User Guide
User Guide
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MP3 Rage is the definitive collection of tools for MP3 enthusiasts with a Macintosh running Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X. You can edit ID3 tags, analyze MP3's and adjust their sound volume automatically to play at similar levels, export MP3 files to AIFF format for burning CD's, play MP3 files, catalog, organize, rename, find, and change thousands of MP3 files and their ID3 tags quickly and painlessly. It does all this with a clean, powerful, and easy-to-use interface. Here's a list of the some of the features:
MP3 Rage is shareware. Please support shareware by registering your copy. You can register online via the Chaotic Software website at http://www.chaoticsoftware.com/store.html. Your support is appreciated! If you have any suggestions for changes or new features, please send them to support@chaoticsoftware.com for consideration.
Using MP3 Rage is simple: Just drag MP3 files or folders of MP3s onto the application or tools of the application, select the options you want, and run the tools. MP3 Rage supports all currently available ID3 tag formats. This includes ID3v2.4, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.2, and ID3v1.1, and ID3v1.0. You can easily convert between different tag formats using the Tag Changer tool (See the "How To Convert Between Different Tag Formats" section below for info on how to do this). To use the Contextual Menu, simply drop the "Edit MP3 Tags CM" file into your Mac OS 9 System Folder and restart. Then, control-click on any file and select the "Edit MP3 Tags" menu item, and change any tags you wish in the dialog that appears. The contextual menu item will write tags in both the ID3v2.3.0 and ID3v1.1 formats for maximum compatibility. Please be careful with this plug-in! It allows you to modify files that do not have any tags, allowing you to easily irreversibly change files that are not MP3s.
MP3 Rage places a vast array of powerful tools at your fingertips. They are:
With this handy tool, you can quickly inspect a set of MP3s for artwork, and add it to files if you like. To get started with the tool, drag an MP3 file or a folder of MP3 files into the File List. Once they are added, their MP3 tag information will be shown in the list. If no tag information is present, the file will be listed as "ID3 tag info missing". The files are either not MP3s or they do not contain tags (if you wish to easily add tags to these files, you should see the other tools available in MP3 Rage, such as the Tag Changer). Next, to examine the artwork that is contained in the files of the list, simply click on one of the items in the list. If artwork is available, it will appear in the "Artwork" panel on the right of the list. Clicking and dragging in the list will allow you to quickly scan the list for artwork. Alternatively, you can use the "<< Previous" and "Next >>" buttons to move up and down the list. You can also add or change the artwork in any of the files in the list: select the target file in the list, and then drag any common image formatted file into the window (e.g. JPEGs, GIFs, even Photoshop files). The artwork should appear in the panel. To save the artwork into the file, click the "Save Changes" button. As a further convenience, you can drag images directly from the "Artwork Search" tool into this dialog to add artwork to files in the list. The currently selected item in the list will be the recipient of the artwork dragged into the window. For further information on how to use the Artwork Search tool, see below.
With this tool, you can search for artwork on the internet for placement in your MP3 tags. Using the built-in player, you can have the artwork shown as you listen to your favorite album! To use it, simply enter your search criteria, and click the Search button. When you find artwork you wish to place in your MP3s, drag the art from the search results into one of several tools that allows adding art to tags, including the QuickEdit window, the Artwork Browser, or the Tag Changer.
The Cataloger tool is great for creating a text-file catalog of your entire MP3 collection, based on their tag information. You can use a preset "Expression" to generate a catalog in the output style you prefer, or you can create a custom regular expression to generate your own fancy output. Simply drag in a folder of MP3s to catalog, choose a destination directory and output filename, setup your output options, and click the "Catalog" button.
If you have a bunch of MP3s with little or no ID3 tag information, the CDDB
tagger could be the tool for you. using the information contained in the tag
or the filename, MP3 rage will contact Gracenote's CDDB2 system and attempt
to find the complete ID3 tag information and place it in the file. Simply drag
a folder of MP3s onto the tool, set up how you would like it to search for tag
information, and click the "Tag" button. The tool will do the rest. If you do
not have a CDDB account, you can click the "CDDB Registration" button to step
through creating an account.
