3.8.2
Copyright © 2020 Urs Fleisch
Abstract
Kid3 is an application to edit the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags in MP3 files in an efficient way. Also tags in Ogg/Vorbis, Opus, DSF, FLAC, MPC, APE, MP4/AAC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio, WavPack, WMA, WAV, AIFF files and tracker modules (MOD, S3M, IT, XM) 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.
Table of Contents
List of Tables
kid3
[ --help
| --author
| --version
| --license
| --desktopfile
] [FILE
FILE
...]
kid3-qt
[--portable
] [Qt-options
] [FILE
...]
kid3-cli
[--portable
] [--dbus
] [ -h
| --help
] [-c COMMAND1
] [-c COMMAND2
...] [FILE
...]
--portable
Store configuration in file kid3.ini
inside application directory.
FILE
If
is the
path to a directory, it will be opened. If one or more file paths are given,
their common directory is opened and the files are selected.
FILE
--help
Show help about options.
--author
Show author information.
--version
Show version information.
--license
Show license information.
--desktopfile
FILE
The base file name of the desktop entry for this application.
--dbus
Activate the D-Bus interface.
-c
Execute a command. Multiple -c
options are
possible, they are executed in sequence. See the section about
kid3-cli for a description of the available
commands.
-h
|--help
Show help about options and commands.
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, Opus, DSF, FLAC, MPC, APE, MP4/AAC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio, WavPack, WMA, WAV, AIFF files and tracker modules (MOD, S3M, IT, XM) are supported too.
Kid3 does not grab nor encode 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, Amazon 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.
Table of Contents
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, Opus, DSF, FLAC, MPC, APE, MP4/AAC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio, WavPack, WMA, WAV and AIFF tags
Generate tags from filename
Generate tags from the contents of tag fields
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, Amazon 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
To: button in the File
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 Date and select "Pop" from the
Genre combobox. To set only these two values, their checkboxes
are automatically checked and all other checkboxes are left 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.
Table of Contents
The Kid3 GUI is separated in six sections: At the left are the file and directory listboxes, the right side contains the File, Tag 1, Tag 2 and Tag 3 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 *.opus *.dsf *.flac *.mpc *.aac *.m4a *.m4b *.m4p *.mp4 *.mp2 *.spx
*.tta *.wv *.wma *.wav *.aiff *.ape
). 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.
Besides Name, also other columns Size, Type, Date Modified with file details can be displayed. Columns can be hidden by unchecking their name in the context menu of the list header. The order of the columns can be changed by drag and drop. The sort order can be toggled by clicking on the column header.
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.
Clicking the right mouse button inside the file list opens a context menu with the following commands:
: Expands all folder trees (only the current tree if the shift key is pressed)
: Collapses all folder trees
: Changes the name of a file
: Moves a file to the trash
Play. If the selected file is a playlist, the files of the playlist will be played.
: Plays a file, seeThe subsequent entries are user commands, which can be defined in the User Actions tab of Configure Kid3. The playback on double click can also be activated there.
A playlist can be created empty or containing the tracks of a folder, see Create Playlist. The playlist file created in such a way can be edited by double click or using Edit from the file list context menu. A dialog with the entries of the playlist is shown. It is possible to open multiple playlists simultaneously.
New entries can be added by drag and drop from the file list, a file manager or another playlist. If an entry is dragged from another playlist, it will be moved or copied depending on the system. To invoke the other operation, respectively, the Shift, Ctrl or Alt (to copy instead of move on macOS) key has to be pressed. Reordering entries within the playlist is also possible via drag and drop. Alternatively, entries can be moved using the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Shift+Up and Ctrl+Shift+Down (on macOS Command has to be pressed instead of Ctrl). An entry can be removed using the Delete key.
Please note the following: To drag entries from the file list, they have to be held at the left side (near the icons), the same gesture at the right side will perform a multi selection, such an action is hereby still easily possible.
When a playlist has been modified, the changes can be stored using
or discarded using . When the window is closed, a confirmation prompt is shown if there are unsaved changes.Tracks selected in a playlist will be automatically selected in the file list, thereby making it possible to edit their tags.
To execute actions on a playlist, its file must be selected in the file list. example Export Playlist Folder, which copies the files from a playlist into a folder.
from the context menu will lead to the dialog described in this section, and will start the media player with the tracks from the playlist. User actions can act on playlists, for
The directory list contains the names of the directories in the opened
directory, as well as the current (.
) and the parent
(..
) directory. It allows one to quickly change the directory
without using the command or drag and drop.
Column visibility, order and sorting can be configured as described in the section about the file list.
Shows information about the encoding (MP3, Ogg, Opus, DSF, FLAC, MPC, APE, MP2, MP4, AAC, Speex, TrueAudio, WavPack, WMA, WAV, AIFF), bit rate, sample rate, channels and the length of the file.
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 the 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 zeros, e.g. 1)
%g %{genre} Genre
%{ignore} Ignored when generating tags from the file name
The format codes are not restricted to the examples given above. Any frame
name can be used, for instance unified frame names
like %{albumartist}
,
%{discnumber.1}
, %{bpm}
or
format specific names like %{popm}
.
It is possible to prepend and append strings to the replacement for a format
code by adding them in double quotes inside the curly braces of a format
code. These strings will only be put into the resulting string if the format
code yields a nonempty value. For example, if the file name shall
both contain the title and the subtitle, one could use
%{title} [%{subtitle}]
in the format string. But this
would result in a string ending with []
if
no subtitle frame exists for a file. In order to omit the brackets if no
subtitle is present, %{title}%{" ["subtitle"]"}
shall
be used instead. This will omit the brackets, the leading space and the
subtitle if not subtitle exists.
The list of available formats can be edited in the dialog which appears when clicking the File tab of the settings.
button in theA second Format combo box (with arrow down) is 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.
The list of available formats can be edited in the dialog which appears when clicking the File tab of the settings.
button in theInternally, a regular expression is built from the format codes. If advanced regular expressions are required, the format to generate the tags from the filenames can be given as a complete regular expression with captures which are preceded by the format codes, e.g. to extract the track numbers without removal of leading zeros, a format like "/%{track}(\d+) %{title}(.*)" could be used.
From: , : Sets the filename using the selected format and the first tag or the second tag, respectively.
To: , : The tags are set from the filename. First, the format specified in Format is used. If the existing filename does not match this format, the following formats are tried:
Artist - Album/Track Song
Album/Track - Artist - Song
/Artist - Album - Track - Song
Album/Artist - Track - Song
Album/Artist - Song
Artist/Album/Track Song
If a single file is selected, the GUI controls are filled with the values extracted from the filename. If multiple files are selected, the tags of the files are directly set according to the filenames.
The line edit widgets for Title, Artist, Album, Comment, Date, Track Number 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 Comment line edits, 0 for the numerical Date and Track Number edits and an empty selected value for the Genre combo box. The values can be changed and if the corresponding check box is checked, they will be set for the selected file after the selection is changed. The file is then marked as modified by a disk symbol in the file listbox but remains unchanged until the command is used.
If multiple files are selected, only the values which are identical in all selected files are displayed. In all other controls, the empty values as described above are displayed. All check boxes are unchecked to avoid unwanted changes. If a value has to be set for all selected files, it can be edited and the checkbox has to be set. The values will be set for all selected files when the selection is changed and can be saved using the
command.The check boxes also control the operation of most commands affecting the tags, such as copy, paste and transfer between tags 1 and 2. To make it easier to use with multiple files where all check boxes are unchecked, these commands behave in the same way when all check boxes are checked and when all check boxes are unchecked.
: The tag 1 fields are set from the corresponding values in tag 2. If a single file is selected, the GUI controls are filled with the values from tag 2. If multiple files are selected, the tags of the files are directly set.
: The copy buffer is filled with the Tag 1 values. Only values with checked checkbox will be used in subsequent Paste commands.
: Pastes the values from the copy buffer into the GUI controls.
: This will set all GUI controls to their empty values which results in removing all values. The saved file will then contain no tag 1.
The GUI controls function in the same way as described for the Tag 1 section, but the size of the strings is not limited.
For the tag 2 Genre you can also use your own names besides the genres listed in the combo box, just type the name into the line edit.
The tag 2 can not only contain the same values as the tag 1, the format is built in a flexible way from several frames which are themselves composed of several fields. The tag 2 table shows all the frames which are available in the selected file.
: This will open a window which allows one to edit all fields of the selected frame. If multiple files are selected, the edited fields are applied to all selected files which contain such a frame.
: A requester to select the frame type will appear and a frame of the selected type can be edited and added to the file. This works also to add a frame to multiple selected files.
: Deletes the selected frame in the selected files.
Drag album artwork here is shown if the file does not contain embedded cover art. A picture can be added using drag and drop from a browser or file manager and will be displayed here. Picture frames can be edited or added by double clicking on this control.
Some files can have more than two tags, and a third tag section is visible. The following file types can have such a Tag 3 section:
MP3 files can have an ID3v1.1 tag, an ID3v2 (2.3.0 or 2.4.0) tag and in the third section an APE tag. Such APE tags are used for replay gain information. In the Tag 3 section, this information is visible, and the APE tag can be removed with the button.
The RIFF INFO chunk of WAV files is available in the Tag 3 section because the Tag 1 section is dedicated to ID3v1.1 tags and handles their restrictions. The Tag 2 is still used for ID3v2.4.0 tags, which are also supported for WAV files, but RIFF INFO chunks seem to be supported better.
FLAC files normally use a Vorbis comment for their meta data. However, there are FLAC files which have IDv1 and ID3v2 tags, which can be found in the Tag 1 and Tag 3 sections. ID3 tags in FLAC files are only supported by TagLib, therefore the OggFlacMetadata plugin has to be disabled in the Plugins tab of the settings.
The GUI controls work in the same way as in the Tag 2 section.
Kid3 can edit most of the frames for all of the supported file types. Some frames are accessed using unified names, so that they can be exchanged between files with different formats. Frames which are not unified can be accessed as format specific frames.
