Copyright © 2009 Urs Fleisch
Kid3 is an application to edit the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags in MP3 files in an efficient way. Also tags in Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, MP4/AAC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio and WavPack files are supported. It is easy to set tags of multiple files to the same values (e.g. album, artist, year and genre in all files of the same album) and generate the tags from the file name or vice versa.
Kid3 is an application to edit the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags in MP3 files in an efficient way. These tags can be edited by most MP3 players, but not in a very comfortable and efficient way. Moreover the tags in Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, MP4/AAC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio and WavPack files are supported too.
Kid3 does not grab, encode nor play MP3 files, but it is targeted to edit the ID3 tags of all files of an album in an efficient way, i.e. with as few mouse clicks and key strokes as possible. Where most other programs can edit either ID3v1 or ID3v2 tags, Kid3 has full control over both versions, can convert tags between the two formats and has access to all ID3v2 tags. Tags of multiple files can be set to the same value, e.g. the artist, album, year and genre of all files of an album typically have the same values and can be set together. If the information for the tags is contained in the file name, the tags can be automatically set from the file name. It is also possible to set the file name according to the tags found in the file in arbitrary formats.
The editing task is further supported by automatic replacement of characters or substrings, for instance to remove illegal characters from filenames. Automatic control of upper and lower case characters makes it easy to use a consistent naming scheme in all tags.
The tag information for full albums can be taken from gnudb.org, TrackType.org, MusicBrainz, Discogs or other sources of track lists. The import format is freely configurable by regular expressions.
Please report any problems or feature requests to the author.
Edit ID3v1.1 tags
Edit all ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 frames
Edit tags of multiple files
Convert between ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags
Edit MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, MP4/AAC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio and WavPack tags
Generate tags from filename
Generate filename from tags
Generate and change directory names from tags
Generate playlist file
Automatic case conversion and string translation
Import from gnudb.org, TrackType.org, MusicBrainz, Discogs and other data sources
Export as CSV, HTML, playlist, Kover XML and other formats. Exported CSV files can be imported again.
This section describes a typical session with Kid3. Let's assume we have a directory containing MP3 files with the tracks from the album "Let's Tag" from the band "One Hit Wonder". The directory is named in the "artist - album" format, in our case One Hit Wonder - Let's Tag. The directory contains the tracks in the "track title.mp3" format, which I think is useful because the filenames are short (important when using mobile MP3 players with small displays) and in the correct order when sorted alphabetically (important when using hardware MP3 players which play the tracks in alphabetical order or in the order in which they are burnt on CD and that order is alphabetical when using mkisofs). Besides this, the artist and album information is already in the directory name and does not have to be repeated in the filename. But back to our example, the directory listing looks like this:
01 Intro.mp3
02 We Only Got This One.mp3
03 Outro.mp3
These files have no tags yet and we want to generate them using Kid3. We use ( menu or toolbar) and select one of the files in this directory. All files will be displayed in the file listbox. Lazy as we are, we want to use the information in the directory and file names to generate tags. Therefore we select all files, then click the button in the Tag 1 section. This will set the title, artist, album and track values in all files. To set the year and genre values of all files, we keep all files selected and type in "2002" for the Year and select "Pop" from the Genre combobox. To set only these two values, we check their checkboxes and leave all other checkboxes unchecked. Now we change the selection by only selecting the first file and we see that all tags contain the correct values. The tags of the other files can be verified too by selecting them one by one. When we are satisfied with the tags, we use ( menu or toolbar). Selecting from the menu will generate a file One Hit Wonder - Let's Tag.m3u in the directory.
The Kid3 GUI is separated in five sections: At the left are the file and directory listboxes, the right side contains the Filename, Tag 1 and Tag 2 sections.
The file list contains the names of all the files in the opened directory which match the selected file name filter (typically *.mp3 *.ogg *.flac *.mpc *.aac *.m4a *.m4b *.m4p *.mp4 *.mp2 *.spx *.tta *.wv). A single or multiple files can be selected. To select no file, click into the empty area after the listbox entries. The selection determines the files which are affected by the operations which are available by using the buttons described below.
At the left of the names an icon can be displayed: a disc to show that the file has been modified or information about which tags are present (V1, V2, V1V2 or NO TAG, no icon is displayed if the file has not been read in yet).
Directories are displayed with a folder icon. If a directory is opened, its files are displayed in a hierarchical tree. By selecting files from subdirectories, operations can be executed on files in different directories, which is useful if the music collection is organized with a folder for each artist containing folders for albums of this artist.
The directory list contains the names of the directories in the opened directory, as well as the current (.) and the parent (..) directory. It allows to quickly change the directory without using the command or drag and drop.
The Name line edit contains the name of the file (if only a single file is selected). If this name is changed, the file will be renamed when the Save command is used.
The Format combo box and line edit contains the format to be used when the filename is generated from first or the second tag. The filename can contain arbitrary characters, even a directory part separated by a slash from the file name, but that directory must already exist for the renaming to succeed. The following special codes are used to insert tag values into the filename:
%s %{title} Title (Song)
%a %{artist} Artist
%l %{album} Album
%c %{comment} Comment
%y %{year} Year
%t %{track} Track (e.g. 01)
%t %{track.n} Track with field width n (e.g. 001 for %{track.3})
%T %{tracknumber} Track (without leading zeroes, e.g. 1)
%g %{genre} Genre
This format is also used to generate the tags from the filename. If the format of the filename does not match this pattern, a few other commonly used formats are tried.
Some commonly used filename formats are already available in the combo box, but it is also possible to type in some special format into the line edit.
: Sets the filename using the selected format and the first tag.
: Sets the filename using the selected format and the second tag.
: Shows information about the encoding (MP3, Ogg, FLAC, MPC, MP2, MP4, AAC, Speex, TrueAudio, WavPack), bitrate, sample rate, channels and the length of the file.
The line edit widgets for Title, Artist, Album, Comment, Year, Track and Genre are used to edit the corresponding value in the first tag of the selected files. The value will be changed when the file selection is altered or before operations like and and when the corresponding check box at the left of the field name is checked. This is useful to change only some values and leave the other values unchanged.
If a single file is selected, all check boxes are checked and the line edit widgets contain the values found in the tags of this file. If a tag is not found in the file, the corresponding empty value is displayed, which is an empty string for the Title, Artist, Album and