Editing Song Titles and ID3 Tags

[Micron]

Also if you do not have a disc number in the tag,

That seems to be the major shortcoming. Hard to edit titles from tags when the tags don't have values as I've already noted.

Anyway, this software discussion is sort of hijacking the thread. Happy to review such suggestions but the main focus of my thread was to get info from anyone who had experience editing ID3 tags with VBA.

[Welshgasman]

Here is something from MrExcel
https://www.mrexcel.com/board/thread...-tags.1104401/

Not sure where you find that cddbControlLib though

[Micron]

I used your friend to find it the other day...
https://www.dlldownloader.com/cddbcontrol-dll/

[davegri]

PAS FullscreenMusicPlayer-v08.zip

Here's a MP3 player that shows how to extract and update metadata in mp3 files. The editing is not the main thrust (playing the music is), but it does show how to access the tags. I've included a lot of comments in the VBA, some control tips and a couple of right-click context menus to show the way.
Note that the code uses Windows media player ActiveX dll. The MP3 files must exist in the native Windows Music library for the .dll code to work.
Your computer must have this .dll available.



Some code in modEditMetaData shows some tags captured:

    'frmMetaData is unbound. The below code loads a UDT with the data for the required fields
    'on the form.
    Meta.mdArtist = wmp.currentMedia.getItemInfo("Artist")
    Meta.mdAlbum = wmp.currentMedia.getItemInfo("Album")
    Meta.mdTrack = wmp.currentMedia.getItemInfo("WM/TrackNumber")
    Meta.mdGenre = wmp.currentMedia.getItemInfo("Genre")
    Meta.mdTitle = wmp.currentMedia.getItemInfo("Title")
    Meta.mdYear = wmp.currentMedia.getItemInfo("ReleaseDateYear")
    Meta.mdSourceURL = wmp.currentMedia.getItemInfo("SourceURL")
    Meta.mdBitrate = wmp.currentMedia.getItemInfo("Bitrate")
    DoCmd.OpenForm "frmMetadata"

Also, if your Windows Music Library folder is not on drive C:\, check this code in the form_load event of frmPlayer

'>>> If your music library is not on drive C:\ then modify below for your windows login username and drive letter
    Select Case fcnMyUserName
        Case "Davegri"
            MPath = Replace(MPath, "C:\", "E:\")
        Case "Stephen"
            MPath = Replace(MPath, "C;\", "D;\")
    End Select
'>>>

Here's how to use context menus:

[Micron]

Maybe I gave this thread the wrong title. It's not about editing tags as much as it is about creating them when they don't exist. I haven't seen any suggestions yet that provide for "editing" tags when the tag properties exist but the tag property values do not.

[davegri]

In the DB in post 19, frmMetaData has a button click event that updates metadata:
The Meta. values are the existing values(which may be blank) in the mp3 file's attributes. The txt(boxes) contain values you typed in.

Private Sub cmdUpdate_Click()
    If (txtArtist & "") = "" Then
        MsgBox "Blank Artist not allowed!", vbInformation, " C A N N O T  B E  B L A N K "
        Exit Sub
    End If
    If txtArtist <> Meta.mdArtist Then
        wmp.currentMedia.setItemInfo "Artist", Me.txtArtist
    End If
    If txtTitle <> Meta.mdTitle Then
        wmp.currentMedia.setItemInfo "Title", Me.txtTitle
    End If
    If txtGenre <> Meta.mdGenre Then
        wmp.currentMedia.setItemInfo "Genre", Me.txtGenre
    End If
    If txtTrack <> Meta.mdTrack Then
        wmp.currentMedia.setItemInfo "WM/TrackNumber", Me.txtTrack
    End If
    If Len(txtAlbum & "") = 0 Then
        wmp.currentMedia.setItemInfo "Album", vbNullString
    ElseIf txtAlbum <> Meta.mdAlbum Then
        wmp.currentMedia.setItemInfo "Album", Me.txtAlbum
    End If
    DoCmd.Close acForm, Me.Name
End Sub

[Welshgasman]

Maybe I gave this thread the wrong title. It's not about editing tags as much as it is about creating them when they don't exist. I haven't seen any suggestions yet that provide for "editing" tags when the tag properties exist but the tag property values do not.

For that to happen you have to have something to refer to, surely.

That Scan option in MusicBrainz seems to be the solution, as that can make the best guess from the audio, not knowing any tags? Not perfect admittedly, but better than nothing?

If you could at least enter the artist and title, that MusicBrainz might be able to get the rest?

[Micron]

After examining lots of code posts, 2 tag editing apps and the like I got some help from Mr. Excel when I posted to an old thread. To reiterate my explanation as to why I wanted to do this:
My car lists music files by artist, album, folder (thus by file name) or song title, and maybe others I can't recall. All I wanted was for the track position number to match the value of the leading numeric characters in the file name. So "02 Song Name Here" track position would be 2 and not 7 as published/released. That way the order would always be the same regardless of which view option I used, and the file name orders are as I want them, not as published. Consider also that if I group 2 songs from this album and 2 from that, and 3 from that (same artist/band) it makes no sense to me to have multiple folders as opposed to one. In that case, multiple songs can have the same track number. Yes the tag apps can do this editing - one at a time. Not an option.

I have only tested on one folder but here is code that worked flawlessly once I modified it to suit my filename string syntax. I'm posting a link in case it is of interest to anyone in the future since it solves this thread. As noted in the linked thread, the code only seems to work in Excel (an API caused a "no such function" compile error, or something like that). Maybe that's due to a missing Access reference but I might not play with that. I'll use Access to loop through all folders and format the file names, then use Excel to edit the position tag. I'd still like to have a db as a catalogue and I'm not inclined to use Excel for that.

Thanks for the suggestions thus far.
EDIT - bad paste of url. Hang on...
OK, fixed

https://www.mrexcel.com/board/thread...1/post-6157709