Table 3.1. Mapping of Unified Frame Types to Various Formats
Unified | ID3v2.3 | ID3v2.4 | MP4 | ASF | Vorbis | RIFF |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Title | TIT2 | TIT2 | ©nam | Title | TITLE | INAM |
Artist | TPE1 | TPE1 | ©ART | Author | ARTIST | IART |
Album | TALB | TALB | ©alb | WM/AlbumTitle | ALBUM | IPRD |
Comment | COMM | COMM | ©cmt | Description | COMMENT | ICMT |
Date | TYER | TDRC | ©day | WM/Year | DATE | ICRD |
Track Number | TRCK | TRCK | trkn | WM/TrackNumber | TRACKNUMBER | IPRT or ITRK |
Genre | TCON | TCON | ©gen | WM/Genre | GENRE | IGNR |
Album Artist | TPE2 | TPE2 | aART | WM/AlbumArtist | ALBUMARTIST | |
Arranger | IPLS | TIPL | ARRANGER | WM/Producer | ARRANGER | IENG |
Author | TOLY | TOLY | AUTHOR | AUTHOR | ||
BPM | TBPM | TBPM | tmpo | WM/BeatsPerMinute | BPM | IBPM |
Catalog Number | TXXX:CATALOGNUMBER | TXXX:CATALOGNUMBER | CATALOGNUMBER | |||
Compilation | TCMP | TCMP | cpil | COMPILATION | ||
Composer | TCOM | TCOM | ©wrt | WM/Composer | COMPOSER | IMUS |
Conductor | TPE3 | TPE3 | CONDUCTOR | WM/Conductor | CONDUCTOR | |
Copyright | TCOP | TCOP | cprt | Copyright | COPYRIGHT | ICOP |
Description | TIT3 | TIT3 | desc | WM/SubTitleDescription | DESCRIPTION | |
Disc Number | TPOS | TPOS | disk | WM/PartOfSet | DISCNUMBER | |
Encoded-by | TENC | TENC | ©enc | WM/EncodedBy | ENCODED-BY | ITCH |
Encoder Settings | TSSE | TSSE | ©too | WM/EncodingSettings | ENCODERSETTINGS | ISFT |
Encoding Time | TDEN | WM/EncodingTime | ENCODINGTIME | IDIT | ||
Grouping | GRP1 | GRP1 | ©grp | GROUPING | ||
Initial Key | TKEY | TKEY | WM/InitialKey | INITIALKEY | ||
ISRC | TSRC | TSRC | ISRC | WM/ISRC | ISRC | ISRC |
Language | TLAN | TLAN | LANGUAGE | WM/Language | LANGUAGE | ILNG |
Lyricist | TEXT | TEXT | LYRICIST | WM/Writer | LYRICIST | IWRI |
Lyrics | USLT | USLT | ©lyr | WM/Lyrics | LYRICS | |
Media | TMED | TMED | SOURCEMEDIA | SOURCEMEDIA | IMED | |
Mood | TMOO | WM/Mood | MOOD | |||
Original Album | TOAL | TOAL | ORIGINALALBUM | WM/OriginalAlbumTitle | ORIGINALALBUM | |
Original Artist | TOPE | TOPE | ORIGINALARTIST | WM/OriginalArtist | ORIGINALARTIST | |
Original Date | TORY | TDOR | ORIGINALDATE | WM/OriginalReleaseYear | ORIGINALDATE | |
Performer | IPLS | TMCL | PERFORMER | PERFORMER | ISTR | |
Picture | APIC | APIC | covr | WM/Picture | METADATA_BLOCK_PICTURE | |
Publisher | TPUB | TPUB | PUBLISHER | WM/Publisher | PUBLISHER | IPUB |
Rating | POPM | POPM | rate | WM/SharedUserRating | RATING | IRTD |
Release Country | TXXX:RELEASECOUNTRY | TXXX:RELEASECOUNTRY | RELEASECOUNTRY | ICNT | ||
Release Date | TDRL | RELEASEDATE | RELEASEDATE | |||
Remixer | TPE4 | TPE4 | REMIXER | WM/ModifiedBy | REMIXER | IEDT |
Sort Album | TSOA | TSOA | soal | WM/AlbumSortOrder | ALBUMSORT | |
Sort Album Artist | TSO2 | TSO2 | soaa | ALBUMARTISTSORT | ||
Sort Artist | TSOP | TSOP | soar | WM/ArtistSortOrder | ARTISTSORT | |
Sort Composer | TSOC | TSOC | soco | COMPOSERSORT | ||
Sort Name | TSOT | TSOT | sonm | WM/TitleSortOrder | TITLESORT | |
Subtitle | TSST | SUBTITLE | WM/SubTitle | SUBTITLE | PRT1 | |
Website | WOAR | WOAR | WEBSITE | WM/AuthorURL | WEBSITE | IBSU |
Work | TIT1 | TIT1 | ©wrk | WM/ContentGroupDescription | WORK | |
WWW Audio File | WOAF | WOAF | WM/AudioFileURL | WWWAUDIOFILE | ||
WWW Audio Source | WOAS | WOAS | WM/AudioSourceURL | WWWAUDIOSOURCE |
Remarks concerning the mappings to unified frame names:
The number of unified frame names is limited by the fact that a sensible mapping shall be possible for all supported file formats. Most tags support frames with arbitrary names; these will be used if no specific frame is available (e.g. the names in uppercase in the column MP4). If no such possibility exists, some frame types may not be supported for the format, e.g. Author and Performer for ASF (WMA).
The mappings are not chosen arbitrarily, they are geared to the usage of the frames in other applications and devices. Thus the ID3v2 frame "TPE2 - Band/orchestra/accompaniment" does not suggest its usage as Album Artist, but this is commonly used. The actual meaning for ID3v2 on the other hand is the reason why this frame is used for the orchestra when importing (e.g. from Discogs), although this may seem a bit strange for other tag formats.
The mappings are not always bijective. So ID3v2.3 uses an IPLS frame for both Arranger and Performer. When reading back, both frames are displayed as "Arranger".
The frames Arranger and Performer use a particular format for their contents: "involvement 1|involvee 1|involvement 2|involvee 2|...", for instance "Chorus Master|Ernst Dunshirn|Soprano Vocals|Anna Netrebko". This will create IPLS (ID3v2.3) or TIPL/TMCL (ID3v2.4) frames with a string list in the specified format (the "|" is used as a separator between the strings). Values in this format are also set when importing data from servers which offer this information.
To explicitly use a specific frame name which conflicts with a unified frame name, prepend an exclamation mark. For example, adding a frame of type "Media" to a Vorbis comment will create a frame with name "SOURCEMEDIA" because of the unified type mapping. In order to add a frame with name "MEDIA" and not "SOURCEMEDIA", use "!MEDIA" to force the explicit name.
For information synchronized with the audio data, a specific editor is available. These frames are supported for ID3v2.3.0 and ID3v2.4.0 tags. To add such a frame, the specific frame name has to be selected in the list which appears when the Synchronized Lyrics or Event Timing Codes, respectively. The editor is the same for both types, for the event timing codes, only a predefined set of events is available whereas for the synchronized lyrics, text has to be entered. In the following, editing synchronized lyrics is explained.
button is clicked -A file having an ID3v2 tag is selected, the lyrics editor is entered using Synchronized Lyrics. For an existing Synchronized Lyrics frame, it is selected and is clicked. The player is automatically opened with the current file so that the file can be played and paused to synchronize lyrics.
and selectingThe settings at the top of the SYLT editor normally do not have to be changed. If the lyrics contains characters which are not present in the Latin 1 character set, changing the text encoding to UTF16 (or UTF8 for ID3v2.4.0) is advisable. For English lyrics and maximum compatibility, ISO-8859-1 should be used.
The Lyrics section has five buttons at the top. will add a new time event in the table. The time is taken from the position of the player, thus adding an entry while playing the track will add a line for the currently played position. The events in the table have to be chronologically ordered, therefore the row will be inserted accordingly. Entries with an invalid time are treated specially: If the currently selected row has an invalid time, its time stamp will be replaced by the current time instead of adding a new row. If the current time is not invalid, the first row with an invalid time will be used if present. This behavior should facilitate adding time stamps if the lyrics text is already in the table but the time stamps are missing (which is the case when importing unsynchronized lyrics). Note that the invalid time is represented as 00:00.00, i.e. the same as the time at the absolute beginning of the track, which is not invalid. To make a time invalid, press the Delete key, or use from the context menu. New rows inserted using from the context menu or created when importing unsynchronized lyrics with or also contain invalid time stamps. Rows in the table can be deleted by clicking the button or using from the context menu.
Synchronized lyrics can be imported from a file using From Clipboard. Synchronized lyrics can be written to LRC files using . Note that only entries with valid time stamps will be exported and that the entries will be sorted by time. Entries with invalid time won't be stored in the SYLT frame either, so make sure to include all timing information before leaving the dialog.
. The expected format is simple or enhanced LRC. If the selected file does not contain a square bracket in the first line, it is supposed to be a simple text file with unsynchronized lyrics. The lines from such a file are then imported having invalid time stamps. The time information can be added using the button or by manual entry. It is also possible to import lyrics via copy-paste usingThe ID3 specification suggests a time stamp for each syllable. However most players only support the granularity of a line or sentence. To support both use cases, Kid3 follows the same conventions as SYLT Editor. Text which is entered into the table is assumed to start a new line unless it starts with a space or a hyphen. Exceptions to this rule are possible by starting a line with an underscore ('_') to force continuation or a hash mark ('#') to force a new line. These escape characters are not stored inside the SYLT frame. Inside the SYLT frame, new lines start with a line feed character (hex 0A) whereas continuations do not. When reading SYLT frames, Kid3 checks if the first entry starts with a line feed. If this is not the case, it is assumed that all entries are new lines and that no syllable continuations are used.
While the track is played, the row associated with the current playing position is highlighted, so that the correctness of the synchronization information can be verified. If an offset has to be added to one or more time stamps, this can be accomplished with the
context menu. Negative values can be used to reduce the time. Using in the context menu, it is possible to set the playing position to the time of the selected row.Recommended procedure to add new synchronized lyrics
Get the unsynchronized lyrics, e.g. using
→ from the file list context menu.Copy the unsynchronized lyrics to the clipboard, just go to the Lyrics row in the frame table and press Ctrl+C.
Add a synchronized lyrics frame (Synchronized Lyrics, ), click .
,Now all lines from the unsynchronized lyrics are in the table, all time stamps are invalid (0:0:0.00). You can delete empty entries beforehand.
Start playing the song by clicking the play button
in the play toolbar at the bottom of the main window.When the next lyrics line with invalid timestamp comes, click Alt+A, the timestamp will be updated.
or pressContinue like this until all timestamps are set. If you missed something, stop playback and clear the timestamps using the Delete key or by selecting them and using from the context menu. To restart playback from a given timestamp, use from the context menu.
Opens a directory. All files matching the selected file name filter will be displayed in the file listbox and the chosen file is selected.
Opens a recently opened directory.
Opens a directory. All files matching the selected file name filter will be displayed in the file listbox.
Reload directory. Modified files have to be saved before. Expanded subfolders will be collapsed.
Saves all changed files in the directory. The changed files are marked with a disk symbol in the file listbox. If any file names have been changed, those files will be renamed.
Reverts the changes of one or multiple files. If no files are selected in the file listbox, the changes of all files will be reverted, else only the changes of the selected files are reverted.
The Import dialog can be used to import data directly from a freedb.org server, from a MusicBrainz server, from Discogs, Amazon or other sources of album track lists in textual format.
Import from a freedb.org server is possible using a dialog which appears when or is selected. The artist and album name to search for can be entered in the two topmost fields, the albums which match the query will be displayed when is clicked and the results from www.gnudb.org are received. Importing the track data for an album is done by double-clicking the album in the list. The freedb.org server to import from can be selected as well as the CGI path. The imported data is displayed in the preview table of the import dialog. When satisfied with the displayed tracks, they can be imported by terminating the import dialog with .
