EasyTAG: A Tool for Viewing and Editing Tags in Audio and Video Files

Most of us, come across graphics of several kind in our day to day life. Our interaction with graphics ranges from viewing and manipulating images, videos and audio’s. Before we deal with graphics of any kind in real, all the tag information is our source of knowledge.

As a child, when ever I used to see picture and text tags associated with an image, a video or audio and no way to edit it, I feel like finding a way to edit it. Well then I have no idea about EasyTAG.

Here in this article we will be discussing every aspect of EasyTAG, its Features, Usability, Installation and a whole lot other aspects.

What is EasyTAG?

EasyTAG is a free and open source application software released under GNU General Public License for viewing and editing Graphics and ID3 tag. It is a simple application which usages tag manipulation library of MAD project for the support of ID3 tag.

Features of EasyTAG

  1. Very Easy and Straight forward Interface for End user Interaction.
  2. The Application is written in ‘C’ Programming Language which usage GTK+ for GUI.
  3. Supports a large Number of formats which include (mp2, mp3, mp4, mpc, flac, opus, speex, ape, ogg vorbis).
  4. Support for automated Tagging using custom masks.
  5. Supports a huge filed of tagging which expands upto (Title, Artist, Album, Disc Album, Year, Track Number, Genre, Composer, Comment, Original Artist, URL, Encoder, Copyright Information and Picture).
  6. Support for the change of field value in bulk of files, all at a time.
  7. Support for rename of files using tag information as well as external text files.
  8. Show file header information i.e., bitrates, time, etc.
  9. Auto complete Partial Entered Date.
  10. Supports Hierarchical tree based browsing as well as by filed artist and album.
  11. Support the recursive action for tagging, renaming, deleting, saving, etc.
  12. Undo/redo last change supported.
  13. Support for Compact Disc Database (CDDB). CDDB is a database for software applications to find audio CD information over Internet.
  14. Capable of Generating Playlist and Inbuilt embedded Searching.
  15. Very Mature Project with more than 13 years of serving and still in active stage of development.

Installing EasyTAG in Linux

EasyTAG depends upon GTK+ along with other optional packages. The current version is EasyTAG 2.4 which can be downloaded from the below link.

  1. https://download.gnome.org/sources/easytag/

However in most of the standard Linux Distribution, the package is already available in repository and needs to be downloaded and installed from there.

On Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint

Open terminal using “Ctr+Alt+T” and add the third-party PPA to install latest stable builds of EasyTAG using following series of command with the hep of apt-get command.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:amigadave/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install easytag
On RedHat/CentOS/Fedora

Here, you need to Enable EPEL repository and then install using yum command as shown.

# yum install easytag
# dnf install easytag    [On Fedora 22+ versions]

After successful installation, we can check the version and location of binary.

# easytag -version 

EasyTAG 2.1.7 by Jerome Couderc (compiled 23:14:56, May 10 2012) 
E-mail: [email protected] 
Web Page: http://easytag.sourceforge.net
# whereis easytag 

easytag: /usr/bin/easytag /usr/bin/X11/easytag /usr/share/easytag /usr/share/man/man1/easytag.1.gz

Now EasyTAG is ready to be tested. A GTK+ launcher can be found at the location ‘Sound & Video’ Menu.

How to Use EasyTAG

The working interface seems easy and used to. Nothing much to worry about. Very much simplified.

EasyTAG Main Window
EasyTAG Main Window

Chose an mp3 file and look at the tags, already associated with it, in the rightmost panel. Oh! so this was secret.

Choose MP3 File
Choose MP3 File

Editing the text with own data seems a cakewalk. It was easy and fluent.

Edit MP3 File Tags
Edit MP3 File Tags

Look at the picture tag, already associated with this mp3 file.

Add Custom MP3 Picture
Add Custom MP3 Picture

Remove the picture after uploading own picture and customizing it, as visible below.

Upload MP3 Picture
Upload MP3 Picture

Save the tags, so that the changes are taken into effect.

Save New Tags
Save New Tags

Look at the tags on from property windows. Hurrah! It was so simple.

