NAME

id3 - a command line mass tagger

SYNOPSIS

id3 [-v] [-m] [-123] [-d] [-t title] [-a artist] [-l album]
[-n tracknr] [-y year] [-g genre] [-c comment]
[-f template] [-q format] [-D file] [-R] [-M]
[-E] [-s size] [-u] [-rFRAME] [-wFRAME data] “filespec”

DESCRIPTION

id3 mass tagger is a tool for listing and manipulating ID3 and Lyrics3 tags in multiple files. It can generate tag fields from the filename and other variables, and/or rename files, using an intuitive syntax.

id3 currently supports old-style ID3v1 tags, Lyrics3v2, as well as the more complex ID3v2 format. This means its use is limited to audio files which use these formats, i.e. MPEG-1 Layer III.

OPTIONS

Order of the options is only important where specified.

filespec ...: specifies the file(s) to be affected by the command.
If you use wildcards, it is necessary to enclose the specification in double quotes ("") for pattern matching to work.
-h, --help: show command line help
-V, --version: display version number and copyright
-v, --verbose: be verbose
-1: process/add ID3v1 tags.
-2: process/add ID3v2 tags.
-3: process/add Lyrics3 tags.
If more than one tag type is specified, they are all written, and the left-most one that is found is used for variable substitution. If no tag type is specified, id3 will by default attempt to read ID3v2, Lyrics3 and ID3v1 tags in that order, only modify existing ID3v2 and Lyrics3 tags, and modify/add ID3v1 tags.
-R, --recursive: searches recursively; When this is enabled, `*' wildcards in filespec will also match against directory separators. Normally, this is not the case.
-M, --keep-time: preserve last modification time of files operated on
--: force the following argument to be interpreted as a filename. Use this for files that start with a `-' (dash).

Modifying operations

The default operation of id3 is to list the tags found. By using any of the following options, this behaviour is inhibited.

-d, --delete: do not re-use existing tag data. If no new tag information is specified in conjunction with this option, all selected tags will be removed.

-t title, --title title
-a artist, --artist artist
-l album, --album album
-n tracknr, --track tracknr
-y year, --year year
-g genre, --genre genre
-c comment, --comment comment

: add/replace the specified fields in all selected tags with the values given. Field values are scanned for substitution variables, see SUBSTITUTION below. If a field value is a single variable, and its substitution fails, no operation is performed.
Genres can be specified either directly or with their assigned number, regardless of tag format.

-f filename-template, --rename filename-template: rename files encountered according to filename-template. The argument is scanned for substitution variables. An empty variable will by default get replaced with “Unknown”. Trying to rename to an already existing file will cause an error.
-q format, --query format: for each file encountered, format will get scanned for substitution variables, and written to standard output. Using this option will block any attempt to modify files.
-m, --match: match mode; interpret any substitution variables (see SUBSTITUTION below) found in a filespec as a wildcard, and set the corresponding tag field to the matched portion of the filename.
Thus, `id3 -m "%a - %t.mp3"' is short-hand for `id3 -a %1 -t %2 "* - *.mp3"'.
-D filename, --duplicate filename: duplicate and copy the tags found in filename to the target files. The tag in each target file is replaced after any variables have been read, but before any fields are updated.
Any original tag values not explicitly written to the new tag (for example, by using -u) are lost. If filename does not have any tags, this option is identical to the -d option.

The following options only apply on the tag most recently selected before them, and only have meaning where relevant.

-E, --if-exists: only write a tag of the most recently selected type if a file already contains it; do not add new ones.
-u, --update: update all standard tag fields by copying them from the source tag. This is similar to writing `-talnygc %t %a %l %n %y %g %c', but only operates on the most recent tag. It is possible for the source and destination tag to be the same.
-s size, --size size: try to write a new tag using exactly size bytes, adding / removing padding as necessary. The resulting tag will have no padding if size is smaller than the actual size necessary.
-rFRAME, --remove=FRAME: remove occurrences of frames named FRAME from the tag. Consult the format documentation for valid FRAME names. For text frames, it is equivalent to `-wFRAME ""'.
-wFRAME data, --frame=FRAME data: add / update a frame named FRAME with data in the tag. data is scanned for substitution variables. Again, consult the format documentation. See COMPATIBILITY for more information.

Short-form options can be stacked in a single argument for more convenience. For example, running

id3 -2d -alt "Artist" "Album" "Title" *.mp3

is equivalent to:

id3 -2 -d -a "Artist" -l "Album" -t "Title" *.mp3

SUBSTITUTION

id3 can perform “printf-like” substitution on the values prior to writing them to a tag. Note that if you want to use pattern matching, you HAVE TO enclose the wildcard specification on the command line in double quotes to prevent your shell from expanding any wildcards.

\c: escape sequence. \n, \r, \t, \v, \f, \b, \a, get replaced as in C, any other character will be stripped of any special meaning. E.g., \n becomes the newline character, \\ a single backslash.
%<modifiers>N: where N <- [0..9] replaced with the portion of the file path matching the nth `*' (asterisk) wildcard in the file specification. 0 is taken to mean 10.
%<modifiers>c: where c <- [a..z]

replaced by values according to the following table:

%t title
%a artist
%l album title
%n track number
%y year
%g genre
%c comment field
%f file name (without path)
%p path to filename
%x auto-increasing counter
%X file counter

Values get read (where applicable) from the source tag, which is the left-most tag selected on the command line, and reflect the state of the file before any modifications were made. If the source value is not available, the variable fails. “%_p%_f” combines to the raw full path and file name. The “%x” value gets increased every time it has been substituted inside the same directory, and is intended for auto-numbering. “%X” increases for every file processed.