This tool is essential if your MP3 files are lacking ID3 tags but have nice, uniform, and descriptive filenames that would make great ID3 tag information. This is often the case when obtaining files from the internet, or from your friends. First, drag in a folder of files you wish to convert. Then, attempt to describe the folder structure of the files on your disk using the available popups. For example, if the files are organized like this on disk:
Then you would probably want to drag in the "Rock" folder as your source folder, then set the first popup to be "<skip>", the second popup would be set to "Genre" to represent the "Rock" folder on your disk, the third popup would be "Artist" to represent the "King's X" and "AC/DC" folders, the fourth popup would be set to "Album" to represent the "Manic Moonlight" and "Highway To Hell" folders, and finally, the last popup would be set to "Title" to represent the "Believe", "Static" and "Girl's Got Rhythm" files found in the folder hierarchy, since they are the track title and contain no more information. If they did have more information in the title, you could at this point set the popup to be one of the other popup values that represents the title, and if one is not present, you can select a custom method using a regular expressions to parse the titles of the files. If you are using Regular Expressions to convert the file titles, you must at this point set up your regular expression in the "Use Regular Expression Title Parsing" section. Click on the "Regular Expression Editor…" button if you would like to experiment with a custom regular expression. Finally, you will need to specify your output tag format and other options. once finished, click the "Convert" button and the tool will attempt to gather all of the available information in the folders and files and generate ID3 tags from it.
This window is the starting point for using MP3 Rage. It contains a complete
list of all tools in MP3 Rage, and a brief description. You can also use it
as your central processing station for files by dragging a file or folder of
MP3s to any of the tool icons. The tool will open, setting the dragged folder
as its source folder. At this point you can run the tool on that source folder,
and once you are done, close that tool and drag the source folder to another
tool to modify it in a different way.
The Duplicate Finder is no more than what its title implies - it will search a folder of MP3s for files that appear to be the same based on the ID3 tag information. Once found, you can use the handy buttons to open them or simply trash them.
The Resource Changer allows you to place the MP3 tag information into your
file's 'vers', comments and balloon (Mac OS9 only) resources. This is handy
for quickly browsing the ID3 tag information in the Finder without having to
run any music player application. The Finder will display the contents of these
resources in the list views, or in the Get Info file inspector windows. However,
be aware that if you change tag information and do not re-run this tool, the
old tag information will be in the resources. You must re-run this tool each
time you change tags. To use this tool, drag in a starting folder of files to
change, select which resources you want to write, type in a formula for what
information you want to write into each resource, and click the 'Change' button.
For the formula, use the keys found at the bottom of the tool - e.g. if you
wanted to write the artist into the tag, you would add a "%a" to the textfield
of the appropriate resource. The changes should be reflected in the output "Example"
areas so you can see what the resulting output would be like.
This tool is great for changing the file-system attributes of hundreds of files quickly. If you are switching from using iTunes as your main player to MP3 Rage, you could run this tool on your entire collection, setting the Type and Create to MP3 rage using the handy popup. You could also lock all of your files, set comments, etc. As usual, drag in a folder of files to change, and click the "Change" button. The tool will do the rest.
With this handy tool, you can quickly inspect a set of MP3s for lyrics, and add them to files if you like. To get started with the tool, drag an MP3 file or a folder of MP3 files into the File List. Once they are added, their MP3 tag information will be shown in the list. If no tag information is present, the file will be listed as "ID3 tag info missing". The files are either not MP3s or they do not contain tags (if you wish to easily add tags to these files, you should see the other tools available in MP3 Rage, such as the Tag Changer). Next, to examine the lyrics that are contained in the files of the list, simply click on one of the items in the list. If the song has a lyric available, it will appear in the "Song Lyric" panel on the right of the list. Clicking and dragging in the list will allow you to quickly scan the list for lyrics. Alternatively, you can use the "<< Previous" and "Next >>" buttons to move up and down the list. You can also add or change the lyric in any of the files in the list: select the target file in the list, and then type any new lyric text into the textfield. To save the lyric into the file, click the "Save Changes" button.
You can now submit lyrics directly to LyricTracker.com, the best source for
Lyrics on the internet! Open this tool, paste or type the relevant song information
into the text fields, add the desired lyrics, and click the 'Submit' button.
You can optionally have your lyric tracker account information and password
saved into the keychain for easy access by clicking the 'Use Keychain' checkbox.
