# The Kid3 Handbook

Urs Fleisch

    ufleisch@users.sourceforge.net

2007 Urs Fleisch
&FDLNotice;
2007-11-15
0.10

&kid3; is an application to edit the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags in MP3 files in an efficient way. Also tags in Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, MP4/AAC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio and WavPack files are supported. It is easy to set tags of multiple files to the same values (e.g. album, artist, year and genre in all files of the same album) and generate the tags from the file name or vice versa.

KDE kdemultimedia MP3 ID3 ID3v1 ID3v2 Ogg Vorbis FLAC MPC APE Musepack MP4 M4A MP2 Speex TrueAudio WavPack

## Introduction

&kid3; is an application to edit the ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags in MP3 files in an efficient way. These tags can be edited by most MP3 players, but not in a very comfortable and efficient way. Moreover the tags in Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, MP4/AAC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio and WavPack files are supported too.

&kid3; does not grab, encode nor play MP3 files, but it is targeted to edit the ID3 tags of all files of an album in an efficient way, i.e. with as few mouse clicks and key strokes as possible. Where most other programs can edit either ID3v1 or ID3v2 tags, &kid3; has full control over both versions, can convert tags between the two formats and has access to all ID3v2 tags. Tags of multiple files can be set to the same value, e.g. the artist, album, year and genre of all files of an album typically have the same values and can be set together. If the information for the tags is contained in the file name, the tags can be automatically set from the file name. It is also possible to set the file name according to the tags found in the file in arbitrary formats.

The editing task is further supported by automatic replacement of characters or substrings, for instance to remove illegal characters from filenames. Automatic control of upper and lower case characters makes it easy to use a consistent naming scheme in all tags.

The tag information for full albums can be taken from gnudb.org, TrackType.org, MusicBrainz, Discogs or other sources of track lists. The import format is freely configurable by regular expressions.

Please report any problems or feature requests to the author.

## Using Kid3

### Kid3 features

- Edit ID3v1.1 tags

- Edit all ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 frames

- Edit tags of multiple files

- Convert between ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags

- Edit MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, MP4/AAC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio and WavPack tags

- Generate tags from filename

- Generate filename from tags

- Generate and change directory names from tags

- Generate playlist file

- Automatic case conversion and string translation

- Import from gnudb.org, TrackType.org, MusicBrainz, Discogs and other data sources

- Export as CSV, HTML, playlist, Kover XML and other formats. Exported CSV files can be imported again.

### Example Usage

This section describes a typical session with &kid3;. Let's assume we have a directory containing MP3 files with the tracks from the album "Let's Tag" from the band "One Hit Wonder". The directory is named in the "artist - album" format, in our case `One Hit Wonder - Let's Tag`. The directory contains the tracks in the "track title.mp3" format, which I think is useful because the filenames are short (important when using mobile MP3 players with small displays) and in the correct order when sorted alphabetically (important when using hardware MP3 players which play the tracks in alphabetical order or in the order in which they are burnt on CD and that order is alphabetical when using `mkisofs`). Besides this, the artist and album information is already in the directory name and does not have to be repeated in the filename. But back to our example, the directory listing looks like this:

`01 Intro.mp3`

`02 We Only Got This One.mp3`

`03 Outro.mp3`

These files have no tags yet and we want to generate them using &kid3;. We use Open (File menu or toolbar) and select one of the files in this directory. All files will be displayed in the file listbox. Lazy as we are, we want to use the information in the directory and file names to generate tags. Therefore we select all files, then click the From Filename button in the Tag 1 section. This will set the title, artist, album and track values in all files. To set the year and genre values of all files, we keep all files selected and type in "2002" for the Year and select "Pop" from the Genre combobox. To set only these two values, we check their checkboxes and leave all other checkboxes unchecked. Now we change the selection by only selecting the first file and we see that all tags contain the correct values. The tags of the other files can be verified too by selecting them one by one. When we are satisfied with the tags, we use Save (File menu or toolbar). Selecting Create Playlist from the File menu will generate a file `One Hit Wonder - Let's Tag.m3u` in the directory.

## Command Reference

### The Kid3 Window

#### The GUI Elements

The &kid3; GUI is separated in five sections: At the left are the file and directory listboxes, the right side contains the Filename, Tag 1 and Tag 2 sections.

Filelist

  The file list contains the names of all the files in the opened directory which match the selected file name filter (typically `*.mp3 *.ogg *.flac *.mpc *.aac *.m4a *.m4b *.m4p *.mp4 *.mp2 *.spx *.tta *.wv`). A single or multiple files can be selected. To select no file, click into the empty area after the listbox entries. The selection determines the files which are affected by the operations which are available by using the buttons described below.

  At the left of the names an icon can be displayed: a disc to show that the file has been modified or information about which tags are present (V1, V2, V1V2 or NO TAG, no icon is displayed if the file has not been read in yet).