A search on the Discogs server can be performed using . As in the dialog, you can enter artist and album and then choose from a list of releases. If Standard Tags is marked, the standard information is imported, e.g. artist, album, and title. If Additional Tags is marked, more information is imported if available, e.g. performers, arrangers, or the publisher. If Cover Art is marked, cover art will be downloaded if available.
A search on Amazon can be performed using . As in the dialog, you can enter artist and album and then choose from a list of releases. If Additional Tags is marked, more information is imported if available, e.g. performers, arrangers, or the publisher. If Cover Art is marked, cover art will be downloaded if available.
You can search in the same way in the release database of MusicBrainz using . The workflow is the same as described for .
Import from a MusicBrainz server is possible using the dialog which appears when is selected. The Server can be selected as in the freedb import dialog. Below is a table displaying the imported track data. The right column shows the state of the MusicBrainz query, which starts with "Pending" when the dialog is opened. Then the fingerprint is looked up and if it does not yield a result, another lookup using the tags in the file is tried. Thus it can be helpful for a successful MusicBrainz query to store known information (e.g. artist and album) in the tags before the import. If a result was found, the search ends in the state "Recognized", otherwise nothing was found or multiple ambiguous results and one of them has to be selected by the user. and use the imported data, closes the dialog. The closing can take a while since the whole MusicBrainz machinery has to be shut down.
For the import of textual data, opens a subdialog, where several preconfigured import formats are available. The first two, "CSV unquoted" and "CSV quoted" can be used to import data which was exported by the Export dialog. The CSV data can be edited with a spreadsheet, and shall be written using tabs as delimiters. Import should then be possible using "CSV quoted", which is more flexible than "CSV unquoted". However, its fields cannot contain any double quotes. If you only export from Kid3 and import later, "CSV unquoted" can be used as a simple format for this purpose. Note that there are also "Export CSV" and "Import CSV" commands in the context menu of the file list, which use scripts to export and import CSV data in a more complete, powerful and flexible way.
The next format, "freedb HTML text", can be used to copy information from an HTML page of freedb.org. Search an album in freedb and if the desired information is displayed in the web browser, copy the contents to the clipboard. Then click the button and the imported tracks will be displayed in the preview table at the top of the dialog. If you are satisfied with the imported data, terminate the dialog with , which will insert the data into the tags of the current directory. The destination (Tag 1, Tag 2 or Tag 1 and Tag 2) can be selected with a combo box. The files in the current directory should be in the correct track order to get their tags assigned. This is the case if they are numbered.
The next preconfigured import format, "freedb HTML source", can be used, if the data is available as an HTML document. Import is possible using the
button, which opens a file selector, or copying its contents from an editor and then importing from clipboard. This format can be useful for offline import, although the HTML document could also be opened in a browser and then be imported in the first format via the clipboard.More preconfigured formats, e.g. "Track Title Time", are available. An empty custom format can be created with Kid3 specific codes to specify which field to capture. The codes are the same as used for the filename format, besides the codes listed below, any frame name is possible:
to be set by the user. Two lines below the format name can be set with a regular expression to capture the fields from the import text. The first regular expression will be parsed once per document to gather per-album data such as artist, album, year and genre. The second line is tried to match from the start of the document to the end to get track data, usually number and title. The regular expressions include all the features offered by Qt, which is most of the what Perl offers. Bracketing constructs "(..)" create capture buffers for the fields to import and are preceded by%s %{title} Title (Song)
%a %{artist} Artist
%l %{album} Album
%c %{comment} Comment
%y %{year} Year
%t %{track} Track
%g %{genre} Genre
%d %{duration} Duration
For example, a track regular expression (second line) to import from an
.m3u playlist could be "%{track}(\d+)\s+%{title}(\S[^\r\n]*)\.mp3[\r\n]". All formats can
be changed by editing the regular expressions and the name and then clicking
kid3rc
file in the configuration directory. This file can
be directly edited to have more import formats or it can be deleted to revert
to the default formats. Formats can be deleted
using .
shows an estimation of how good the imported information matches the given tracks. It uses track durations or file names to calculate the level of similarity in percent. shows the URL of the album cover image which will be downloaded.
To check whether the imported tracks match the current set of files, the duration of the imported tracks can be compared with the duration of the files. This option can be enabled with the checkbox
and the maximum tolerated difference in time can be set in seconds. If a mismatch in a length is detected, the length is displayed with a red background in the preview table.If the files are ordered differently than the imported tracks, their assigned tracks have to be changed. This task can be facilitated using the Match with buttons , , and , which will reorder the tracks according to the corresponding field. To correct the assignments manually, a track can be dragged with the left mouse button and the Ctrl key hold down, and then dropped at the new location.
When the import dialog is opened, it contains the actual contents of the tags. The tag type (Tag 1, Tag 2, Tag 1 and Tag 2) can be selected using the Destination combo box. The button on the right of this combo box can be used to revert the table to the current contents of the tags. The checkboxes in the first table column can be used to select the tracks which are imported. This can be useful if a folder contains the tracks of both CDs of a double CD and only the tracks of the second CD have to be imported.
To identify the tracks which are imported, it is possible to display the file names or the full paths to the files using the context menu of the table header. The values in the import table can be edited. The revert-button to the right of the Destination combo box can be used to restore the contents of the tags, which can also be useful after changing the Destination.
Almost all dialogs feature a
button, which can be used to store the dialog specific settings and the window size persistently.leads to a subdialog to set tag frames from the contents of other tag frames. This can be used to simply copy information between tags or extract a part from one frame and insert it in another.
As in the import from file/clipboard dialog, there are freely configurable formats to perform different operations. Already preconfigured are formats to copy the Album value to Album Artist, Composer or Conductor, and to extract the Track Number from Title fields which contain a number. There is also a format to extract a Subtitle from a Title field.
The following example explains how to add a custom format, which sets the information from the Subtitle field also in the Comment field. Create a new format using Source and "%{comment}(.*)" for Extraction and click .
and set a new name, e.g. "Subtitle to Comment". Then enter "%{subtitle}" inThe expression in Source can contain format codes for arbitrary tag frames, multiple codes can be used to combine the contents from different frames. For each track, a text is generated from its tags using the Source format, and the regular expression from Extraction is applied to this text to set new values for the tags. Format codes are used before the capturing parentheses to specify the tag frame where the captured text shall be stored. It works in the same way as for the import from file/clipboard.
is also directly available from the menu. The difference between these two functions is that the import dialog subdialog operates on all files of the current directory whereas the menu function operates on the selected files (which can be in different directories). The menu function supports an additional code "%{__return}" to return the extracted value, which can be useful with the CLI and QML interfaces.
Import from a freedb.org server using gnudb.org album search. This menu item opens the same import dialog as , but opens directly the dialog.
Import from the TrackType.org server. This menu item opens the same import dialog as , but opens directly the dialog.
Import from the Discogs server. This menu item opens the same import dialog as , but opens directly the dialog.
Import from Amazon. This menu item opens the same import dialog as , but opens directly the dialog.
Import from the MusicBrainz release database. This menu item opens the same import dialog as , but opens directly the dialog.
Import from a MusicBrainz server. This menu item opens the same import dialog as , but opens directly the dialog.
Like From Tags, but the import is applied to the selected files.
Automatic Import allows one to import information for multiple albums from various web services. If directories are selected in the file list, track data for the selected directories will be imported. If no directory is selected, all directories in the file list will be imported.
The tag type (Tag 1, Tag 2, Tag 1 and Tag 2) can be selected using the Destination combo box.
Profiles determine which servers will be contacted to fetch album information. Some profiles are predefined (All, MusicBrainz, Discogs, Cover Art), custom profiles can be added using the Profile combo box.
button at the right of theThe table below shows the servers which will be used when importing album information using the selected profile. The import process for an album is finished if all required information has been found, so the order of the rows in the table is important. It can be changed using the Standard Tags, Additional Tags, Cover Art determine the information which shall be fetched from the server. Finally, Accuracy is the minimum accuracy which must be achieved to accept the imported data. If the accuracy is insufficient, the next server in the list will be tried. The same dialog containing the server properties appears when is clicked to add a new server entry. Existing entries can be deleted using .
and buttons. can be used to change an existing entry. The selection offers the same servers as can be used in the import functions.To launch an automatic batch import with the selected profile, click
. Details about the running import are displayed at the top of the dialog. The process can be aborted with the button.
The Browse Cover Art dialog helps to find album cover
art. Artist/Album is filled from the tags if
possible. Source offers a variety of websites with album
cover art. The URL with artist and album as parameters can be found beneath
the name. URL-encoded values for artist and album can be inserted using
%u{artist}
and %u{album}
, other
values from the tags are possible too, as described
in Configure Kid3, User
Actions. More sources can be entered after the entry "Custom
Source" by replacing "Custom Source" with the source's name, pressing Enter,
then inserting the URL and finally pressing . The resulting browser command is displayed at the top of
the dialog and can be started by clicking . The
browser, which can be configured in the settings, is started with the selected
source. A cover image can then be dragged from the browser into the Kid3
window and will be set in the picture frame of the selected files.
Because not all browsers support drag and drop of images and the pictures on websites often have a URL, in such cases Kid3 will receive the URL and not the picture. If the URL points to a picture, it will be downloaded. However, if the URL refers to some other web resource, it has to be translated to the corresponding picture. Such mappings are defined in the table URL extraction. The left column Match contains a regular expression which is compared with the URL. If it matches, the captured expressions in parentheses are inserted into the pattern of the right Picture URL column (at the positions marked with \1 etc.). The replaced regular expression contains the URL of the picture. By this means cover art can be imported from Amazon, Google Images, etc. using drag and drop. It is also possible to define your own mappings.
The Export Dialog is used to store data from the tags in a file or the clipboard. The editor at the top shows a preview of the data to export. If the export data contain tabulator characters, the export is displayed in a table. The data will be generated from the tags in the current directory according to the configured format.
The format settings are similar as in the Import dialog: The topmost field contains the title (e.g. "CSV unquoted"), followed by the header, which will be generated at the begin of the file. The track data follows; it is used for every track. Finally, the trailer can be used to generate some finishing text.
The format fields do not contain regular expressions as in the Import dialog, but only output format expressions with special %-expressions, which will be replaced by values from the tags. The whole thing works like the file name format, and the same codes are used plus some additional codes. Not only the codes listed below but all tag frame names can be used.
%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 zeros, e.g. 1)
%g %{genre} Genre
%f %{file} File name
%p %{filepath} Path
%{modificationdate} Modification date
%{creationdate} Creation date
%u %{url} URL
%{dirname} Directory name
%d %{duration} Duration in minutes:seconds
%D %{seconds} Duration in seconds
%n %{tracks} Number of tracks of the album
%e %{extension} File extension
%O %{tag1} The format of tag 1 (ID3v1.1 or empty if not existing)
%o %{tag2} The format of tag 2 (ID3v2.3.0, ID3v2.4.0, ID3v2.2.0, ID3v2.2.1, Vorbis, APE, MP4, ASF, or empty if not existing)
%b %{bitrate} Bit rate in kbit/s
%v %{vbr} VBR or empty (only for ID3v2.3 with id3lib)
%r %{samplerate} Sample rate in Hz
%m %{mode} Channel mode (Stereo or Joint Stereo)
%h %{channels} Number of channels (1 or 2)
%k %{codec} Codec (e.g. MPEG 1 Layer 3, MP4, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, APE, ASF, AIFF, WAV)
A few formats are predefined. "CSV unquoted" separates the fields by
tabs. Data in this format can be imported again into Kid3 using the import
format with the same name. "CSV quoted" additionally encloses the fields by
double quotes, which eases the import into spreadsheet applications. However,
the fields shall not contain any double quotes when this format is used.
