Okay guys, I think I have whipped up something that will work for those of you that seem to already have a massive library of Lyrics3-tagged files. It ended up being easier than I thought, the id3_reader and id3_writer stuff scared me, but it turns out they have a simple API which converts Lyrics3 to SYLT, though they don't make it obvious what's happening underneath.

HOWEVER. By default, it's leaving the Lyrics3 tag in along with the proper ID3v2 SYLT frame. I have no way to remove just the Lyrics3 tag without also removing the ID3v1 tag.

What this means is, if you have MP3's which are tagged with ONLY ID3v1 fields, my attempts to remove the Lyrics3 tag after converting it to an ID3v2 SYLT frame will will end up with MP3's with no artist, title, etc. info.

So what I'm thinking I'll do is try to add some intelligence to it, so it does the following, all automatically:

1) reads the Lyrics3 tag
2) writes it to a SYLT frame in the ID3v2 tag
3) if you've got ID3v2 fields, it will remove the ID3v1 tag (removing the Lyrics3 tag also)
4) if you've only got ID3v1 fields, it will copy the info over to an ID3v2 tag, and then remove the ID3v1 tag (Lyrics3 tag go bye-bye)

I'm not sure I'll be able to do the last part. If I can't, I'm going to release it the way it is, meaning it will strip your Lyrics3 tag AND your v1 tag, and you'll be responsible for making sure you've got ID3v2 Artist, Title, etc. information. Most taggers do this nowadays.

Is this good for everyone? Also, is there ANY reason why I should consider leaving Lyrics3 tags in the MP3's?

Finally, I'm going to try to include a facility for exporting the synced lyrics (in whatever form they're in) to LRC format text files. This will hopefully allow people to share lyrics more easily, i.e. nobody will have an excuse that it's too hard to export their lyrics to a text file.

So, for all this effort, I would like you guys that supposedly have all these Lyrics3 MP3's to assure me that you'll share your LRC files with us once the database is up. Can I get some kind of assurance that you won't just disappear after I release this utility? I'm going to have to put at least another couple hours into this thing so it can do the right thing with the Lyrics3 tags and also output LRC files, the least you could do would be to share your efforts with the community.

Deal?

Edit: Oh, does anyone *NEED* this on the Linux version of lrc2sylt as well as the Windows one? The reason I ask is that the Windows version uses the C++ interface to id3lib, while the Linux version uses the C interface to id3lib. I'd essentially have to back-port the C++ code I'm writing for the Windows version to C just for the Linux version. Anyone really need that? Is ANYONE using the Linux version of lrc2sylt to begin with? Besides me...