Confirm Audio Tags Property
Confirm Audio Tags Property

Here comes the picture tag we associated with the mp3 file.

Picture Tag in Action
Picture Tag in Action

Trying to perform the same operation with a Video file. Here in this case none of the tags were there. We entered them from the starting point as depicted below.

Edit Video File Tags
Edit Video File Tags

No way to tag picture to a video file. Moreover tagging picture to video file seems meaningless, isn’t it?

No Video Picture
No Video Picture

Saved the above tag and then find the tags associated with the video file from property.

Save Video Tag Property
Save Video Tag Property

Area of Application

The EasyTAG application is the backbone of Industry dealing with Audio, Videos, Animation, etc to tag their data with information, Pictures and Copyright information so that the end user can have detailed information regarding the file they are dealing with Media Industry, TV shows over Internet, Videos over Internet,… actually the area of application of EasyTAG is beyond what we can think of.

Conclusion

EasyTAG is an upper-state of the end of the art which has a very simple interface yet powerful and productive applicability. It is a lightweight tool which is must if you deal with graphics tagging. A wonderful tool which is useful and on the other hand can be used as a prank to show your mates/colleges that an audio/video file has your personal data into tags.

However this tool works much beyond pranks in real world. Why don’t you make your hands dirty with this tool and tell us your experience.

That’s all for now. I’ll be here again with another interesting article. Till Then stay tuned and connected to Tecmint. Don’t forget to provide us with your valuable feedback in the comment section below.

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Ravi Saive
I am an experienced GNU/Linux expert and a full-stack software developer with over a decade in the field of Linux and Open Source technologies

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9 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. ALL I wanted to do was add ONE year and ONE genre tag to each song of every album I have. Thanks to retarded autistic cunts that made this impossible in EasyTag, I have to change the year (or ANY OTHER TAG FIELD) one song at a time. Way to go faggots.

    Reply
  2. Hi, for some reason your response to my reply isn’t showing, it still says it’s awaiting moderation.

    Anyway, to be clear, album art works for me, most of the time. About 2 out of 10 albums I save album art to, the album art shows up in Easytag but not in players such as Banshee, and others. With 8 out of 10 albums, when I add album art via Easytag the art that shows up fine in all players, every time. For the albums that don’t show the art, I can’t find anything in common. I’ve tried multiple image types, but no matter what I do, certain albums will end up with art that won’t show up in any player. I’ve been dealing with this bug for about five years, and I’ve tried Easytag on Debian, Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu and Manjaro. If only I could figure out why the album art doesn’t work all the time, that would be awesome.

    Reply
  3. I’ve been using Easytag for a number of years. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug when it comes to adding album art. Sometimes, the album art doesn’t show up in media players, even though Easytag embedded it into the file.

    I’m not sure why this happens. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. When this happens, media players will show no album art, but Easytag does show the art. This will effect all players, such as Banshee, Rhythmbox, GNOME Music, and even my Android phone.

    Reply
    • @Jay,

      After your feedback, I installed EasyTag on My Mint box, I tried adding track information using EasyTag and played the same track using Banshee, Gnome Music, etc, the track information showing perfectly for me…

      Reply
      • Hi Ravi,

        I hope this message doesn’t show up twice. You can delete the other comment. Sorry. Anyway, I think you may have missed part of what I mentioned. This problem happens sometimes, but not other times.

        Most of the time when I save album art, it does work just fine. Other times, it won’t work. Every time I add album art, Easytag sees it. But sometimes other players won’t.

        I would say 8 out of 10 albums I add album art to, work just fine without issue in all players. A few albums will never show the art in any player (but will still show the art in Easytag, even when closing and reopening the app).

        I cannot find anything in common with the albums that won’t work, and I can’t find a way to trigger this. I’ve even tried re-ripping CDs and re-adding the album art over and over.

        Reply
    • @Ajinkya,

      This EasyTaG tool is only used to edit or add the information about video or song like artist name, title of file, year, genre etc, not for SEO..

      Reply

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