At last, the final version of Mp3/Tag Studio 3.0 is released!

You can get it at the Mp3/Tag Studio website:

http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts

Thanks to all empeggers for the testing of the special preview version!

I would very much appreciate any and all help with spreading the news to as many people as possible, e.g. through friends, newsgroups and other message boards, so please feel free to do so. :-)

Also, there is a new message board opened at the website, for support, bug reports, suggestions and general discussion. You are all very welcome to drop by, check it out, and share your Mp3/Tag Studio expertise (and also get help if you have any questions yourself of course)!

The forum can be reached through the Mp3/Tag Studio website, at the URL listed above, or at the direct URL:

http://www.magnusbrading.com/mp3ts/forum

Below you will find a list of updates in version 3.0.


PS. Thank you Tony for cutting me that promised piece of your paycheck, you too are now a member of the proud honest few! :-)


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What's new in version 3.0
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* Changed the licensing policy.
All registrations are now for life (for the
exact same price as before)! That is, if you
register the program you will get all future
updates of it for free!

* Due to popular demand, a second type of
program installation package was added.
This new package does not contain any banner
at all, but it does instead have limitations
in the unregistered mode. The reason for
this new package is that so many people are
terrified of anything that has a banner in
it, even though the banner in Mp3/Tag Studio
is a completely harmless image that has been
compiled into the program. Please note that
the old style package with a banner in the
unregistered mode is still available though.
This new package is only an addition for
adware-paranoids.

* Added a new tool, the list importer.
This tool can extract data from files with
user defined formats (e.g. text or HTML
files) and tag or rename files based on this
data. It has a bunch of quite powerful
features to play around with.

* Added a new tool, the file search tool.
This tool will let you specify any criteria
(using the normal filter) and then search an
mp3 collection of any size using these.
The results will be presented in a spread
sheet style window. It's quite good if you
just want to practise setting up the filter
for the rest of the tools too (since nothing
is modified, you only get to see exactly
which files will pass through certain filter
settings).

* Added a "preview mode" option for all tools
in the program that do any kind of tagging
or renaming. Using this, the results of any
mass processing operation can be viewed
before deciding to perform the operation for
real.

* Big upgrade of the casefix tool.
Both added functionality to it and redesigned
its GUI. The new "Advanced mode" should be
powerful enough for any casefixing needs!
(read more in the help file)

* Big upgrade of the mp3 processing filter.
Both added advanced functionality to it
(read more in the help file) and redesigned
its GUI.

* Big upgrade of the program main settings.
Added many options and redesigned the GUI to
be much more efficient and good looking.

* All tools for tagging and renaming (in
advanced mode) can now use arbitrary ID3v2
text fields as targets and sources! These
fields use the format <V2_XXXX>, where XXXX
is the ID3v2.3 frame ID of the specific
frame.

* Added cancel-capability to all mass file
processing operations.

* Added progress meters to all mass file
processing operations.

* Upgraded the custom files list box, so that
it now has checkboxes for each entry, and
also has a horizontal scrollbar when needed.
The entries in it can also be manually
rearranged in any order, or automatically
sorted by file name or file date.

* Added even more advanced functionality to
the advanced mode of parse-templates (e.g.
the auto tag tool). You can now parse out
data to a single field from any number of
parts of the source (e.g. a filename).

Example:
You have a file with the following name

"Britney (my future wife) Spears - Track 3 CD 1.mp3"

You can then e.g. let the artist be set to
"Britney Spears", and let the tracknumber
be set to 103. That's just one simple
example anyway, the possibilities are
pretty endless.

* Added an advanced mode to the "Direct tag
manipulation" tool. It can now use templates
(similar to the ones in the auto rename tool)
to write new tag contents, and it can also
process any v1 field, any v2 field (including
all special v2-fields) and also corresponding
v1 and v2 fields at the same time!

* Upgraded the list maker tool.
Both added an advanced mode and custom
sorting to it, and also added options to
insert custom headers and footers to the
lists. It can now output very complex lists
(including completely custom HTML lists and
multi-line entries). Some new fields were
added too, e.g. all ID3v2 text fields (in
advanced mode) and relative file paths.

* Upgraded the repair tool.
Added a new repair mode to remove junk data
before the first mpeg header in mp3 files.
This can recover many types of problems,
mostly caused by other programs that have
written bad ID3v2 tags or VBR-headers to the
file. The "Totally remove corrupt frames"
mode is still planned for a future version
of the program, but I cannot promise exactly
when it will be.

* Added the "absolute path mode" also to the
direct rename tool.

* Made it possible to add custom commands
(i.e. calling of external programs) that
can be performed on files from the browse
tool menu and shell extension menu.

* Made the program more responsive during
mass processing operations.

* Enabled use of track numbers larger than 255
(only in ID3v2 tags though, in ID3v1.1 tags
this is theoretically impossible, but as long
as ID3v2 tags are enabled inside Mp3/Tag
Studio, it is handled as smooth and seamless
as possible anyway).