"Extended M3U" and "Extended PLS" generate playlists with extended attributes
and absolute path names. "HTML" can be used to generate an HTML page with
hyperlinks to the tracks. "Kover XML" creates a file which can be imported by
the cover printing program Kover. "Technical Details" provides information
about bit rate, sample rate, channels, etc. Finally, "Custom Format" is left empty for
definition of a custom format. You can define more formats of your own by
adding lines in the file kid3rc
in the configuration
directory. The other formats can be adapted to your needs.
The source of the tags to generate the export data (Tag 1 or Tag 2) can be selected with a combo box. Pushing or stores the data in a file or on the clipboard. and close the dialog, whereas accepts the current dialog settings.
Creates a playlist. The format and contents of the playlist can be set by various options.
The name of the playlist can be the Export. will make an empty playlist with the given name. The extension depends on the playlist format.
or use a with values from the tags, e.g. "%{artist} - %{album}" to have the artist and album name in the playlist file name. The format codes are the same as forThe location of the generated playlist is determined by the selection of the Create in combo box.
The playlist is created in the current directory and contains only files of the current directory. The current directory is the directory where the current file is located. If multiple files are selected, the current file is probably the last selected file.
A playlist is created in every directory which contains listed files, and each playlist contains the files of that directory.
Only one playlist is created in the top-level directory (i.e. the directory of the file list) and it contains the listed files of the top-level directory and all of its sub-directories.
The Format of the playlist can be M3U, PLS or XSPF.
If
is checked, only the selected files will be included in the playlist. If a directory is selected, all of its files are selected. If this check box is not activated, all audio files are included in the playlist.selects the usual case where the files are ordered by file name. With , it is possible to sort by a format string with values from tag fields. For instance, "%{track.3}" can be used to sort by track number (the ".3" is used to get three digits with leading zeros because strings are used for sorting). It is also possible to use multiple fields, e.g. "%{genre}%{year}" to sort using a string composed of genre and year.
The playlist entries will have relative or absolute file paths depending on whether
or is set.When
is set, the playlist will only contain the paths to the files. To generate an extended playlist with additional information, a format string can be set using the control.Quits the application.
Selects all files.
Deselects all files.
Selects all files of the current directory.
Selects the previous file.
Selects the next file.
Find strings in the file names and the tags. The Find dialog is a subset of the Replace dialog, which is described below.
This function opens a dialog to find and replace strings in the file names and the tags. The set of frames where the search is performed can be restricted by deactivating the Select all checkbox and selecting the frames which shall be searched. There are also search options available to search backwards, case sensitively, and to use regular expressions.
Depending on the number of files, the search might take some time, therefore it can be aborted by closing the dialog.
When Automatically apply format is switched off for the filename format in the configuration dialog, this menu item can be used to apply the configured format to the names of the selected files. This can also be used to check whether the file names conform with the configured format by applying the format to all saved files and then checking if any files were changed (and therefore marked with a disk symbol in the file listbox).
When Automatically apply format is switched off for the tag format in the configuration dialog, this menu item can be used to apply the configured format to the tags of the selected files. This can also be used to check whether the tags conform with the configured format by applying the format to all saved files and then checking if any files were changed (and therefore marked with a disk symbol in the file listbox).
Sets the Text encoding selected in Settings/Configure Kid3.../Tags/Tag 2 for all selected files. If UTF8 is selected, UTF16 will be used for ID3v2.3.0 tags because UTF8 is not supported for this format.
This dialog offers the possibility to automatically rename the currently open directory according to the tags in the files. Several formats are preconfigured to include information about artist, album and year in the directory name. It is also possible to set a custom format and
the list of available formats. The following special codes are used to insert tag values into the directory name:%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 zeros, e.g. 1)
%g %{genre} Genre
%{dirname} Directory name (e.g. %{year" "}%{dirname} will prepend the year to the current directory name)
%{max-year} The maximum year value found for this directory, can also be used with other codes than "year"
%{min-year} The minimum year value found for this directory
%{unq-year} The unique year value found for this directory or empty if not unique
If a directory separator "/" is found in the format, multiple directories are created. If you want to create a new directory instead of renaming the current directory, select Create Folder instead of Rename Folder. The source of the tag information can be chosen between From Tag 1 and Tag 2, From Tag 1 and From Tag 2. A preview for the rename operation performed on the first file can be seen in the From and To sections of the dialog.
Multiple directories can be renamed by selecting them.
If the track numbers in the tags are not set or have the wrong values, this function can number the tracks automatically in ascending order. The start number can be set in the dialog. If only part of the tracks have to be numbered, they must be selected.
When Total number of tracks is checked, the number of tracks will also be set in the tags.
It is possible to number the tracks over multiple directories. The folders have to be expanded and selected.
If Reset counter for each folder is checked, track numbering is restarted with the given number for each directory when multiple folders are selected.
The number tracks dialog can also be used to format existing track numbers without changing the values when the check box left to Start number is deactivated. The total number of tracks will be added if the corresponding check box is active, which can be used to set the total for all selected tracks. If only formatting of the existing numbers is desired, this check box has to be deactivated too.
The filter can be used to display only those files which match certain criteria. This is helpful if you want to organize a large collection and only edit those files which are not in the desired scheme. The expression defining which files to display uses the same format codes which are used in the file name format, import and export.
%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 zeros, e.g. 1)
%g %{genre} Genre
%f %{file} File name
%p %{filepath} Absolute path to file
%e %{extension} File extension
%O %{tag1} The format of tag 1 (ID3v1.1 or empty if not existing)
%o %{tag2} The format of tag 2 (ID3v2.3.0, ID3v2.4.0, ID3v2.2.0, ID3v2.2.1, Vorbis, APE, MP4, ASF, or empty if not existing)
%b %{bitrate} Bit rate in kbit/s
%v %{vbr} VBR or empty (only for ID3v2.3 with id3lib)
%r %{samplerate} Sample rate in Hz
%m %{mode} Channel mode (Stereo or Joint Stereo)
%h %{channels} Number of channels (1 or 2)
%k %{codec} Codec (e.g. MPEG 1 Layer 3, MP4, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, APE, ASF, AIFF, WAV)
%w %{marked} Marked, is 1 if the file is marked (e.g. because of truncation or standard violation), empty otherwise
%1a %1{artist}, ... Use the prefix 1 to get values of tag 1
%2a %2{artist}, ... Use the prefix 2 to get values of tag 2
These codes are replaced with the values for the file, and the resulting strings can be compared with the following operations:
s1 equals s2: true if s1 and s2 are equal.
s1 contains s2: true if s1 contains s2, i.e. s2 is a substring of s1.
s matches re: true if s matches the regular expression re.
True expressions are replaced by 1, false by 0. True values are represented by 1, true, on and yes, false values by 0, false, off and no. Boolean operations are not, and, or (in this order of precedence) and can be grouped by parentheses.
Some filter rules are predefined and can serve as examples for your own expressions:
When the file list is filtered - this is shown by "[filtered]" in the window title - and all files shall be displayed again, the filtering can be reverted using this filter. It uses an empty expression, but a true value would have the same effect.
not (%{filepath} contains "%{artist} - %{album}/%{track} %{title}")
Tests if the file path conforms with the file name format. This rule is automatically adapted if the file name format changes.
%{tag1} equals ""
Displays only files which do not have a tag 1.
%{tag2} equals ""
Displays only files which do not have a tag 2.
%{tag2} equals "ID3v2.3.0"
Displays only files which have an ID3v2.3.0 tag.
%{tag2} equals "ID3v2.4.0"
Displays only files which have an ID3v2.4.0 tag.
not (%1{title} equals %2{title} and %1{album} equals %2{album} and %1{artist}
equals %2{artist} and %1{comment} equals %2{comment} and %1{year} equals
%2{year} and %1{track} equals %2{track} and %1{genre} equals %2{genre})
Displays files with differences between tag 1 and tag2.
%1{title} equals %2{title} and %1{album} equals %2{album} and %1{artist}
equals %2{artist} and %1{comment} equals %2{comment} and %1{year} equals
%2{year} and %1{track} equals %2{track} and %1{genre} equals %2{genre}
Displays files with identical tag 1 and tag 2.
%{title} equals "" or %{artist} equals "" or %{album} equals "" or %{year} equals "" or %{tracknumber} equals "" or %{genre} equals ""
Displays files with empty values in the standard tags (title, artist, album, date, track number, genre).
%{picture} equals ""
Displays only files which do not have a picture.
not (%{marked} equals "")
Displays only files which are marked because they violate the ID3 standard, are truncated or the picture is too large.
To add your own filter, select this entry. For instance, if you want to have a filter for artists starting with "The", replace "Custom Filter" with the name "The Bands" and press Enter. Then insert the following expression into the line edit:
%{artist} matches "The.*"
Then click
. Click to filter the files. All files processed are displayed in the text view, with a "+" for those who match the filter and a "-" for the others. When finished, only the files with an artist starting with "The" are displayed, and the window title is marked with "[filtered]".If there are any ID3v2.3 tags in the selected files, they will be converted to ID3v2.4 tags. Frames which are not supported by TagLib will be discarded. Only files without unsaved changes will be converted.
If there are any ID3v2.4 tags in the selected files, they will be converted to ID3v2.3 tags. Only files without unsaved changes will be converted.
This opens a simple toolbar to play audio files. It contains buttons for the basic operations (
, , , , ), sliders for position and volume and a display of the current position. If multiple files are selected, the selected tracks are played, else all files will be played.
Toggles displaying of the toolbar.
Toggles displaying of the statusbar, which displays longer actions such as opening or saving a directory.
Toggles displaying of the album cover art preview picture.
Empty tags are automatically hidden if this option is active. The File, Tag 1 and Tag 2 sections can be manually collapsed and expanded by clicking on the corresponding / buttons.
Opens the configuration dialog, which consists of pages for tags, files, user actions, and network settings.
Tag specific options can be found on the Tags page, which is itself separated into four tabs for Tag 1, Tag 2, Tag 3, and All Tags.
If Mark truncated fields is checked, truncated ID3v1.1 fields will be marked red. The text fields of ID3v1.1 tags can only have 30 characters, the comment only 28 characters. Also the genre and track numbers are restricted, so that fields can be truncated when imported or transferred from ID3v2. Truncated fields and the file will be marked red, and the mark will be removed after the field has been edited.
