In my search for a tool, I came across this very useful post outlining a similar project. In the authors quest to do the same thing, he came up with a shell script that searches for all MP3 files, and removes tags that are not in his list of “good” tags. I usually don’t like to rehash the work someone else has done, but since I use his script so often, I thought it would be useful to repost it with only minor modifications.

Prerequisite: Install eyeD3

The script requires the eyeD3 tag editor to parse and manipulate the tag data. So be sure to install eyeD3, which should be available in your favorite Linux repository.

sudo apt-get install eyed3

Save and Modify Script

Save the following script as strip-tags.sh somewhere in your executable path.

#!/bin/bash
# Script name: strip-tags.sh
# Original Author: Ian of DarkStarShout Blog
# Site: http://darkstarshout.blogspot.com/
# Options slightly modified to liking of SavvyAdmin.com
 
oktags="TALB APIC TCON TPE1 TPE2 TPE3 TIT2 TRCK TYER TCOM TPOS"
 
indexfile=`mktemp`
 
#Determine tags present:
find . -iname "*.mp3" -exec eyeD3 --no-color -v {} \; > $indexfile
tagspresent=`sort -u $indexfile | awk -F\): '/^<.*$/ {print $1}' \
| uniq | awk -F\)\> '{print $1}' | awk -F\( '{print $(NF)}' \
| awk 'BEGIN {ORS=" "} {print $0}'`
 
rm $indexfile
 
#Determine tags to strip:
tostrip=`echo -n $tagspresent $oktags $oktags \
| awk 'BEGIN {RS=" "; ORS="\n"} {print $0}' | sort | uniq -u \
| awk 'BEGIN {ORS=" "} {print $0}'`
 
#Confirm action:
echo
echo The following tags have been found in the mp3s:
echo $tagspresent
echo These tags are to be stripped:
echo $tostrip
echo
echo -n Press enter to confirm, or Ctrl+C to cancel...
read dummy
 
#Strip 'em
stripstring=`echo $tostrip \
| awk 'BEGIN {FS="\n"; RS=" "} {print "--set-text-frame=" $1 ": "}'`
 
# First pass copies any v1.x tags to v2.3 and strips unwanted tag data.
# Second pass removes v1.x tags, since I don't like to use them.
# Without --no-tagging-time-frame, a new unwanted tag is added.  :-)
 
find . -iname "*.mp3" \
-exec eyeD3 --to-v2.3 --no-tagging-time-frame $stripstring {} \; \
-exec eyeD3 --remove-v1 --no-tagging-time-frame {} \; 
 
echo "Script complete!"

To run the script, just execute it from the top level parent directory.

cd ~/Music/
strip-tags.sh

I really didn’t change a whole lot from the original, only making slight tweaks to eyeD3 options. For example, I removed colors from the eyeD3 output when creating the first list of tags, and added a line to remove v1.x ID3 tags since I don’t like to keep them around.

Be sure to edit the list of good tags identified by the “okaytags” variable. My preferred list includes the following:

oktags="TALB APIC TCON TPE1 TPE2 TPE3 TIT2 TRCK TYER TCOM TPOS"

TALB - Album/Movie/Show title
APIC - Attached picture (Album Art)
TCON - Content type (Genre)
TPE1 - Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s)
TPE2 - Band/orchestra/accompaniment
TPE3 - Conductor/performer refinement
TIT2 - Title/songname/content description
TRCK - Track number/Position in set
TYER - Year
TCOM - Composer
TPOS - Part of a set


Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Rhythmbox ID3 Tag Issues
2. MP3 Tag Editing in Linux

“The sound conversion application for the GNOME environment. It reads anything the GStreamer library can read (Ogg Vorbis, AAC, MP3, FLAC, WAV, AVI, MPEG, MOV, M4A, AC3, DTS, ALAC, MPC, Shorten, APE, SID, etc…), and writes WAV, FLAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis files.”

Installing SoundConverter is a snap as most distributions have a binary package available, or you can build the latest version from source code.  At the time of writing this aricle, Ubuntu 8.04 repositories have made available version 1.0.1, although the project is currently advertising 1.3.1.  Yikes.  A little out of date, but it still works extremely well.

Installing SoundConverter in Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt-get install soundconverter

If you take a look at the preferences, you’ll also be pleasantly surprised to find a fine set of available options to control the quality of your newly converted files.  Whether you are converting single files or entire collections, this SoundConverter is at your service.