Upon successful submission, all textfields that are not 'pinned' will be cleared.
To pin a textfield, click the pushpin toggle button next to each desired textfield.
To easily locate MP3s on your hard disk or server based on tag information, look no further than the Finder tool. Simply drag in a folder or disk of files to be examined by the tool, select the desired search criteria checkboxes, enter the search strings or select the correct popup values as appropriate for a criteria, and click the 'Search' button. You can also modify the search using the 'Search Type' popup — setting the popup value to be "At Least one criteria must be found" will require that only one of the criteria values be met. If you select "All criteria must be found" in the popup, then all of the information in all of the active criteria must match. Useful tip: if you are attempting to locate all of your MP3s that do not have ID3 tags, you can activate the checkboxes for both "ID3v1 Tag" and "ID3v2 Tag" criteria popups, set their values to "none" (leaving all other criteria off) and run it on your collection. All files without tags will appear in the list!
The music exporter allows you to take your MP3 files and convert them into other formats. For example, if you wanted to generate some AIFF-formatted files that are used in burning audio CDs, this tool does it effortlessly. To use the tool, drag in a folder of files you wish to convert into the "Source Folder" box, or click the "Choose…" button to select a folder. Drag or choose a Destination for the converted files in the "Destination Folder" area of the tool. Select your options, and click the "Export" button. The files you choose as targets will be used to generate files in the selected output format. A quick explanation of the Export Settings:
Quickly organize your entire MP3 collection using the Organizer tool. This tool can move/alias/copy thousands of MP3s files with incredible ease and flexibility. Select a starting folder, the destination folder, and the extra options and let the organizer put your MP3s where they belong. The organizer examines the ID3 tag information for each file in the starting folder, and based on your settings, places a copy, an alias, or the actual file, in the destination folder according to the folder layout you have specified. Therefore, it is best that you run the organizer on a starting folder of files that already have ID3 tags. A quick tour of the "Organize Options":
MP3 Rage includes a full-featured MP3 Player that you can use
to create playlists of your favorite songs. It includes various playback modes,
as well as support for relative volumes (see the Volume Adjuster below) and
display of ID3 tag album artwork during playback. To use the player on a set
of files, simply drag the files into a new Player window.
If you wish to edit or inspect a single MP3 file's tag or disk
information, the QuickEdit window is the way to go. Open a new QuickEdit window
and drag in a target file — its tag information (if any is available) will
be loaded into the view for display. If Lyrics or Artwork are present, their
respective buttons will highlight bold. Click on either button to view the content.
Change any field you wish, and when you are finished, click the Update button
to save the changes. Also included in this dialog are "QuickTools", which allow
to easily change certain aspects of the tag information. For example, if you
like to have all of your Tag information be "Title Caps" such that all new words
start with a capital letter, click on the "Change Tag Case" popup and select
"Title Caps". All fields in the dialog will be automatically changed to the
new values. To save the changes, click the "Update" button. If you don't like
your current changes, at any time you can click the "Revert" button, which will
re-read the file on disk and restore all information to the current file state.
You may also play any file by clicking the "Play" button. Helpful tip: you can
open a QuickEdit dialog for any single file in any MP3 table listing in MP3
Rage simply by double-clicking it.
Essential for editing multiple MP3s in succession, the Multiple File QuickEdit is great for modifying a bunch of random MP3s, or a whole album. However, if you are changing repetitive information in a group of tags, it would be best to use the Tag Changer (see below for details). To use the Multiple File Quickedit tool, drag a file, a group of files or a folder into the file list, wait for them to appear (it could be a few seconds if you drag in many files or a folder), and select the file you wish to edit. The files tag information and properties will appear to the right, edit the content you wish, and click the 'Save' button. or to go to the next file in the list after saving, use the 'Save & Next' button.