With Text encoding for ID3v1 it is possible to set the character set used in ID3v1 tags. This encoding is supposed to be ISO-8859-1, so it is recommended to keep this default value. However, there are tags around with different encoding, so it can be set here and the ID3v1 tags can then be copied to ID3v2 which supports Unicode.
The check box Use track/total number of tracks format controls whether the track number field of ID3v2 tags contains simply the track number or additionally the total number of tracks in the directory.
When Genre as text instead of numeric string is checked, all ID3v2 genres will be stored as a text string even if there is a corresponding code for ID3v1 genres. If this option is not set, genres for which an ID3v1 code exists are stored as the number of the genre code (in parentheses for ID3v2.3). Thus the genre Metal is stored as "Metal" or "(9)" depending on this option. Genres which are not in the list of ID3v1 genres are always stored as a text string. The purpose of this option is improved compatibility with devices which do not correctly interpret genre codes.
When WAV files with lowercase id3 chunk is checked, the RIFF chunk used to store ID3v2 tags in WAV files will be named "id3 " instead of "ID3 ". By default, Kid3 and other applications using TagLib accept both the lowercase and the uppercase variant when reading WAV files, but they use "ID3 " when writing ID3v2 tags to WAV files. As there exist other applications which only accept "id3 " (e.g. JRiver Media Center and foobar2000), this option can be used to create tags which can be read by such applications.
When Mark standard violations is checked, ID3v2 fields which violate the standard will be marked red. Details about the violation are shown in a tooltip:
Must be unique
New line is forbidden
Carriage return is forbidden
Owner must be non-empty
Must be numeric
Must be numeric or number/total
Format is DDMM
Format is HHMM
Format is YYYY
Must begin with a year and a space character
Must be ISO 8601 date/time
Must be musical key, 3 characters, A-G, b, #, m, o
Must have ISO 639-2 language code, 3 lowercase characters
Must be ISRC code, 12 characters
Must be list of strings separated by '|'
Has excess white space
The ID3 standard documents are available online:
Text encoding defines the default encoding used for ID3v2 frames and can be set to ISO-8859-1, UTF16, or UTF8. UTF8 is not valid for ID3v2.3.0 frames; if it is set, UTF16 will be used instead. For ID3v2.4.0 frames, all three encodings are possible.
Version used for new tags determines whether new ID3v2 tags are created as version 2.3.0 or 2.4.0.
Track number digits is the number of digits in Track Number fields. Leading zeros are used to pad. For instance, with a value of 2 the track number 5 is set as "05".
The combo box Comment field name is only relevant for Ogg/Vorbis and FLAC files and sets the name of the field used for comments. Different applications seem to use different names, "COMMENT" for instance is used by xmms, whereas amaroK uses "DESCRIPTION".
The format of pictures in Ogg/Vorbis files is determined by Picture field name, which can be METADATA_BLOCK_PICTURE or COVERART. The first is the official standard and uses the same format as pictures in FLAC tags. COVERART is an earlier unofficial way to include pictures in Vorbis comments. It can be used for compatibility with legacy players.
If the Mark if larger than check box is activated, files containing embedded album cover art exceeding the given size in bytes are marked red. This can be used to find files containing oversized pictures which are not accepted by some applications and players. The default value is 131072 bytes (128 KB).
Custom Genres can be used to define genres which are not available in the standard genre list, e.g. "Gothic Metal". Such custom genres will appear in the Genre combo box of Tag 2. For ID3v1.1 tags, only the predefined genres can be used.
The list of custom genres can also be used to reduce the number of genres available in the Genre combo box to those typically used. If your collection mostly contains music in the genres Metal, Gothic Metal, Ancient and Hard Rock, you can enter those genres and mark Show only custom genres. The Tag 2 Genre combo box will then only contain those four genres and you will not have to search through the complete genres list for them. In this example, only Metal and Hard Rock will be listed in the tag 1 genres list, because those two custom genres entries are standard genres. If Show only custom genres is not active, the custom genres can be found at the end of the genres list.
Quick Access Frames defines which frame types are always shown in the Tag 2 section. Such frames can then be added without first using the button. The order of these quick access frames can be changed by dragging and dropping items.
The combo box Track number field name is only relevant for RIFF INFO and sets the name of the field used for track numbers. Track numbers are not specified in the original RIFF standard, there are applications which use "ITRK", others use "IPRT".
Tag Format contains options for the format of the tags. When Automatically apply format is checked, the format configuration is automatically used while editing text in the line edits. Validation enables validators in the controls with track/total and date/time values. The Case conversion can be set to No changes, All lowercase, All uppercase, First letter uppercase or All first letters uppercase. To use locale-aware conversion between lowercase and uppercase characters, a locale can be selected in the combobox below. The string replacement list can be set to arbitrary string mappings. To add a new mapping, select the From cell of a row and insert the text to replace, then go to the To column and enter the replacement text. When the text to replace starts and ends with a slash ("/"), a regular expression is used. For regular expressions containing capturing groups, occurrences of \1, \2, ... in To are replaced with the string captured by the corresponding capturing group. To remove a mapping set the From cell to an empty value (e.g. by first typing space and then backspace). Inserting and deleting rows is also possible using a context menu which appears when the right mouse button is clicked. Replacement is only active, if the String replacement checkbox is checked.
The table in Rating contains the mapping of star ratings to the effective values stored in the tag. The frames with rating information are listed in the Rating row of the frame list. For these frames, the rating can be set by giving a number of stars out of five stars. Different tag formats and different applications use different values to map the star rating to the value stored in the tag. In order to display the correct number of stars, Kid3 will look up a map in this table. The key to look up the mapping is the frame name, for example "RATING" as used for Vorbis comments or "IRTD" for RIFF INFO. For ID3v2 tags, a combined key is used consisting of the frame ID "POPM" of the Popularimeter frame and its "Email" field, separated by a dot. Therefore, different keys for ID3v2 exist, e.g. "POPM.Windows Media Player 9 Series" for the mapping used by Windows Media Player and Explorer, and simply "POPM" for POPM frames with an empty "Email" field. As multiple entries for "POPM" can exist, their order is important. When Kid3 adds a new Popularimeter frame, it will use the first "POPM" entry to determine the value to be written into the "Email" field. This value will then specify the mapping to be used for star ratings. The first entry is also used if no key was found, it is therefore the default entry.
Besides the Name column containing the keys, the table has columns 1 to 5 for the values to be stored when the corresponding number of stars is given. The other way round, the values determine the number of stars which are displayed for the value stored in the frame. For instance, the row in the table below contains the values 1, 64, 128, 196, 255. The thresholds for the number of stars to be displayed lay between these values and are compatible with what the Windows Explorer uses.
On the page Files the check box Load last-opened files can be marked so that Kid3 will open and select the last selected file when it is started the next time. Preserve file timestamp can be checked to preserve the file modification time stamp. Filename for cover sets the name which is suggested when an embedded image is exported to a file. With Text encoding (Export, Playlist) the encoding used when writing files can be set. The default System can be changed for example if playlists have to be used on a different device.
If Mark changes is active, changed fields are marked with a light gray label background.
The section File List determines which files are
displayed in the file list. A Filter can be used to
restrict the items in this list to files with supported extensions. To
explicitly specify which directories to display in the file list or exclude
certain directories, the options Include folders and
Exclude folders can be used. They can contain wildcard
expressions, for instance */Music/*
to include only the
Music
folder, or */iTunes/*
to
exclude the iTunes folder from the file list. If multiple such expressions
have to be used, they can be separated by spaces or semicolons.
The buttons Format open dialogs to edit the formats which are available in the Format combo boxes (with arrows up and down), which can be found in the File section of the main window.
and in sectionFilename Format contains options for the format of the filenames. The same options as in Tag Format are available.
The User Actions page contains a table with the commands which are available in the context menu of the file list. For critical operations such as deleting files, it is advisable to mark Confirm to pop up a confirmation dialog before executing the command. Output can be marked to see the output written by console commands (standard output and standard error). Name is the name displayed in the context menu. Command is the command line to be executed. Arguments can be passed using the following codes:
%F %{files} File paths (a list if multiple files selected)
%f %{file} File path to single file
%uF %{urls} URLs (a list if multiple files selected)
%uf %{url} URL to single file
%d %{directory} Directory
%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 zeros, e.g. 1)
%g %{genre} Genre
%b %{browser} Command to start the web browser
%q %{qmlpath} Base directory of provided QML files
The special code @separator can be set as a command to insert a separator into the user actions context menu. Menu items can be put into a submenu by enclosing them with @beginmenu and @endmenu commands. The name of the submenu is determined by the Name column of the @beginmenu command.
To execute QML scripts, @qml is used as a command name. The
path to the QML script is passed as a parameter. The provided scripts can be
found in the folder %{qmlpath}/script/
(on
Linux typically /usr/share/kid3/qml/script/
, on
Windows qml/script/
inside the installation directory,
and on macOS in the app folder
kid3.app/Contents/Resources/qml/script/
). Custom scripts
can be stored in any directory. If the QML code uses GUI components,
@qmlview shall be used instead of
@qml. Additional parameters are passed to the QML script
where they will be available via the getArguments()
function. An overview of some functions and properties which are available in
QML can be found in the appendix QML Interface.
The command which will be inserted with %{browser} can be defined in the Web browser line edit above. Commands starting with %{browser} can be used to fetch information about the audio files from the web, for instance
%{browser} http://lyricwiki.org/%u{artist}:%u{title}
will query the lyrics for the current song in LyricWiki. The "u" in %u{artist} and %u{title} is used to URL-encode the artist %{artist} and song %{title} information. It is easy to define your own queries in the same way, e.g. an image search with Google:
%{browser} http://images.google.com/images?q=%u{artist}%20%u{album}
To add album cover art to tag 2, you can search for images with Google or Amazon using the commands described above. The picture can be added to the tag with drag and drop. You can also add an image with
, then select the Picture frame and import an image file or paste from the clipboard. Picture frames are supported for ID3v2, MP4, FLAC, Ogg and ASF tags.To add and delete entries in the table, a context menu can be used.
The Network page contains only a field to insert the proxy address and optionally the port, separated by a colon. The proxy will be used when importing from an Internet server when the checkbox is checked.
In the Plugins page, available plugins can be enabled or disabled. The plugins are separated into two sections. The Metadata Plugins & Priority list contains plugins which support audio file formats. The order of the plugins is important because they are tried from top to bottom. Some formats are supported by multiple plugins, so files will be opened with the first plugin supporting them. The TaglibMetadata supports most formats, if it is at the top of the list, it will open most of the files. If you want to use a different plugin for a file format, make sure that it is listed before the TaglibMetadata plugin. Details about the metadata plugin and why you may want to use them instead of TagLib are listed below.
Id3libMetadata: Uses id3lib for ID3v1.1 and ID3v2.3 tags in MP3, MP2, AAC files. Supports a few more frame types than TagLib.
OggFlacMetadata: Uses libogg, libvorbis, libvorbisfile for Ogg files, and additionally libFLAC++ and libFLAC for FLAC files. These are the official libraries for these formats.
TaglibMetadata: Uses TagLib which supports a lot of audio file formats. It can be used for all audio files supported by Kid3.
