Quick question: I'm correcting a lot of my track title tags from (song name) to (game: song name) because, well, there are a hell of a lot of "Opening Theme" and "Stage 1"s out there. So right now the best solution I've found is to select every track on an album, ctrl+v "game: " into the front of the title and hit enter. T&R automatically returns me to the same place in the next track, so it's just a matter of hitting ctrl+v enter 30-40 times per soundtrack. Not terrible, still not optimal.

The obvious solution is to auto-rename the files with the adjustment, import the id3 track titles back from the file name, and undo the file rename. That takes like 10 seconds per album. But it doesn't work for me because I'm using :, like "Stage 1-3" becomes "Super Turrican: Stage 1-3". You can't use : in file names. Any ideas?

If you use MP3tag, when you do that, unusable characters get dropped entirely so you would get:
"Super Turrican Stage 1-3 title"

You can, however go:
"album - title"

But then you would get multiples of hyphens where titles might already have them.

You can go:
"Album; title"
Semi-colons are valid Windows characters in filename/filepath.

But you might get repeats of those.

Tildes are usable.
"Album ~ Title"

You're not likely to get repeats of those.
Some users do use them when not called for from original labels. It's easy to replace.

Illegal Windows Characters:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/windows/desktop/aa365247%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

< (less than)
> (greater than)
: (colon)
" (double quote)
/ (forward slash)
\ (backslash)
| (vertical bar or pipe)
? (question mark)
* (asterisk)


So anything but those.

You can go creative and try:
"[Album] Title"
{Album} Title

Or what I do:
Search albums for generic tracks like:

"openging titles, titles, closing, etc"

and change only those tracks to include the album name in the title tag.
"title" becomes "title [Album]"

01 - Opening Titles [Super Turrican Stage 1-3]
So I don't get every tracked renamed to include album. Works great for listening to lots on random.

Thanks. I thought about using brackets. I'm a little particular about my tags though and really wanted : in there, so I'll just do it the "hard" way, which still goes pretty quick. I was hoping T&R had an option I'm overlooking. I've never used MP3tag but it sounds like the same concept.

MP3tag is still being maintained. The developers keep looking into things for bugfixes and updates.

There is a unicode form legal for Windows filenames/filepaths:
Unicode Character 'FULLWIDTH COLON' (U+FF1A) (http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/ff1a/index.htm)

"fullwidth colon"

：

It consumes a wider space than standard colon. (Hence: "fullwidth")

But, archiving those, some hacked archive programs (JDownloader's hacked "WinRAR") won't be able to extract it and end up creaing a zero-byte file that requries extra footwork to delete.

Is there a program that will number all tracks in alphabetical order?

So if the tracklisting was:
01 - Track Name
02 - Track Name
...
11 - Track Name
Blah blah blah...

It would automatically tag all the songs from 1 to however many tracks there are?

Is there a program that will number all tracks in alphabetical order?

So if the tracklisting was:
01 - Track Name
02 - Track Name
...
11 - Track Name
Blah blah blah...

It would automatically tag all the songs from 1 to however many tracks there are?

MP3tag can add track numbers to the given order that is shown.

For instance:

if it's just a file with no_tags, and you have only filenames:
01 - filename

And you sort it by default when you open them, or sort by "filename", then it will assign track numbers in order of filename, as you see in the program.

With existing tags, you can replace track numbers in a new order.
You can sort by "title" (A-Z) or descending "title" (Z-A).
And existing track numbers will get replaced.

If that's what you mean.

Is there a program that will number all tracks in alphabetical order?

So if the tracklisting was:
01 - Track Name
02 - Track Name
...
11 - Track Name
Blah blah blah...

It would automatically tag all the songs from 1 to however many tracks there are?

Tag&Rename can do that. It basically lets you extract file names from tags and vice versa, so as long as you have them in one it's a simple click to pull them into the other.

---------- Post added at 03:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:46 PM ----------

T&R is $30 but the registration code is good for life as far as I can tell and I couldn't live without it.

MP3tag is free for life.
It also does what T&R does.
allows you to take tags from filenames and also take tags to make filenames.

You can use strings or even regular expression (http://forums.mp3tag.de/?showtopic=1204) if you know how.

In Mp3Tag you could actually do the the following using the "Tag - Tag" conversion:

Field: TITLE (this is the tag you want to update)

Format String: %album%: %title%

This would automatically update all track titles. If you want the file names to reflect this change as well, then you would have to run another "Tag - Filename" conversion afterwards.

Is there a program that will number all tracks in alphabetical order?

So if the tracklisting was:
01 - Track Name
02 - Track Name
...
11 - Track Name
Blah blah blah...

It would automatically tag all the songs from 1 to however many tracks there are?

Pretty sure that Foobar comes with an auto-tagger installed. All you have to do is highlight the tracks, go to Properties, click on Tools, and then hit the menu option that reads "Auto track number". Although I'm not sure why you'd want to do this if your track order is "alphabetical" already.

On a slightly related note, does anybody know if Foobar has a plugin or component that adds a "next" or "previous" button to the Properties window? It's a bit tedious having to go back and forth between tracks, but that was one nice aspect in iTunes.

One more thing. Can the sample rate, for example, be directly changed from 32000 Hz to 44100 Hz in Foobar?

IMO the best app for tagging renaming and managing large numbers of mp3s/flacs etc is TagScanner http://www.xdlab.ru/en/index.htm

And schwingggg. It's free.