Program to convert M4a to MP3 and TAG from Filename at same time?

[6of1]

I need a program that can convert from .m4a to .mp3 and also inject/replace ID Tag info with filename in one step, this will be done multiple times a day with multiple files. super time consuming. There are about a million different conversion apps and I have installed 3 or 4 now just to find no ability to do the conversion and the filename-to-tag at the same time. Hope someone can think of one.

I have a .m4a file named "Smith Project 123456.m4a"

I would like it to convert to an .mp3 named "Smith Project 123456.mp3" and also change the Tag to [Artist: Smith, Title: Project, Album: 123456]

Thanks

The above would work out just fine for me but I just had a thought. If it could be completely automatic when I drop the file into the folder it just happens would be better

[sneaker]

The .m4a files have no tagging? Are the file names always "artist[space]title[space]album.m4a"? Because things will get complicated if you have e.g. "Adam Smith New Title Album.m4a". How do you know it's [Artist: Adam Smith, Title: New Title, Album: Album] and not [Artist: Adam, Title: Smith, Album: New Title Album] etc.

[6of1]

The audio files have no tag info at all, they are audio recordings / dictations from the job site. The program they are created with doesn't create the tags. That is where I have a problem. The program we use for the transcription of above audio needs tag info so we can tell which is which..

[sneaker]

You didn't answer my second question.

[6of1]

Sorry about that..
Yes, the filenames will always be "artist[space]title[space]album.m4a"

[hello_hello]

Your first example has an m4a with a particular title, and an output MP3 with a slightly different title. How does an automated process know what the change should be? ie How would it know to change "Smith Project 123456.m4a" to "Smith Joe 123456.mp3"?

I'm not sure about using the input file names to create tags to be added to the output file. Generally the idea would be to copy any existing tags. It shouldn't be hard to create them first, although I'd be inclined to convert the files to MP3 and then tag them.

Have you used Mp3Tag? It's awesome for that kind of thing once you get to know it. You can open a bunch of MP3s and automatically batch create tags based on their file names, or batch rename them using the tags. You can create presets for the re-naming/tagging function. Like this:

%artist%-%title%-%album%
Or
%artist% - %title% - %album%
etc.

I suspect using only a space to separate each field as per your example would be a bad idea. What if the title contains four words and the album name consists of three words? How would a program know what's what?

Mp3Tag lets you manually batch tag MP3s too. You can enter or change a field such as Artist for multiple files by highlighting them, typing the artist name into the template section on the left, right clicking on the files and selecting save.

Other things that make Mp3Tag handy:
It can open and tag many file types, not just MP3.
It has a right click "action" menu that can automatically remove data from specific tags or convert the tags to lower case or sentence case... that sort of thing.
It can batch copy tags from one group of files to another (even different file types).

I know it's not exactly what you want but once you get to know it Mp3Tag makes renaming and/or tagging large numbers of files quick and easy. There's a few different 3rd party add-ons for foobar2000 dedicated to improving it's tagging functionality so out of curiosity I'll have a look later to see if one of them will do what you want and report back if I discover anything useful, but unless someone has a better idea, give Mp3Tag a spin.

[6of1]

Your first example has an m4a with a particular title, and an output MP3 with a slightly different title. How does an automated process know what the change should be? ie How would it know to change "Smith Project 123456.m4a" to "Smith Joe 123456.mp3"?

typo, oops.. fixed now (its been one of them days)

Reading and Downloading Mp3Tag to try it out now

[sneaker]

You can create a file named e.g. "whatever.bat" with the following content:

@ECHO OFF

SET pathToFFmpeg="c:\program files\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe"

:loop
IF "%~1"=="" GOTO end

for /f "tokens=1,2,3 delims= " %%a in ("%~n1") do (
	%pathToFFmpeg% -i "%~f1" -metadata artist="%%a" -metadata title="%%b" -metadata album="%%c" "%~dpn1.mp3"
)

SHIFT
GOTO loop

:end
PAUSE

1. edit pathToFFmpeg to your needs. (you need ffmpeg, obviously)
2. drag&drop (one or more) m4a files onto the .bat file in Windows explorer

That's pretty much it.
Like hello_hello said it is easier if you separate into two steps using e.g. foobar2000 but I didn't know any GUI from the top of my head that could do it in a single step.

[hello_hello]

Reading and Downloading Mp3Tag to try it out now

It might seem a little confusing at first but once you get to know it and have it customized to your liking, I think Mp3Tag will make your life much easier. The columns (File Name, Artist, Title etc) can be reordered by dragging them and they can be re-sized, which is worth doing to make the columns you need easy to see if need be.

I haven't found a way to make the whole thing a one step process with foobar2000 yet. It's easy enough to automatically copy tags when converting and the TagBox component (I have it installed but only use it for basic stuff as I prefer Mp3Tag) can create tags from file names too but I haven't found a way to do it as part of the conversion process.

I won't have time till tonight but I'll research it some more, or ask in the foobar2000 forum. I'm curious now. I'll post back if I find out foobar2000 can do it, although sneaker's method might be even better. Even if you converted that way and then used MP3Tag to check the tags are okay.

sneaker,
How would the files have to be named for that to work correctly? I'm not sure I've got my head around it.
Cheers.

[6of1]

Hello_Hello, Thanks, Mp3Tag did work perfectly.

BUT...

Sneaker! I haven't got as far as testing it on the transcription side yet but it looks as though that bat file did exactly what was needed in one step!!, Sneaker, you rock..

[sneaker]

How would the files have to be named for that to work correctly?

It can only split the filename at the space characters.

[V1de0Luvr]

My PowerShell script, TagRename, splits the filename on a dash ( - ) to get artist and title. It takes album from the playlist or folder name. Script attached. More info:

This script writes ID3 tags into MP3 files based on formatting of the MP3 filenames, such as Track - Artist - Title. Album is tagged from the folder name or M3U playlist filename. Other tags parsed from MP3 filenames are Year and "comment." My comments begin with "(Live." On my filenames, "featured artist" names follow the song title so that primary artists and titles sort together. This script finds featured artist names following the title and adds them to the Artists tag.

Another feature of this script is renaming files from their order in a playlist. Track numbers are required in filenames for proper playback sequence on hardware not reading playlists, such as some car stereos playing from a USB stick. After adding new MP3 files to a playlist the files must be renumbered for the car stereo to play them properly. File extensions from the playlist are ignored so that a video playlist can be used to renumber an audio-only version of the videos. A new playlist is also created after renaming the files. This script can rename videos as well as MP3s and other types of audio files. Videos will not be ID3 tagged.

If no playlist exists in the current folder, MP3 files will just be tagged from the filenames and nothing will be renamed.

While tagging MP3s the tags are displayed on screen: Album - Track - Artists - Title - Comment - Year

The MPTag module is required for tagging and can be installed into folder: C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\MPTag