Mp4v2Metadata: mp4v2 was originally used by Kid3 to support M4A files. Can be used in case of problems with the M4A support of TagLib.
The Available Plugins section lists the remaining plugins. Their order is not important, but they can be enabled or disabled using the check boxes.
AmazonImport: Used for the function.
DiscogsImport: Used for the function.
FreedbImport: Used for the and functions.
MusicBrainzImport: Used for the function.
AcoustidImport: Used for the function, which depends on the Chromaprint and libav libraries.
Plugins which are disabled will not be loaded. This can be used to optimize resource usage and startup time. The settings on this page take only effect after a restart of Kid3.
Opens a dialog to assign keyboard shortcuts for most of the program functions. There are even functions without corresponding menu or button available, e.g. next file, previous file, select all.
Table of Contents
kid3-cli offers a command-line-interface for Kid3. If a
directory path is used, the directory is opened. If one or more file paths are
given, the common directory is opened and the files are selected. Subsequent
commands will then work on these files. Commands are specified using
-c
options. If multiple commands are passed, they are
executed in the given order. If files are modified by the commands, they will
be saved at the end. If no command options are passed,
kid3-cli starts in interactive mode. Commands can be
entered and will operate on the current selection. The following sections
list all available commands.
help
[COMMAND-NAME
]
Displays help about the parameters of
COMMAND-NAME
or about all commands if no command
name is given.
timeout
[ default | off | TIME
]
Overwrite the default command timeout. The CLI commands abort after a
command specific timeout is expired. This timeout is 10 seconds for
ls and albumart, 60 seconds for
autoimport and filter, and 3 seconds for
all other commands. If a huge number of files has to be processed, these
timeouts may be too restrictive, thus the timeout for all commands can be set
to TIME
ms, switched off altogether or be left at
the default values.
exit
[force]
Exit application. If there are modified unsaved files, the force
parameter is required.
cd
[DIRECTORY
]
If no DIRECTORY
is given, change to the home
directory. If a directory is given, change into the directory. If one or more
file paths are given, change to their common directory and select the files.
ls
List the contents of the current directory. This corresponds to the file list in the Kid3 GUI. Five characters before the file names show the state of the file.
>
File is selected.
*
File is modified.
1
File has a tag 1,
otherwise '-
' is displayed.
2
File has a tag 2,
otherwise '-
' is displayed.
3
File has a tag 3,
otherwise '-
' is displayed.
kid3-cli>
ls
1-- 01 Intro.mp3 > 12- 02 We Only Got This One.mp3 *1-- 03 Outro.mp3
In this example, all files have a tag 1, the second file also has a tag 2 and it is selected. The third file is modified.
select
[ all | none | first | previous | next | FILE
... ]
To select all files, enter select all
, to
deselect all files, enter select none
. To traverse the
files in the current directory start with select first
,
then go forward using select next
or backward using
select previous
. Specific files can be added to the
current selection by giving their file names. Wildcards are possible, so
select *.mp3
will select all MP3 files in the current
directory.
kid3-cli>
select first
kid3-cli>
ls
> 1-- 01 Intro.mp3 12- 02 We Only Got This One.mp3 *1-- 03 Outro.mp3
kid3-cli>
select next
kid3-cli>
ls
1-- 01 Intro.mp3 > 12- 02 We Only Got This One.mp3 *1-- 03 Outro.mp3
kid3-cli>
select *.mp3
kid3-cli>
ls
> 1-- 01 Intro.mp3 > 12- 02 We Only Got This One.mp3 >*1-- 03 Outro.mp3
tag
[TAG-NUMBERS
]
Many commands have an optional TAG-NUMBERS
parameter, which specifies whether the command operates on tag 1, 2, or 3. If
this parameter is omitted, the default tag numbers are used, which can be set
by this command. At startup, it is set to 12
which means
that information is read from tag 2 if available, else from tag 1;
modifications are done on tag 2. The
can be set to
TAG-NUMBERS
1
, 2
, or
3
to operate only on the
corresponding tag. If the parameter is omitted, the current setting is
displayed.
get
[ all | FRAME-NAME
] [TAG-NUMBERS
]
This command can be used to read the value of a specific tag frame or
get information about all tag frames (if the argument is omitted or
all
is used). Modified frames are marked with a
'*
'.
kid3-cli>
get
File: MPEG 1 Layer 3 192 kbps 44100 Hz Joint Stereo Name: 01 Intro.mp3 Tag 1: ID3v1.1 Title Intro Artist One Hit Wonder Album Let's Tag Date 2013 Track Number 1 Genre Pop
kid3-cli>
get title
Intro
To save the contents of a picture frame to a file, use
get picture:'/path/to/folder.jpg'
To save synchronized lyrics to an LRC file, use
get SYLT:'/path/to/lyrics.lrc'
It is possible to get only a specific field from a frame, for example
get POPM.Email
for the Email field of a Popularimeter
frame. If a file has multiple frames of the same kind, the different frames
can be indexed with brackets, for example the first performer from a Vorbis
comment can be retrieved using get performer[0]
,
the second using get performer[1]
.
The pseudo field name "selected" can be used to check if a frame is selected,
for example get artist.selected
will return
1
if the artist frame is selected, else
0
.
set
{FRAME-NAME
} {FRAME-VALUE
} [TAG-NUMBERS
]
This command sets the value of a specific tag frame.
If FRAME-VALUE
is empty, the frame is deleted.
kid3-cli>
set remixer 'O.H. Wonder'
To set the contents of a picture frame from a file, use
set picture:'/path/to/folder.jpg' 'Picture Description'
To set synchronized lyrics from an LRC file, use
set SYLT:'/path/to/lyrics.lrc' 'Lyrics Description'
To set a specific field of a frame, the field name can be given after a dot, e.g. to set the Counter field of a Popularimeter frame, use
set POPM.Counter 5
An application for field specifications is the case where you want a custom TXXX frame with "rating" description instead of a standard Popularimeter frame (this seems to be used by some plugins). You can create such a TXXX rating frame with kid3-cli, however, you have to first create a TXXX frame with description "rating" and then set the value of this frame to the rating value.
kid3-cli>
set rating ""
kid3-cli>
set TXXX.Description rating
kid3-cli>
set rating 5
The first command will delete an existing POPM frame, because if such a frame
exists, set rating 5
would set the POPM frame and not
the TXXX frame. Another possibility would be to use set TXXX.Text
5
, but this would only work if there is no other TXXX frame
present.
To set multiple frames of the same kind, an index can be given in brackets, e.g. to set multiple performers in a Vorbis comment, use
kid3-cli>
set performer[0] 'Liza don Getti (soprano)'
kid3-cli>
set performer[1] 'Joe Barr (piano)'
To select certain frames before a copy, paste or remove action, the pseudo
field name "selected" can be used. Normally, all frames are selected, to
deselect all, use set '*.selected' 0
, then for example
set artist.selected 1
to select the artist frame.
revert
Revert all modifications in the selected files (or all files if no files are selected).
import
{FILE
} {FORMAT-NAME
} [TAG-NUMBERS
]
Tags are imported from the file FILE
in the format with the name
FORMAT-NAME
(e.g. "CSV
unquoted"
, see Import).
If tags
is given for
FILE
, tags are imported from other tags. Instead of
FORMAT-NAME
parameters
SOURCE
and EXTRACTION
are required, see Import from Tags.
To apply the import from tags on the selected files, use
tagsel
instead of tags
.
This function also supports output of the extracted value by using an
EXTRACTION
with the value
%{__return}(.+)
.
autoimport
[PROFILE-NAME
] [TAG-NUMBERS
]
Batch import using profile PROFILE-NAME
(see
Automatic Import,
"All"
is used if omitted).
albumart
{URL
} [all]
Set the album artwork by downloading a picture from
URL
. The rules defined in the Browse Cover Art dialog are used to transform
general URLs (e.g. from Amazon) to a picture URL. To set the album cover from
a local picture file, use the set command.
kid3-cli>
albumart http://www.amazon.com/Versus-World-Amon-Amarth/dp/B000078DOC
export
{FILE
} {FORMAT-NAME
} [TAG-NUMBERS
]
Tags are exported to file FILE
in the format with the name
FORMAT-NAME
(e.g. "CSV
unquoted"
, see Export).
playlist
Create playlist in the format set in the configuration, see Create Playlist.
filenameformat
Apply file name format set in the configuration, see Apply Filename Format.
textencoding
Apply text encoding set in the configuration, see Apply Text Encoding.
renamedir
[FORMAT
] [ create | rename | dryrun ] [TAG-NUMBERS
]
Rename or create directories from the values in the
tags according to a given FORMAT
(e.g. %{artist} - %{album}
, see Rename Folder), if no format is given,
the format defined in the Rename folder dialog is
used. The default mode is rename
; to create directories,
create
must be given explicitly. The rename actions will be
performed immediately, to just see what would be done, use the
dryrun
option.
numbertracks
[TRACK-NUMBER
] [TAG-NUMBERS
]
Number the selected tracks starting with
TRACK-NUMBER
(1
if omitted).
filter
[ FILTER-NAME
| FILTER-FORMAT
]
Filter the files so that only the files matching the
FILTER-FORMAT
are visible. The name of a predefined
filter expression (e.g. "Filename Tag Mismatch"
) can be
used instead of a filter expression, see Filter.
kid3-cli>
filter '%{title} contains "tro"'
Started /home/urs/One Hit Wonder - Let's Tag + 01 Intro.mp3 - 02 We Only Got This One.mp3 + 03 Outro.mp3 Finished
kid3-cli>
ls
1-- 01 Intro.mp3 1-- 03 Outro.mp3
kid3-cli>
filter All
Started /home/urs/One Hit Wonder - Let's Tag + 01 Intro.mp3 + 02 We Only Got This One.mp3 + 03 Outro.mp3 Finished
kid3-cli>
ls
1-- 01 Intro.mp3 12- 02 We Only Got This One.mp3 1-- 03 Outro.mp3
fromtag
[FORMAT
] [TAG-NUMBERS
]
Set the file names of the selected files from values in the tags, for
example fromtag '%{track} - %{title}' 1
. If no format
is specified, the format set in the GUI is used.
totag
[FORMAT
] [TAG-NUMBERS
]
Set the tag frames from the file names, for example totag
'%{albumartist} - %{album}/%{track} %{title}' 2
. If no format
is specified, the format set in the GUI is used. If the format
of the filename does not match this pattern, a few other commonly used formats
are tried.
syncto
{TAG-NUMBER
}
Copy the tag frames from one tag to the other tag, e.g. to set the ID3v2
tag from the ID3v1 tag, use syncto 2
.
copy
[TAG-NUMBER
]
Copy the tag frames of the selected file to the internal copy buffer. They can then be set on another file using the paste command.
To copy only a subset of the frames, use the "selected" pseudo field with the set command. For example, to copy only the disc number and copyright frames, use
set '*.selected' 0
set discnumber.selected 1
set copyright.selected 1
copy
remove
[TAG-NUMBER
]
Remove a tag.
