Default: 1) Specifies the maximum level of
concurrency. If you have fast I/O multiple CPU
cores, increasing this value will improve runtime.
d:\JB.Id3Editor.exe clearcovers --targetpath="D:\My_Awesome_Song.mp3"
d:\JB.Id3Editor.exe clearcovers --targetpath="D:\My_Awesome_Album_Folder\"
d:\JB.Id3Editor.exe clearcovers --recursive --targetpath="D:\My_Awesome_Music_Collection\"
or, if your storage device and amount of cpu cores permits it, run the task(s) in parallel via the --maxdegreeofparallelism option, i.e.:
d:\JB.Id3Editor.exe clearcovers --maxdegreeofparallelism=4 --recursive --targetpath="D:\My_Awesome_Music_Collection\"
... this will run up to 4 parallel tasks & therefore clearing 4 files in parallel.
If you want to run the tool against file(s) other than .mp3 ones, you can use the --searchfilter option, i.e.:
d:\JB.Id3Editor.exe clearcovers --searchfilter="*.empeethree" --targetpath="D:\My_Awesome_Album_Folder\"
The writecovers command allows to write (front) cover art to either a single file or in bulk to files in a directory. Besides a Default Cover,
a mapping .ini file for ID3 genres
to cover files allows custom cover arts to be written based on the genre Id3 tag in the corresponding file.
The available options are:
--targetpath Required. Path to target file or directory.
--custommappingsfile (Default: <empty>) Full path to custom Mappings.ini
file.
--force (Default: false) If enabled, existing cover art
in .mp3(s) will be overwritten instead of
skipping these file(s).
--recursive (Default: false) If --targetpath is a Directory,
enabling --recursive will traverse into
sub-directories, too.
--searchfilter (Default: *.mp3) If --targetpath is a Directory,
this will be used to find the corresponding
file(s) to process.
--maxdegreeofparallelism (Default: 1) Specifies the maximum level of
concurrency. If you have fast I/O multiple CPU
cores, increasing this value will improve runtime.
d:\JB.Id3Editor.exe writecovers --targetpath="D:\My_Awesome_Song_Without_CoverArt.mp3"
By default the tool skips over file(s) that have pre-existing cover art but you can...
d:\JB.Id3Editor.exe writecovers --force --targetpath="D:\My_Awesome_Song_Without_CoverArt.mp3"
The --force option forces the tool to ignore the check for pre-existing cover art and write the (default) cover art to the file(s) in any way.
Write default cover to all files in a target directory and its sub-directories, overwriting existing cover art and doing so with 4 parallel operations:
d:\JB.Id3Editor.exe writecovers --force --recursive --maxdegreeofparallelism=4 --targetpath="D:\My_Awesome_Music_Collection\"
Write cover art per genre to all files in a target directory and its sub-directories, overwriting existing cover art:
d:\JB.Id3Editor.exe writecovers --force --recursive --custommappingsfile="./My_Custom_Mappings.ini" --targetpath="D:\My_Awesome_Music_Collection\"
The --custommappingsfile option and its specified file can contain custom mappings of the genre ID3 tag to different cover art.
This .ini file must adhere to the .ini format given in the provided 'UserMappings.ini' file:
- (Lines with) Comments start with the '#' character
- Mappings must be inside the '
[Genres]' section, one mapping at a line and look like this:- '
<Genre Name> = <Full or relative path to cover art file>', i.e.:Alternative = ./Covers/Alternative.pngClassical = ./Covers/Classical.pngPop = ./Covers/Pop.png- ...
- '
The tool comes with a sample .ini file you can use as a base to create your own. If the genre tag inside a file does not match any of the specified ones in the .ini file, it'll fallback to the default one. That's why the default one is mandatory and included and specified in the DefaultMappings.ini. You can certainly create your own default cover file and specify it there, but a default one must exist or the tool won't start processing the file(s).
This tool uses the following libraries and I'd like think their authors and contributors for providing them - good stuff!
- TagLib# a.k.a. taglib
- INI Parser a.k.a. ini-parser
- Command Line Parser Library a.k.a. CommandLineParser
See the LICENSE file