The JuK Tag Editor

For many file formats, it is practical to use the filename to describe the contents of the file: Report for the board - June 2003.doc for example, may be all the information you need in order to find that file again. Trying to capture all the useful information about a particular song however, could lead to filenames like this: Type O Negative - The Glorious Liberation Of The Peoples Technocratic Republic Of Vinnland By The Combined Forces Of The United Territories Of Europa.mp3 or Various Artists_15_The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz Volume II_Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra - Organ Grinder's Swing.mp3. These are neither very practical to use, nor do they contain all of the useful information that you might have collected about the song. Adding the album, and track number, for example, to the first would make it even longer and more unmanageable, while still not telling you at a glance the year it was released, or what style of music it is, if you're not familiar with the artist.

The solution then, is to store this kind of metadata inside the files themselves. Mp3 and ogg files can also contain small snippets of text which you can use to describe the content of the file. There are several formats, but JuK hides the details of the differences between them, and provides a standard way to edit a standard subset of well known tags for all your audio files.

JuK's full featured tag editor allows you to edit the tags in both mp3 and ogg files. You can edit single files or multiple files, and you can select a mix of mp3 and ogg files to edit. The only requirement is that you have write access to the files themselves; you cannot edit the tags of a file that is mounted from a CD-ROM for example.

Editing the Tags in a Single File

To edit the tag in a single file, select it in either the collection list or any entries it has in any playlist. If the tag editor is not visible, enable it by choosing ViewShow Tag Editor. The tag editor displays in the bottom of the list view.

Simply type into any of the editable fields to change the information. When you are done, left mouse button click back in the list, and you will be prompted to save your changes.

You may find that the tag editor remains disabled when you've clicked on a file. This happens when JuK has detected that the track is read-only.

Tag Editor Fields

Artist Name:

The name of the Artist(s) who released the song.

Track name:

The name of the song.

Album name:

The name of the album the song was released on.

Genre:

The Style of the music. JuK provides a list corresponding roughly to the informal id3 standard, but you are free to type your own entries in this list.

File name:

The file name of the actual file on disk. You can edit this directly, and when you save, the file will be renamed.

Track:

The position of the track on the original recording.

Year:

The year the song was released.

Length:

This is not editable, it is simply shown for information.

Bitrate:

This is not editable, it is simply shown for information.

Comment:

You can add your own free text comment here, with additional notes etc.

You can explicitly and immediately save your changes at any time using the TaggerSave menu entry or by pressing Ctrl+T.

Editing the Tags in Multiple Files

You can select multiple files in the list view, and edit one or more fields in the tags for all files at once.

Use Shift and the left mouse button to select a contiguous list of files, and Ctrl and left mouse button to select individual non-contiguous files.

If the tag editor is not visible, you can enable it by choosing ViewShow Tag Editor. The tag editor displays in the bottom of the list view.

The tag editor behaves slightly differently when you have selected multiple files.

Each field in the tag editor will now show an Enable check box next to it. Any field that has exactly the same contents for all the files you selected, displays that content, and is enabled for editing, with the Enable check box checked.

Any field that does not have matching contents in all selected files is not initially editable, and does not display any contents at all.

To change the content of any field, check the Enable check box if it is not already checked, and edit the field as you normally would.

When you are done, left mouse button click back in the list view and you will be prompted to save your changes. The prompt dialog will show you a list of the affected files, so you have a chance to check that you are indeed altering the files you intended to.

You can explicitly and immediately save your changes at any time using the TaggerSave menu entry or by pressing Ctrl+T.