Related posts:

1. MP3 Tag Editing in Linux
2. Rhythmbox ID3 Tag Issues

In my experience, EasyTag is the most versatile tag editor available.  Some often wonder why on first launch that all of their tracks are highlighted in red and why it keeps prompting them to save changes that they didn’t make.  This is because by default EasyTag writes both v1.1 and v2.4 tags to files it touches, and will attempt to automatically upgrade all v2.3 tags it has scanned.  This behavior can be adjusted from “Settings… Preferences… ID3 Tag Settings”.  If you have a player that is not compatible with 2.4 tags, then this is the place to change it back to v2.3.  Uncheck the “Automatically convert old ID3v2 tag versions” option if you would like to stop that behavior. Personally, I also remove the option to save ID3v1.x tags.

It’s easy to get a bit overwhelmed with all the options EasyTag has to offer, but the defaults are typically safe to use.  Here’s a couple screenshots of the main user interface.

Other useful features include the ability to perform bulk file and directory renaming based on the tag data, or even set the tags based on the directory and file naming convention.  You can clear all tags (be careful), and automatically populate tags from CDDB sources such as freedb.org, musicbrainz.org, and gnudb.org.

There are also a slew of command line tag editors each with their own strengths and weaknesses.  The lack of 2.4 support plagues most of them, with the exception of eyeD3.  This application is wicked cool.  Not only does it support v2.4 tags but it also provides a very clean display of current tags using color and bold text.  You can attach album art, add new or modify existing tags, and of course is easily scriptable.

Related posts:

1. Rhythmbox ID3 Tag Issues
2. Strip All Unwanted MP3 ID3 Tags
3. Amazon MP3 Downloader for Linux!

So I decided to use “strings” to take a look inside the MP3′s and find out what’s going on. It turns out my MP3′s were double tagged with v1 metadata and it was screwing up Rhythmbox’s organizational skills! Boo!

Some brief background info on ID3 tagging is needed before we continue. ID3 v1.x tags are located at the tail end of an MP3, whereas v2.x tags are located at the beginning of the file. To view the raw tag data, open up a terminal window and use the strings command to parse the mp3 for text.

$ strings songname.mp3 | head
$ strings songname.mp3 | tail

Here’s an example of the output obtained from one of my problematic tracks. I wanted the artist name to appear as “Bob Marley”, but Rhythmbox insisted on displaying “Bob Marley & The Wailers”.

$ strings 01\ -\ Is\ This\ Love.mp3 | tail
J/q:
X0aZ
-g%U
TAGIs This Love
Bob Marley & The Wailers
Legend
TAGIs This Love
Bob Marley
Legend
2002Amazon.com Song ID: 20254105

In this example, you can see I have two ID3v1.x tags at the end of the file. Each tag starts with “TAG”, immediately followed by the track name, artist and album. Rhythmbox was only reading the first one, but all of the tag editors I tried were working with the last one.

Solution:
Simply remove all ID3v1.x tags twice, then re-write them if you wish. An easy command line application for this job is “eyeD3“. Others may work as well, but of course your mileage may vary.

Install eyeD3 from repositories if you use Debian/Ubuntu.

$ sudo apt-get install eyed3

Display the outer-most ID3v1.x tag

$ eyeD3 -1 01\ -\ Is\ This\ Love.mp3

Remove the outer-most ID3v1.x tag twice, or until they’re all gone. I trimmed the output below for brevity.

$ eyeD3 --remove-v1 01\ -\ Is\ This\ Love.mp3 1>/dev/null
Removing ID3 v1.x tag: SUCCESS
$ eyeD3 --remove-v1 01\ -\ Is\ This\ Love.mp3 1>/dev/null
Removing ID3 v1.x tag: SUCCESS

Doing so immediately resolves the Rhythmbox tag display issue, as it reverts back to using the v2.x tags at the beginning of the file.

Fixing the problem in bulk:
If you want to fix all of your MP3′s fast, you can use any of the following methods. Remember, you must run them at least twice, or until all v1.x tags have been removed. The commands listed below use "1>/dev/null" to remove all standard output, but still allows standard error messages to be shown. Interestingly, the SUCCESS messages eyeD3 uses are written to standard error, so you’ll see those too.

If all your MP3′s are in the same directory:

$ for i in *.mp3 ; do eyeD3 --remove-v1 "$i" 1>/dev/null ; done

If all your MP3′s span multiple subdirectories:

$ find . -type f -name *.mp3 -exec eyeD3 --remove-v1 '{}' 1>/dev/null \;

Alternatively, you can use a python script written by UlyssesR, originally contributed on the Ubuntu Forums here. The script has the advantage of only needing to be run once and it is relatively safe to use. I actually used it on my entire collection before using eyeD3 in this manner with no problems. I then reapplied my tags using EasyTag.