Like your MP3 files to be named with a certain format? Want to make all of your MP3 files windows compatible? If so, the renamer is the tool you are looking for. It allows you to have great control over how your MP3 files are named in the file system, using the ID3 tag information. To use it, you first need to type in a rename expression into the text field. Use the text keys in the Legend to determine what tag information you wish to include in the filename. For example, if you wanted you files to be named: <Track>. <Song>.mp3 You could enter the formula: %r. %t Where %r will be replaced with the track number, and %t will be replaces with the song title. All other characters are not interpreted and will be put in the file name as they are found. You can try any combination of text and an example output will be printed in the "Example" area. There are a multitude of options in the Renamer window. They are:
The heart and soul of MP3 Rage! The Tag Changer is crucial to anyone who has a large MP3 collection and needs to make wholesale modifications to their files (such as change the ID3 tag version), or make changes to isolated groups of them without having to individually edit the tags. To use the tool, drag a folder of MP3s you wish to change into the "Starting Folder" area of the window. Next, select the checkboxes corresponding to the tag information you wish to change in the "Tag Attributes To Change" group box, and then set the information for each tag attribute in the appropriate controls. Finally, choose any extra options you wish to use during the change operation in the "Options" section. Click the 'Change' button when you are finished setting up the tool and you are ready to modify the files. A quick tour of the changer "Options":
Often times the MP3s you obtain from elsewhere have ID3 tags, but that tag information is correct but in the wrong tag fields. E.g. the artist name is in the album tag, and vice-versa. The tag mover can quickly rectify this problem. In addition, it can allow you to take existing tag information and insert more tag information in a uniform way into some or all of the tag fields. For example, if you wanted to add "[Ripped in 2002]" to some or all of your tag fields, you could do this is a quick click of a button. To use the tool, activate the tag fields you are wanting to modify using the corresponding checkboxes. In each of the appropriate tag fields, enter a formula for how you wish the tag information to be modified.
For example, if you wanted a copyright string to be added to the artist field, but keep the existing artist information, you could type:
[Copyright © 2002 MyMusic] %a
In the example field below it you would see:
[Copyright © 2002 MyMusic] <TheArtistName>
so you can preview the output before you make the changes permanent.
This tool is very powerful, so please browse your tag data (in the Multiple
File QuickEdit) before you make the change, as sometimes it can generate suprising
results with your tag data, despite your attempts to preview the result. When
you are ready to make the changes to your tags, click the 'Change' button, and
all files in the starting folder will be changed.
The toolbar is great for power users who want to have quick access
to all of MP3 Rage tools. It functions in a similar way to the Dashboard - simply
drag a file or folder to the tool icons, and that tool will open with that file
or folder as the source item to use. The toolbar can be made smaller or larger
by clicking the "Grow" button on the window titlebar, or can be put in a horizontal
or vertical orientation by clicking on the Skull icon.
Many MP3 files are correctly named in the filesystem, but have
poor or incomplete tag information in the actual file data. The Track Numberer
can assist you with generating track numbers in your tags. To begin, drag in
a source folder of files to modify. Next, select which sort order the target
folder is arranged in. For example, CDs will be ripped in an orderly fashion,
meaning that their modification dates will be sequential and therefore have
the same ordering as they do on the CD, if sorted by date. If this is the case,
you will want to use the "Sort files in Folders By Date" option. However, if
this is not the case and you want the files to be chosen by alphabetical naming,
use the "Sort files in folders by name" option. Then, select whether or not
you want to skip files that already contain track information. This allows a
speedier process since files that you may have already fixed will be ignored.
Finally, choose what ID3 tag formats (version 1 or 2) that you wish to generate.
Click "Number", and MP3 Rage will do its best to restore relevant track numbering
into the ID3 tags.
This essential tool allows you to compare some or all of your
MP3s to each other or to a reference file, and set the playback volume to a
similar level, without actually changing the song data. Only players that support
"Relative Volume" playback can utilize this information. MP3 Rage's own player,
as well as iTunes, support this feature. To "normalize" all of your songs to
the same sound level, select a source folder of MP3s to compare/change, and
optionally, set a reference file to have the source files compared against.
While the reference file is optional, it allows you to choose a particular file
as the "standard" volume for all of your files and is therefore much quicker
to set the volume of all of your files to a unified volume since not all of
the files need to be analyzed before changing. Optionally, you can set the tool
to skip songs that already have relative volume tags, in case you have changed
some songs previously in your collection and do not wish to analyze/change them
again.
See the next section, "How to use MP3 Rage to Create great-sounding CDs" for
more information on how to get the most out of this tool.