It is possible to remove only a subset of the frames by selecting them as described in the copy command.
Set title containing an apostrophe. Commands passed to
kid3-cli with -c
have to be in quotes if they do not only consist of a single word. If such a
command itself has an argument containing spaces, that argument has to be
quoted too. In UNIX shells single or double quotes can be used, but on the
Windows Command Prompt, it is important that the outer quoting is done using
double quotes and inside these quotes, single quotes are used. If the text
inside the single quotes contains a single quote, it has to be escaped using a
backslash character, as shown in the following example:
kid3-cli -c "set title 'I\'ll be there for you'" /path/to/dir
Set album cover in all files of a directory using the batch import function:
kid3-cli -c "autoimport 'Cover Art'" /path/to/dir
Remove comment frames and apply the tag format in both tags of all MP3 files of a directory:
kid3-cli -c "set comment '' 1" -c "set comment '' 2" \
-c "tagformat 1" -c "tagformat 2" /path/to/dir/*.mp3
Automatically import tag 2, synchronize to tag 1, set file names from tag 2 and finally create a playlist:
kid3-cli -c autoimport -c "syncto 1" -c fromtag -c playlist \
/path/to/dir/*.mp3
For all files with an ID3v2.4.0 tag, convert to ID3v2.3.0 and remove the arranger frame:
kid3-cli -c "filter 'ID3v2.4.0 Tag'" -c "select all" -c to23 \
-c "set arranger ''" /path/to/dir
This Python script uses kid3-cli to generate iTunes Sound Check iTunNORM frames from replay gain information.
#!/usr/bin/env python3 # Generate iTunes Sound Check from ReplayGain. import os, sys, subprocess def rg2sc(dirpath): for root, dirs, files in os.walk(dirpath): for name in files: if name.endswith(('.mp3', '.m4a', '.aiff', '.aif')): fn = os.path.join(root, name) rg = subprocess.check_output([ 'kid3-cli', '-c', 'get "replaygain_track_gain"', fn]).strip() if rg.endswith(b' dB'): rg = rg[:-3] try: rg = float(rg) except ValueError: print('Value %s of %s in not a float' % (rg, fn)) continue sc = (' ' + ('%08X' % int((10 ** (-rg / 10)) * 1000) )) * 10 subprocess.call([ 'kid3-cli', '-c', 'set iTunNORM "%s"' % sc, fn]) if __name__ == '__main__': rg2sc(sys.argv[1])
In order to make it easier to parse results from kid3-cli, it is possible to get the output in JSON format. When the request is in JSON format, the response will also be JSON. A compact format of the request will also give a compact representation of the response. If the request contains an "id" field, it is assumed to be a JSON-RPC request and the response will contain a "jsonrpc" field and the "id" of the request. The request format uses the same commands as the standard CLI, the "method" field contains the command and the parameters (if any) are given in the "params" list. The response contains a "result" object, which can also be null if the corresponding kid3-cli command does not return a result. In case of an error, an "error" object is returned with "code" and "message" fields as used in JSON-RPC.
kid3-cli>
{"method":"set","params":["artist","An Artist"]}
{"result":null}
kid3-cli>
{"method":"get","params":["artist",2]}
{"result":"An Artist"}
kid3-cli>
{"method": "get", "params": ["artist"]}
{ "result": "An Artist" }
kid3-cli>
{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":"123","method":"get","params":["artist"]}
{"id":"123","jsonrpc":"2.0","result":"An Artist"}
Kid3
Program written by Urs Fleisch <ufleisch at users.sourceforge.net>
Kid3 can be found at https://kid3.sourceforge.io.
Kid3 needs Qt. KDE is recommended but not necessary, as Kid3 can also be compiled as a Qt application. Kid3 can be compiled for systems where these libraries are available, e.g. for GNU/Linux, Windows and macOS. To tag Ogg/Vorbis files, libogg, libvorbis and libvorbisfile are required, for FLAC files libFLAC++ and libFLAC. id3lib is used for MP3 files. These four formats are also supported by TagLib, which can also handle Opus, MPC, APE, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio, WavPack, WMA, WAV, AIFF files and tracker modules. To import from acoustic fingerprints, Chromaprint and libav are used.
Kid3 is available for most Linux distributions, Windows and macOS. Links can be found on https://kid3.sourceforge.io.
You can compile Kid3 with or without KDE. Without KDE, Kid3 is a simple Qt application and lacks some configuration and session features.
For a KDE version, go into the top directory and type
%
cmake .
%
make
%
make install
To compile for different versions of Qt or KDE, set the corresponding
cmake
options.
If not all libraries are present, Kid3 is built with reduced functionality.
So you should take care to have all desired development packages installed.
On the other side, cmake
-options control which
libraries are compiled in. The default is
-DWITH_TAGLIB:BOOL=ON -DWITH_MP4V2:BOOL=OFF -DWITH_ID3LIB:BOOL=ON
-DWITH_CHROMAPRINT:BOOL=ON -DWITH_VORBIS:BOOL=ON -DWITH_FLAC:BOOL=ON
. These options can be disabled using
OFF
.
To build Kid3 as a Qt application without KDE, use the
cmake
option -DWITH_APPS=Qt
.
To build both a KDE and a Qt application, set
-DWITH_APPS="Qt;KDE"
.
To use a specific Qt installation, set
-DQT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE=/path/to/qmake
.
Generation of RPM-Packages is supported by the
file kid3.spec
, for Debian-Packages,
the script build-deb.sh
is available.
The Qt application can also be compiled for Windows and macOS.
The script buildlibs.sh
can be used to download
and build all required libraries and create a Kid3 package.
With KDE, the settings are stored in
.config/kid3rc
.
As a Qt application, this file is
in .config/Kid3/Kid3.conf
. On Windows,
the configuration is stored in the registry. on macOS in a plist file.
The environment variable KID3_CONFIG_FILE
can be used
to set the path of the configuration file.
Table of Contents
On Linux a D-Bus-interface can be used to control Kid3 by scripts. Scripts can be written in any language with D-Bus-bindings (e.g. in Python) and can be added to the User Actions to extend the functionality of Kid3.
The artist in tag 2 of the current file can be set to the value "One Hit Wonder" with the following code:
dbus-send --dest=net.sourceforge.kid3 --print-reply=literal \ /Kid3 net.sourceforge.Kid3.setFrame int32:2 string:'Artist' \ string:'One Hit Wonder'
or easier with Qt's qdbus (qdbusviewer can be used to explore the interface in a GUI):
qdbus net.sourceforge.kid3 /Kid3 setFrame 2 Artist \ 'One Hit Wonder'
import dbus kid3 = dbus.SessionBus().get_object( 'net.sourceforge.kid3', '/Kid3') kid3.setFrame(2, 'Artist', 'One Hit Wonder')
use Net::DBus; $kid3 = Net::DBus->session->get_service( "net.sourceforge.kid3")->get_object( "/Kid3", "net.sourceforge.Kid3"); $kid3->setFrame(2, "Artist", "One Hit Wonder");
The D-Bus API is specified
in net.sourceforge.Kid3.xml
. The Kid3 interface has the
following methods:
boolean openDirectory( | path) ; |
string path
;path
path to file or directory
Returns true if OK.
string getErrorMessage( | ) ; |
Returns detailed error message.
boolean batchImport( | tagMask, | |
profileName) ; |
int32 tagMask
;string profileName
;tagMask
tag mask (bit 0 for tag 1, bit 1 for tag 2)
profileName
name of batch import profile to use
boolean importFromFile( | tagMask, | |
path, | ||
fmtIdx) ; |
int32 tagMask
;string path
;int32 fmtIdx
;tagMask
tag bit (1 for tag 1, 2 for tag 2)
path
path of file
fmtIdx
index of format
Returns true if OK.
importFromTags( | tagMask, | |
source, | ||
extraction) ; |
int32 tagMask
;string source
;string extraction
;tagMask
tag bit (1 for tag 1, 2 for tag 2)
source
format to get source text from tags
extraction
regular expression with frame names and captures to extract from source text
array importFromTagsToSelection( | tagMask, | |
source, | ||
extraction) ; |
int32 tagMask
;string source
;string extraction
;tagMask
tag bit (1 for tag 1, 2 for tag 2)
source
format to get source text from tags
extraction
regular expression with frame names and captures to extract from source text
returnValues
extracted value for "%{__return}(.+)"
downloadAlbumArt( | url, | |
allFilesInDir) ; |
string url
;boolean allFilesInDir
;url
URL of picture file or album art resource
allFilesInDir
true to add the image to all files in the directory
boolean exportToFile( | tagMask, | |
path, | ||
fmtIdx) ; |
int32 tagMask
;string path
;int32 fmtIdx
;tagMask
tag bit (1 for tag 1, 2 for tag 2)
path
path of file
fmtIdx
index of format
Returns true if OK.
array getPlaylistItems( | path) ; |
string path
;path
path to playlist file
Returns list of absolute paths to playlist items.
boolean setPlaylistItems( | path, | |
items) ; |
string path
;array items
;path
path to playlist file
items
list of absolute paths to playlist items
Returns true if OK, false if not all items were found and added or saving failed.
boolean previousFile( | ) ; |
Returns true if there is a previous file.
boolean expandDirectory( | ) ; |
A file list item is a directory if getFileName() returns a name with '/' as the last character.
Returns true if current file item is a directory.
boolean setDirNameFromTag( | tagMask, | |
format, | ||
create) ; |
int32 tagMask
;string format
;boolean create
;tagMask
tag mask (bit 0 for tag 1, bit 1 for tag 2)
format
directory name format
create
true to create, false to rename
Returns true if OK, else the error message is available using getErrorMessage().
numberTracks( | tagMask, | |
firstTrackNr) ; |
int32 tagMask
;int32 firstTrackNr
;tagMask
tag mask (bit 0 for tag 1, bit 1 for tag 2)
firstTrackNr
number to use for first file
string getFileName( | ) ; |
Returns true absolute file name, ends with "/" if it is a directory.
setFileName( | name) ; |
string name
;name
file name
The file will be renamed when the directory is saved.
setFileNameFormat( | format) ; |
string format
;format
file name format
setFileNameFromTag( | tagMask) ; |
int32 tagMask
;tagMask
tag bit (1 for tag 1, 2 for tag 2)
string getFrame( | tagMask, | |
name) ; |
int32 tagMask
;string name
;tagMask
tag bit (1 for tag 1, 2 for tag 2)
name
name of frame (e.g. "artist")
To get binary data like a picture, the name of a file to write can be
added after the name
, e.g. "Picture:/path/to/file".
In the same way, synchronized lyrics can be exported, e.g. "SYLT:/path/to/file".
Returns value of frame.
boolean setFrame( | tagMask, | |
name, | ||
value) ; |
int32 tagMask
;string name
;string value
;tagMask
tag bit (1 for tag 1, 2 for tag 2)
name
name of frame (e.g. "artist")
value
value of frame
For tag 2 (tagMask
2), if no frame with name
exists, a new frame
is added, if value
is empty, the frame is deleted.