%<modifiers>{FRAME}: replaced by the content of the FRAME frame in the selected source tag; any frame writeable with the -w option can be used; see COMPATIBILITY for more information.
%%: replaced with a single “%”, equivalent to \%
%|text||alt text||...|?: substituted by the first text that was completely successful, or fails as empty, see fall-backs below. This can be used as an all-or-nothing substitution. A lone “%?” always fails.

Available <modifiers> (optional):

+ (plus sign): Capitalize the substituted value
- (minus sign): Convert all characters to lowercase
_ (underscore): Use the raw value of the variable. Normally, substitution replaces any underscores with spaces, and condenses empty whitespace.
* (asterisk): Split the variable into separate words by looking at the capitalization.
# (hash or pound sign): Attempt to fit numeric values in the substituted string to a desired width, by removing or adding leading zeros. Multiple hash signs can be stacked to indicate the desired width. If there are no numeric values, this modifier has no effect.
|fall-back|: If substitution for a variable fails, attempt fall-back instead. fall-back itself may be empty or contain other variables (including other fall-backs). If fall-back contains variables that fail, the fall-back fails and will not be used. If more than one fall-back is provided, successive fall-backs are tried until one succeeds.

EXAMPLES

Here are some examples of using id3 :

id3 -a "Stallman" -t "Free Software Song" fs_song.mp3"

Add a simple tag to a file.

id3 muzak.mp3

List tag information in a file.

id3 -d *.mp3

Removes all ID3v1 tags from all mp3's.

id3 -2 -1u fs_song.mp3

Copy ID3v2 tag to ID3v1 tag in selected file.

id3 -D source.mp3 -1 -2 dest.mp3

Duplicate ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags of source.mp3

id3 -a "TAFKAT" -n "%1" -t "%+2" "*. *.mp3"

Update tag fields similar to this;

  -a "TAFKAT" -n "01" -t "My Song"  "01. my_song.mp3"
  -a "TAFKAT" -n "02" -t "Untitled" "02. untitled.mp3"

id3 -2 -f "%a - %t.mp3" blaet.mp3

Rename file to a standard format, using ID3v2 values.

id3 -a %t -t %a "*.mp3"

Swap artist and title fields in all mp3's.

id3 -2 -rAPIC -s 0 *.mp3

Removes embedded images and padding from all mp3's.

id3 -2d -u *.mp3

Rewrite ID3v2 tag while keeping only the basic fields.

id3 -2 -wUSLT "foo, bar0alala!0 blaet.mp3

Adds an ID3v2 lyric frame to blaet.mp3.

id3 -v -g alt-rock -alnt "The Author" %1 %2 %3 "Author - */(*) *.mp3"

Process multiple directories at once.

id3 -v -g alt-rock -a "The Author" -m "Author - %l/(%n) %t.mp3"

Shorthand for the previous example.

id3 -2 -c "Was: %_f" -f "%|Nobody|a - %|Untitled (%x)|t.mp3" "*.mp3"

Rename with missing values replaced. Saves previous filename in the comments.

id3 -2 -q "%|%{TPE2}||%{TXXX:ALBUM ARTIST}|?"

Tries to print the “album artist” using two possible ID3v2 frames.

id3 -2 -q "%| %a - %|Untitled|t || %t || %1 |?" "*.mp3"

Generate a simple list of songs.

NOTES

The internal pattern matching emulates the normal pattern matching of “sh”. It supports ?, * and [].

A shell pattern will never match a forward slash (“/”) or a dot (“.”) beginning a filename. Wildcards can be used for directories as well (to arbitrary depths), in which case a search will be performed.

In an ambiguous situation, the pattern matcher will always resolve a “*” wildcard to the shortest possible sequence of tokens. This differs from the behavior of regular expressions, however it tends to make sense in the context of filenames.

Do NOT add ID3 tags to files for which it does not make sense, i.e, add them only to MP3 files. In particular, do not add ID3v2 tags to Ogg files, since ID3v2 tags start at the beginning of the file.

COMPATIBILITY

id3 has a built-in genre list of 148 genres. If you pass the -g parameter a string instead of a number when using ID3v1, id3 tries to find the specified genre in this list, and selects the closest possible match (if any). For the genre numbers and exact spelling, see id3v1.c in the source distribution. An empty or invalid genre is assigned the number 0.

The ID3v1 format only supports to the ISO-8859-1 (Latin 1) encoding. If you need other Unicode characters, you need to use ID3v2 tags.

When using -2, id3 will write ID3v2.3 by default, unless a file is already tagged with the older ID3v2.2. id3 can read ID3v2.4 tags, but these will be converted to ID3v2.3 when modified.

Furthermore, with ID3v2 tags, the -wFRAME option and %{FRAME} substitution only support the following ID3v2.2 (3 letter)/ID3v2.3 (4 letter) frames: T??/T??? (text), W??/W??? (links), COM/COMM (comment), IPL/IPLS (involved people), ULT/USLT (lyrics), CNT/PCNT (numeric play counter) and USER (tos, v2.3 only). Attempts to write ID3v2.2 frames to ID3v2.3 or vice versa will be ignored.

Several ID3v2 frames can be specialized with additional descriptors (TXXX, WXXX, COMM, USLT). These can be read or written using the extended syntax -wFRAME:descriptor and %{FRAME:descriptor}. Descriptors are case sensitive and may contain whitespace. For frames that are language-specific (COMM, USLT), the form FRAME:descriptor:xxx may also be used, where xxx is a three letter ISO-639-2 language code. Which descriptors are meaningful is application-specific.

id3 does not support unnecessary ID3v2 features such as compression, encryption, or embedding binary data (including image files).

AUTHOR

Written by Marc R. Schoolderman <squell@alumina.nl>.

COPYRIGHT

This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.