A frequent problem encountered when creating Audio CDs (especially
compilations) is that some songs sound louder than others on the same CD. Here
are the steps to avoid this problem: 1) Put all the MP3's you want to burn into
a folder (e.g. "MyMusic").
2) Drag & drop your folder of MP3's into the "Source Folder" area of the
MP3 Rage Volume Adjuster.
3) If you have one song you want act as the reference song (i.e. a song that
plays an ideal level), drag & drop it into the "Reference File" area of
the MP3 Rage Volume Adjuster. Otherwise, click the "None" to make sure no reference
file is used.
4) Check the "Skip files with relative volume tags" so it doesn't re-analyze
files that have already been processed.
5) Click "Adjust" button to adjust the volumes of all your files. When the volume
adjustment is done: 1) Drag & drop your folder of MP3's into the "Source
Folder" area of the MP3 Rage Music Exporter.
2) Create a folder to hold the exported music (e.g "MyExportedMusic").
3) Drag & drop your exported music folder onto the "Destination Folder"
area of the MP3 Rage Music Exporter.
2) Select "AIFF" from the file format popup menu.
3) Check "Adjust volumes according to ID3 Tag".
4) Click "Export" button to export your MP3's to AIFF format for burning. When
export is done: 1) Run your CD burning software and set it up to burn an Audio
CD.
2) Set up your CD burning software to burn the folder of music you exported
above (e.g. "MyExportedMusic").
Many home and car MP3 players do not support the newer ID3v2.x
tags, but most support ID3v1.x tags. Here are the steps to convert ID3v2.x tags
to ID3v1.x tags: 1) Put all the MP3's you want to convert into a folder (e.g.
"MyMusic").
2) Open the "Tag Changer" window in MP3 Rage.
3) Drag & drop your folder of MP3's into the "Starting folder" area of the
MP3 Rage "Tag Changer" window.
4) Uncheck all the checkboxes in the "Tag Attributes To Change" and "Options"
sections.
5) Check the checkbox to the right of "ID3v1 Tag".
6) Choose "ID3v1.1" from the popup menu next to "ID3v1 Tag".
7) If want to preserve your existing ID3v2.x tags as well as convert to ID3v1.x
tags, check the checkbox to the right of "ID3v2 Tag" and choose "ID3v2.2", "ID3v2.3",
or "ID3v2.4" from the popup menu next to "ID3v2 Tag", depending on which version
you would like. ID3v2.x tags support much more data than ID3v1 tags, such as
relative volume information, artwork, etc., so to avoid potentially losing valuable
tag data by converting them to the older ID3v1.x format, you should preserve
ID3v2.x tags.
8) Click the "Change" button, and your files will be converted to the new tag
versions.
We hope you enjoy MP3 Rage and find it useful. If you have any problems using
MP3 Rage, please do not hesitate to contact us by email at support@chaoticsoftware.com.
We welcome all comments, suggestions, and criticisms.
ABalloon by James W. Walker (jwwalker@kagi.com)
Resizer by Joseph Chan <firstian@bellatlantic.net>
Artwork Provided by Gabriel Moore of Automaton Design, 813-321-3538.
--
Regular expression support is provided by the PCRE library package, which is
open source software, written by Philip Hazel, and copyright by the University
of Cambridge, England. It can be downloaded from the following location: ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/
--
XML parsing support is provided by James Clark's expat library: Copyright (c)
1998, 1999, 2000 Thai Open Source Software Center Ltd and Clark Cooper.
--
Music recognition technology and related data are provided by Gracenote and
the Gracenote CDDB® Music Recognition Service(sm). Gracenote is the industry
standard in music recognition technology and related content delivery. For more
information go to www.gracenote.com. Gracenote is CDDB, Inc. d/b/a "Gracenote."
CD and music related data from Gracenote CDDB® Music Recognition Service(sm)
© 2000, 2001 Gracenote. Gracenote CDDB Client Software © 2000, 2001
Gracenote. U.S. Patents Numbers #5,987,525; #6,061,680; #6,154,773, and other
patents issued or pending.
--
Lyric Tracker is courtesy lyrictracker.com. To participate in the LyricTracker
community, visit http://www.lyrictracker.com
for the latest in lyrics, and to add submissions for your favorite artists.
Copyright © 1999-2002
Chaotic, Inc
