Tagging VortexBox music files using MP3Tag
October 09, 2013 in digital music by Dan Gravell
bliss now performs music file tagging, but sometimes you need a more dedicated music tagger to work on your music files. MP3Tag is a free music tagger which you can connect to your VortexBox to change the tags in the music files. This blog post is a step-by-step description of how to connect MP3Tag to your VortexBox.
Pre-requisites
Let's start with some pre-requisites. Obviously a VortexBox is required (!) but in addition you will need a Windows based PC (this guide uses Windows 7) and you should also have already downloaded and installed MP3Tag.
The other pre-requisite is related to accessing the VortexBox. To ask your Windows computer to connect to your VortexBox you need to know the name or IP address of the VortexBox. Ideally, you should be able to get by with the name vortexbox. This won't work in all environments though, and in some you will need to know the IP address. This can be found by accessing your home router's DHCP tables or by using a port scanner.
Connecting MP3Tag to VortexBox
First, we'll confirm we can connect your computer to the VortexBox. Click the Windows button, and in the search box type: \\[vortexbox name/IP address] where, as described in the pre-requisites, [vortexbox name/IP address] is either "vortexbox", some other name you have assigned the VortexBox, or the IP address. In my case, I have to use the IP address 192.168.0.5:
Press [enter] and Windows Explorer should show you the "shares" available on your Vortexbox:
You might be tempted to look inside music but be warned: those are read-only files. This makes the music share unsuitable for accessing with MP3Tag, because any attempt to update a file will fail. Instead, it's the files share that we'll use in MP3Tag shortly.
If you've got this far, you know your computer can access the VortexBox music files.
Now we run MP3Tag. Once it has loaded, click File then Change directory:
In the text field marked with a quaver, enter the path to the VortexBox once more:
The directory selector will show the shares again. Click through files, music and then after entering the flac folder, click Select Folder:
Now MP3Tag begins reading your music files. Depending on the number of files you have and the speed of connection between your computer and the VortexBox, this might take a long time! Use a wired connection if you can.
... did I say this will take a long time? ;-)
And finally we're done! Files and tags are shown in a spreadsheet style view. Click on a file and then click on the tag values to change them:
Click the disk icon (who still uses disks?) to save the file:
And that's how to connect MP3Tag to VortexBox files! Once further piece of advice to streamline the process: the first step of opening \\vortexbox in Windows Explorer is not required, that was just done to validate your connection. Instead, you can normally go straight into MP3Tag and use it directly. It should remember the last directory you used.
Thanks to luftholen for the image above.