Related posts:

1. MP3 Tag Editing in Linux
2. Strip All Unwanted MP3 ID3 Tags

The installer is currently advertised as available for Ubuntu 7.10, Debian 4 Etch, Fedora 8, and OpenSUSE 10.3, and I am very happy to report that it is a native application! The installation process is very easy as they are packaged using the standard packaging formats for each platform, and using the application is extremely easy.

Here’s a screen shot of my very first purchase using the MP3 Downloader.

All the songs are conveniently downloaded to a directory of your choice, and organized in directories named after the artist and album.

For many months, I had been writing emails asking that they please release a Linux version of the application, or simply provide an alternate method of purchasing full albums. I am absolutely thrilled that they have listened to their customers, and urge that the Linux community send their messages of gratitude to Amazon.com. Of course, the best way to do that is to return the favour by using their service on the platform of YOUR choice.

Related posts:

1. MP3 Tag Editing in Linux
2. Batch MP3 Encoding with Linux and LAME

Here is an example of a “for loop” that runs the command “lame” against a set of files in your current working directory with the .wav file extension.

$ for f in *.wav ; do lame $f ; done

If your audio file names have spaces in them, then you will need to use quotation marks around “$f” variable.

$ for f in *.wav ; do lame "$f" ; done

I typically create my original audio files without the file name extension of .wav or .au. This is because when you run lame against a file name, and do not omit the extension in the output option, the resulting file will have two extensions in the file name. e.g. filename.wav.mp3. Yes, I can use sed or basename in the for loop to prevent this, but to keep it simple, I just choose to not use the file extension to begin with.

If you are working with a group of files that have all been named using the convention of “Artist – Album – ## – Track Title”, (notice the spaces in the name), the following will work.

$ for f in Artist\ -\ Album* ; do lame "$f" ; done

Once the job is finished, you will be left with a directory full of your original audio files, and your newly created mp3′s.

Extra Credit

Okay, since we’re on the topic of shell scripting. If you want to delete all the original audio files (the ones without any file name extensions), and without first moving the new mp3′s to a different directory, one overly complicated example would be the following.

for f in *.mp3 ; do AUFILE=`basename "$f" .mp3` ; rm "$AUFILE"; done

This would have been easier if the original files could have been identified with .wav extensions, (rm *.wav), but since they had no file extensions to begin with, a wild card alone would not work. Now folks, this is just an example, and there’s a million other ways you can go about this. But in any case, I hope it helps you start exploring on your own!

Related posts:

1. Add Stereo Audio Tracks to MKV Files
2. MP3 Tag Editing in Linux
3. Amazon MP3 Downloader for Linux!

The following post is pretty outdated, and while it’s still relevant, I do not use Gnomad2 any more. I prefer other applications such as Banshee, Rythmbox, and Amarok. Banshee is by far my favorite because of it’s simplicity, clean interface and album art support. KDE users will probably prefer Amarok, and Rhythmbox is by far the simplest. All of these devices have MTP and iPod support, and are available in virtually every distribution repository.

Original Post:

If you would like to get your Creative Zen V Plus or related portable music player working in Ubuntu 7.04 and above, you’re in luck!

All you need is “Gnomad2″ (please see updated notes at the top of this post) as the graphical front end to your players music and playlists, and several libraries that are installed as dependencies (i.e. libmtp5). MTP stands for Microsoft Transfer Protocol, and libmtp5 is the key component to making this work.

As of this writing, the Creative Zen V Plus was not added to the libmtp5 udev rules file. This means that you would need root privileges to run Gnomad2, unless you changed the default permissions. No worries… correcting this is very easy to do.

1. First, install “Gnomad2″. The required dependencies will be installed by default.

sudo apt-get install gnomad2

2. To allow access to the Zen player using your normal user account, you must specify which permissions the device should have applied to it. These permissions can be set easily in a file supplied with the libmtp5 package. Edit the file as shown below.

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/65-libmtp.rules

Simply add the following and save your changes:

# Creative Zen V Plus
SYSFS{idVendor}=="041e", SYSFS{idProduct}=="4152", SYMLINK+="libmtp-%k", MODE="666"

Note: You may need to verify that the “idProduct” variable matches your device Product ID. To obtain this information perform an “lsusb” after plugging in the Zen player. The output will look like the following:

sudo lsusb
Bus 005 Device 007: ID 041e:4152 Creative Technology, Ltd
<snipped for brevity>

In the above example, “041e” represend the Vendor ID (Creative), and the second number to the right, “4152” is your Product ID (Zen V Plus). If your device is different, simply change the values accordingly.

3. Re-plug your Zen player and wait for it to fully initialize to it’s final on-screen display. Start Gnomad2, and have some fun!

For more information on how to use Gnomad2, check out their website: http://gnomad2.sourceforge.net/

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