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Topic: Easiest software option to remove strings from tags? (Read 1334 times) previous topic - next topic
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Easiest software option to remove strings from tags?

Many times when I download digital files (mainly FLAC), I want to edit the metadata to remove extraneous strings from the TITLE field of multiple files. For example, each TITLE field may end in " (Remastered)" or " (Live at BLAH BLAH 2023)". And, of course, the string varies every time.

In mp3tag, I can use Actions to do this, which takes multiple steps: Actions > Actions > Edit Action Group > Edit Action .... etc etc
In foobar2000, I can use MassTagger but again, it is a multi-step process and the last time I tried it, I had to make sure to escape certain punctuation characters to get the results I wanted.

Does anyone have a workflow that they can recommend to easily remove a string from multiple files? I'm probably missing something simple. If it requires different software, so be it. (I'm on Windows.) Thanks!

Re: Easiest software option to remove strings from tags?

Reply #1 –
I think you can make a hotkey for an action in Mp3tag ...?

But anyway, in foobar2000, assuming both the two following hold:
* it is a given field like TITLE (not just "do this to any field")
* you know that everything after the first occurrence of a given string is to be removed, like " ("

Mark all, go into preferences, right-click and automatically fill values, populate from %title% and give the string
%title% (
Then the new TITLE will take the old TITLE from the beginning and up to but not including first occurrence of " (". It doesn't have to be escaped.
Next time you want to do this, you can hit the arrow to the right of those text fields and select the previous one.

Re: Easiest software option to remove strings from tags?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: MrMonkey on
Does anyone have a workflow that they can recommend to easily remove a string from multiple files?
This is what I would do:
  • Use MP3Tag to export all tags for all tracks to a text file;
  • Use a text editor or word processor to perform global substitutions (eg find all... delete);
  • Import the altered tags file into MP3Tag.

If the export is formatted with <tab> separators, it is also easy to read into a spreadsheet and perform more complex manipulations using spreadsheet string functions.
It's your privilege to disagree, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong.

Re: Easiest software option to remove strings from tags?

Reply #3 –
Thanks y'all. I was hoping for something simpler but I can work with those solutions.