To add binary data like a picture, a file can be added after the
name
, e.g. "Picture:/path/to/file".
"SYLT:/path/to/file" can be used to import synchronized lyrics.
Returns true if OK.
array of string getTag( | tagMask) ; |
int32 tagMask
;tagMask
tag bit (1 for tag 1, 2 for tag 2)
Returns list with alternating frame names and values.
array of string getInformation( | ) ; |
Properties are Format, Bitrate, Samplerate, Channels, Duration, Channel Mode, VBR, Tag 1, Tag 2. Properties which are not available are omitted.
Returns list with alternating property names and values.
setTagFromFileName( | tagMask) ; |
int32 tagMask
;tagMask
tag bit (1 for tag 1, 2 for tag 2)
setTagFromOtherTag( | tagMask) ; |
int32 tagMask
;tagMask
tag bit (1 for tag 1, 2 for tag 2)
reparseConfiguration( | ) ; |
Automated configuration changes are possible by modifying the configuration file and then reparsing the configuration.
Table of Contents
QML scripts can be invoked via the context menu of the file list and can be set in the tab User Actions of the settings dialog. The scripts which are set there can be used as examples to program custom scripts. QML uses JavaScript, here is the obligatory "Hello World":
import Kid3 1.0 Kid3Script { onRun: { console.log("Hello world, directory is", app.dirName) Qt.quit() } }
If this script is saved as /path/to/Example.qml
, the user
command can be defined as @qml
/path/to/Example.qml with name QML Test
and
Output checked. It can then be started using the
QML Test item in the file list context menu, and the
output will be visible in the window.
Alternatively, the script could also be started independent of Kid3 using the QML tools.
qml -apptype widget -I /usr/lib/kid3/plugins/imports /path/to/Example.qml
or
qmlscene -I /usr/lib/kid3/plugins/imports /path/to/Example.qml
On Windows and macOS, the import path must be adapted to the
imports
folder inside the installation directory. Scripts
started outside of Kid3 will use the current directory, so it should be
changed beforehand.
To list the titles in the tags 2 of all files in the current directory, the following script could be used:
import Kid3 1.0 Kid3Script { onRun: { app.firstFile() do { if (app.selectionInfo.tag(Frame.Tag_2).tagFormat) { console.log(app.getFrame(tagv2, "title")) } } while (app.nextFile()) } }
If the directory contains many files, such a script might block the user interface for some time. For longer operations, it should therefore have a break from time to time. The alternative implementation below has the work for a single file moved out into a function. This function invokes itself with a timeout of 1 ms at the end, given that more files have to be processed. This will ensure that the GUI remains responsive while the script is running.
import Kid3 1.0 Kid3Script { onRun: { function doWork() { if (app.selectionInfo.tag(Frame.Tag_2).tagFormat) { console.log(app.getFrame(tagv2, "title")) } if (!app.nextFile()) { Qt.quit() } else { setTimeout(doWork, 1) } } app.firstFile() doWork() } }
When using app.firstFile() with
app.nextFile(), all files of the current directory will be
processed. If only the selected files shall be affected, use
firstFile() and nextFile() instead,
these are convenience functions of the Kid3Script
component. The following example is a script which copies only the disc number
and copyright frames of the selected file.
import Kid3 1.1 Kid3Script { onRun: { function doWork() { if (app.selectionInfo.tag(Frame.Tag_2).tagFormat) { app.setFrame(tagv2, "*.selected", false) app.setFrame(tagv2, "discnumber.selected", true) app.setFrame(tagv2, "copyright.selected", true) app.copyTags(tagv2) } if (!nextFile()) { Qt.quit() } else { setTimeout(doWork, 1) } } firstFile() doWork() } }
More example scripts come with Kid3 and are already registered as user commands.
ReplayGain to SoundCheck
(ReplayGain2SoundCheck.qml
):
Create iTunNORM SoundCheck information from replay gain frames.
Resize Album Art
(ResizeAlbumArt.qml
):
Resize embedded cover art images which are larger than 500x500 pixels.
Extract Album Art
(ExtractAlbumArt.qml
):
Extract all embedded cover art pictures avoiding duplicates.
Embed Album Art
(EmbedAlbumArt.qml
):
Embed cover art found in image files into audio files in the same folder.
Embed Lyrics
(EmbedLyrics.qml
):
Fetch unsynchronized lyrics from web service.
Text Encoding ID3v1
(ShowTextEncodingV1.qml
):
Helps to find the encoding of ID3v1 tags by showing the tags of the
current file in all available character encodings.
Export CSV
(ExportCsv.qml
):
Export recursively all tags of all files to a CSV file.
Export Playlist Folder
(ExportPlaylist.qml
):
Copy all files from a playlist into a directory and rename them according to
their position.
QML Console
(QmlConsole.qml
):
Simple console to play with Kid3's QML API.
The API can be easily explored using the QML Console, which is available as an example script with a user interface.
Kid3Script
is a regular QML component located inside
the plugin directory. You could use another QML component just as well. Using
Kid3Script
makes it easy to start the script function
using the onRun
signal handler.
Moreover it offers some functions:
onRun: Signal handler which is invoked when the script is started tagv1, tagv2, tagv2v1: Constants for tag parameters script: Access to scripting functions configs: Access to configuration objects getArguments(): List of script arguments isStandalone(): true if the script was not started from within Kid3 setTimeout(callback, delay): Starts callback after delay ms firstFile(): To first selected file nextFile(): To next selected file
As JavaScript and therefore QML too has only a limited set of functions for
scripting, the script
object has some additional methods,
for instance:
script.properties(obj): String with Qt properties script.writeFile(filePath, data): Write data to file, true if OK script.readFile(filePath): Read data from file script.removeFile(filePath): Delete file, true if OK script.fileExists(filePath): true if file exists script.fileIsWritable(filePath): true if file is writable script.getFilePermissions(filePath): Get file permission mode bits script.setFilePermissions(filePath, modeBits): Set file permission mode bits script.classifyFile(filePath): Get class of file (dir "/", symlink "@", exe "*", file " ") script.renameFile(oldName, newName): Rename file, true if OK script.copyFile(source, dest): Copy file, true if OK script.makeDir(path): Create directory, true if OK script.removeDir(path): Remove directory, true if OK script.tempPath(): Path to temporary directory script.musicPath(): Path to music directory script.listDir(path, [nameFilters], [classify]): List directory entries script.system(program, [args], [msecs]): Synchronously start a system command, [exit code, standard output, standard error] if not timeout script.systemAsync(program, [args], [callback]): Asynchronously start a system command, callback will be called with [exit code, standard output, standard error] script.getEnv(varName): Get value of environment variable script.setEnv(varName, value): Set value of environment variable script.getQtVersion(): Qt version string, e.g. "5.4.1" script.getDataMd5(data): Get hex string of the MD5 hash of data script.getDataSize(data): Get size of byte array script.dataToImage(data, [format]): Create an image from data bytes script.dataFromImage(img, [format]): Get data bytes from image script.loadImage(filePath): Load an image from a file script.saveImage(img, filePath, [format]): Save an image to a file, true if OK script.imageProperties(img): Get properties of an image, map containing "width", "height", "depth" and "colorCount", empty if invalid image script.scaleImage(img, width, [height]): Scale an image, returns scaled image
Using QML, a large part of the Kid3 functions are accessible. The API is similar to the one used for D-Bus. For details, refer to the respective notes.
app.openDirectory(path): Open directory app.unloadAllTags(): Unload all tags app.saveDirectory(): Save directory app.revertFileModifications(): Revert app.importTags(tag, path, fmtIdx): Import file app.importFromTags(tag, source, extraction): Import from tags app.importFromTagsToSelection(tag, source, extraction): Import from tags of selected files app.downloadImage(url, allFilesInDir): Download image app.exportTags(tag, path, fmtIdx): Export file app.writePlaylist(): Write playlist app.getPlaylistItems(path): Get items of a playlist app.setPlaylistItems(path, items): Set items of a playlist app.selectAllFiles(): Select all app.deselectAllFiles(): Deselect app.firstFile([select], [onlyTaggedFiles]): To first file app.nextFile([select], [onlyTaggedFiles]): To next file app.previousFile([select], [onlyTaggedFiles]): To previous file app.selectCurrentFile([select]): Select current file app.selectFile(path, [select]): Select a specific file app.getSelectedFilePaths([onlyTaggedFiles]): Get paths of selected files app.requestExpandFileList(): Expand all app.applyFilenameFormat(): Apply filename format app.applyTagFormat(): Apply tag format app.applyTextEncoding(): Apply text encoding app.numberTracks(nr, total, tag, [options]): Number tracks app.applyFilter(expr): Filter app.convertToId3v23(): Convert ID3v2.4.0 to ID3v2.3.0 app.convertToId3v24(): Convert ID3v2.3.0 to ID3v2.4.0 app.getFilenameFromTags(tag): Filename from tags app.getTagsFromFilename(tag): Filename to tags app.getAllFrames(tag): Get object with all frames app.getFrame(tag, name): Get frame app.setFrame(tag, name, value): Set frame app.getPictureData(): Get data from picture frame app.setPictureData(data): Set data in picture frame app.copyToOtherTag(tag): Tags to other tags app.copyTags(tag): Copy app.pasteTags(tag): Paste app.removeTags(tag): Remove app.playAudio(): Play app.readConfig(): Read configuration app.applyChangedConfiguration(): Apply configuration app.dirName: Directory name app.selectionInfo.fileName: File name app.selectionInfo.filePath: Absolute file path app.selectionInfo.detailInfo: Format details app.selectionInfo.tag(Frame.Tag_1).tagFormat: Tag 1 format app.selectionInfo.tag(Frame.Tag_2).tagFormat: Tag 2 format app.selectionInfo.formatString(tag, format): Substitute codes in format string app.selectFileName(caption, dir, filter, saveFile): Open file dialog to select a file app.selectDirName(caption, dir): Open file dialog to select a directory
For asynchronous operations, callbacks can be connected to signals.
function automaticImport(profile) { function onAutomaticImportFinished() { app.batchImporter.finished.disconnect(onAutomaticImportFinished) } app.batchImporter.finished.connect(onAutomaticImportFinished) app.batchImport(profile, tagv2) } function renameDirectory(format) { function onRenameActionsScheduled() { app.renameActionsScheduled.disconnect(onRenameActionsScheduled) app.performRenameActions() } app.renameActionsScheduled.connect(onRenameActionsScheduled) app.renameDirectory(tagv2v1, format, false) }
The different configuration sections are accessible via methods of
configs
. Their properties can be listed in the QML console.
script.properties(configs.networkConfig())
Properties can be set:
configs.networkConfig().useProxy = false
configs.batchImportConfig() configs.exportConfig() configs.fileConfig() configs.filenameFormatConfig() configs.filterConfig() configs.findReplaceConfig() configs.guiConfig() configs.importConfig() configs.mainWindowConfig() configs.networkConfig() configs.numberTracksConfig() configs.playlistConfig() configs.renDirConfig() configs.tagConfig() configs.tagFormatConfig() configs.userActionsConfig()