* Enabled addition of own genres to the genre
drop-down boxes in the program.

* Added auto completion of genres when typing
in the genre drop-down boxes in the program.

* Enabled use of "/" in ID3v2 track number
fields, e.g. "5/16", according to the ID3v2
standard.

* Enabled auto parsing of genres from filenames
to tags. It being left out in the first place
is a relic from the ID3v1 days, when genres
could not be set to arbitrary strings, but
only to certain genres from a closed set.

* Rewrote and optimized parts of the undo code,
to get rid of a strange bug that caused some
people to get random crashes while undoing
lots of files. I think I finally found this
bug, but please report if you have any such
crashes in this version!

* Added access to all saved casefix/substring-
replacement presets from the shell extension.

* Added access to all saved filter presets from
the shell extension.

* Added access to the remove tag commands from
the shell extension.

* Fixed so that the program will remember if it
was started with the "-resize" parameter the
last time, when executed from the shell
extension menu. Previously it only remembered
the "-noresize" parameter in this way.

* Added an option to set the number of
characters that track numbers should be zero
padded to, when used in e.g. file names.

* Added an option to preserve the file date
(timestamp) of all tagged and renamed files.

* Added an option to use a custom directory for
temporary storage (e.g. of undo data).
Good for people that for different reasons
can't write data to the Mp3/Tag Studio
install dir, which is used for this purpose
by default.

* Added an option for the user to customize the
font used in the tag field text edit boxes.

* Added an option to automatically truncate all
created filenames that exceed a certain length
(some portable mp3 players have relatively low
limits for filename lengths).

* Added an option for the browse tool to
primarily display another tag version than the
global primary tag version in case of unsynced
tags in selected files.

* Added an option to disable the warning message
that is displayed when leaving an unsaved
edited file in the browse tool.

* Added an option to enable/disable the
descriptive header row in created mp3 lists.

* Added an option to issue a warning in the auto
rename tool when any of the fields used to
rename a certain file is empty.

* Added cut/copy/paste/delete/select-all
capabilities to certain context menus inside
the program.

* Added an optional disk space check when
writing ID3v2 tags to mp3 files, so that an
mp3 file can never be damaged even if the disk
space runs out during the operation.

* Added support for ID3v2 tags with multiple
comment fields (with non-equal content
descriptors). Comment fields with non-empty
content descriptors are now treated as non-
directly supported ID3v2 frames.

* Upgraded the "error and warnings" window,
it is now fully resizeable. It can also be
detached, so that one can investigate the
files listed in it while it is still visible.

* Added a hotkey for the "Execute" command in
all tools (ctrl-enter).

* Added an "up one directory level" button for
the working directory box.

* Added some new items to the browse tool
context menu, and also added hotkeys for every
item in this menu.

* Added a display of the mean bitrate in VBR
files.

* Made the program a bit better on extracting
the mp3 sound data from files with certain
kinds of damages.

* Fixed a bug that under certain conditions
could cause problems in the program when the
current working directory had been moved or
deleted by the user.

* Fixed a bug that under certain conditions
resulted in some bad data in the first sound
data frame of files that were VBR-header-
repaired.

* Fixed a bug that under certain conditions
caused the genre field to seem empty in the
browse tool, even though the current tag
actually contained a genre.

* Fixed a bug that caused the mass clean tool
to under certain conditions create unnecessary
empty tags, even though they did not exist to
start out with.

* Fixed a bug that caused fixed-width fields not
to always work correctly in the direct rename
tool.

* Fixed a bug that limited the user input to 30
characters when writing to advanced ID3v2 fields.

* Fixed a bug that made the shell extension act
somewhat different for mp3:s with an uppercase
file extension.

* Fixed a bug related to processing some tag
genres that had originally been written by
Winamp. This bug arose from Winamp fixing a
bug in their program, which I have earlier
compensated for. :-)

* Fixed a bug that under certain conditions made
the genre in the "mass set tag" tool not to be
remembered between executions of the program.

* Fixed a bug that under certain conditions made
the comment in the "mass set tag" tool not to
be remembered between executions of the program
(unrelated to the similar genre field bug that
was also fixed).

* Fixed a bug that could cause an entry in a
created list to be broken into several rows if
any of the listed information in that entry
contained a line break.

* Fixed a bug that could potentially result in
empty list entries from the list creator under
certain conditions.

* Fixed a bug that caused the program not to warn
when only special v2 tag fields had been edited
(without saving), and the user selected another
file in the browse tool.

* Fixed a bug that caused the "include subdirs"
box of the direct tag manipulation tool to be
enabled in custom file selection mode, although
it can't be used in that mode.

* Fixed a potential memory leak in the undo data
generation code for some of the tools.

* Made a lot of smaller fixes, GUI detail
adjustments and other stuff.


Enjoy!