Start Kid3
#1) loading all tracks into Kid3
click on the ‘folder’ icon top left
load all the tracks (click track 1, then scroll to track 22 and Shift-click it to select all files inbetween)
(on OSX the file selection dialog will look differently)
now all 22 tracks will appear in Kid3
Again, ‘select’ all tracks using the same method as above (Click - Shift-click)
#2) Now, we’re going to set some tags which are the same in every track.
click on the small + Tag2
A window will open which shows us some often used tags. But the AlbumArtist is missing!
Click the ‘Add…’ button on the right side, pick ‘AlbumArtist’ from the drop down
Insert all the data, check the boxes
click on the Save (diskette) icon
Of course you can set a Genre here as well.
If you need a DiscNumber tag for a multi-disc album, add it the same way like the AlbumArtist.
#3) now insert these strings into the two ‘Format’ input fields:
%{track}. %{artist} - %{title}
%{track} %{title}
As shown in the screenshot above
(Hovering the mouse over the ‘format strings’ will show you all possible placeholders, which you might need for different ‘renaming’ and ‘tagging’ tasks.)
#4) get tracktitle and track# from the file name
Hovering the mouse over the lower ‘Tag 2’ button will inform you, that this will derive tags from the file name.
Which tags these are, is defined by the ‘format string’ in the lower input field.
Our original filenames only have the track number and the tracktitle, separated by a space character.
Thus our ‘format string’ only has %{track} %{title}
both %{track} and %{title} are placeholders which tell Kid3 which part of the file name is which data type.
click on the lower ‘Tag 2’ button
Some ‘not equal’ signs will inform you, that the contents of the ‘Title’ and the ‘TrackNumber’ tags are now different among our 22 tracks.
Click the ‘Save’ icon again to write the tags to the files.
#5) Renaming files:
In the previous step we already have written meta tags into our files. We will now use these for our filenames.
Hovering the mouse over the upper ‘Tag 2’ button will inform you, that this will derive filenames from metatags.
How our final file name will look like is defined by the ‘format string’ in the upper input field.
We want a 2 digit track number, then a dot and a space, then the ArtistName then space, hyphen, space and the TrackTitle.
Thus our ‘format string’ is %{track}. %{artist} - %{title}
click on the upper ‘Tag 2’ button
Click the ‘Save’ icon again
Done.