  Directories are displayed with a folder icon. If a directory is opened, its files are displayed in a hierarchical tree. By selecting files from subdirectories, operations can be executed on files in different directories, which is useful if the music collection is organized with a folder for each artist containing folders for albums of this artist.

Directory List

  The directory list contains the names of the directories in the opened directory, as well as the current (`.`) and the parent (`..`) directory. It allows to quickly change the directory without using the Open... command or drag and drop.

Filename

  The Name line edit contains the name of the file (if only a single file is selected). If this name is changed, the file will be renamed when the Save command is used.

  The Format combo box and line edit contains the format to be used when the filename is generated from first or the second tag. The filename can contain arbitrary characters, even a directory part separated by a slash from the file name, but that directory must already exist for the renaming to succeed. The following special codes are used to insert tag values into the filename:

  - %s Title (Song)

  - %a Artist

  - %l Album

  - %c Comment

  - %y Year

  - %t Track

  - %g Genre

  This format is also used to generate the tags from the filename. If the format of the filename does not match this pattern, a few other commonly used formats are tried.

  Some commonly used filename formats are already available in the combo box, but it is also possible to type in some special format into the line edit.

  From Tag 1: Sets the filename using the selected format and the first tag.

  From Tag 2: Sets the filename using the selected format and the second tag.

  Info: Shows information about the encoding (MP3, Ogg, FLAC, MPC, MP2, MP4, AAC, Speex, TrueAudio, WavPack), bitrate, sample rate, channels and the length of the file.

Tag 1

  The line edit widgets for Title, Artist, Album, Comment, Year, Track and Genre are used to edit the corresponding value in the first tag of the selected files. The value will be changed when the file selection is altered or before operations like Save and Quit and when the corresponding check box at the left of the field name is checked. This is useful to change only some values and leave the other values unchanged.

  If a single file is selected, all check boxes are checked and the line edit widgets contain the values found in the tags of this file. If a tag is not found in the file, the corresponding empty value is displayed, which is an empty string for the Title, Artist, Album and Comment line edits, 0 for the numerical Year and Track edits and an empty selected value for the Genre combo box. The values can be changed and if the corresponding check box is checked, they will be set for the selected file after the selection is changed. The file is then marked as modified by a disk symbol in the file listbox but remains unchanged until the Save command is used.

  If multiple files are selected, only the values which are identical in all selected files are displayed. In all other controls, the empty values as described above are displayed. All check boxes are unchecked to avoid unwanted changes. If a value has to be set for all selected files, it can be edited and the checkbox has to be set. The values will be set for all selected files when the selection is changed and can be saved using the Save command.

  The check boxes also control the operation of most commands affecting the tags, such as copy, paste and transfer between V1 and V2 tags. To make it easier to use with multiple files where all check boxes are unchecked, these commands behave in the same way when all check boxes are checked and when all check boxes are unchecked.

  From Filename: The tags are set from the filename. First, the format specified in Format is used. If the existing filename does not match this format, the following formats are tried:

  - `Artist - Album/Track Song`

  - `Album/Track - Artist - Song`

  - `/Artist - Album - Track - Song`

  - `Album/Artist - Track - Song`

  - `Album/Artist - Song`

  - `Artist/Album/Track Song`

  If a single file is selected, the GUI controls are filled with the values extracted from the filename. If multiple files are selected, the tags of the files are directly set according to the filenames.

  From Tag 2: The tag 1 fields are set from the corresponding values in tag 2. If a single file is selected, the GUI controls are filled with the values from tag 2. If multiple files are selected, the tags of the files are directly set.

  Copy: The copy buffer is filled with the Tag 1 values. Only values with checked checkbox will be used in subsequent Paste commands.

  Paste: Pastes the values from the copy buffer into the GUI controls.

  Remove: This will set all GUI controls to their empty values which results in removing all values. The saved file will then contain no tag 1.

Tag 2

  The GUI controls function in the same way as described for the Tag 1 section, but the size of the strings is not limited.

  For the tag 2 Genre you can also use your own names besides the genres listed in the combo box, just type the name into the line edit.

  The tag 2 can not only contain the same values as the tag 1, the format is built in a flexible way from several frames which are themselves composed of several fields. The tag 2 table shows all the frames which are available in the selected file.

  Edit: This will open a window which allows to edit all fields of the selected frame. If multiple files are selected, the edited fields are applied to all selected files which contain such a frame.

  Add: A requester to select the frame type will appear and a frame of the selected type can be edited and added to the file. This works also to add a frame to multiple selected files.

  Delete: Deletes the selected frame in the selected files.

#### The File Menu

Ctrl O File Open...

  Opens a directory. All files matching the selected file name filter will be displayed in the file listbox and the chosen file is selected.

File Open Recent

  Opens a recently opened directory.

Ctrl D File Open Directory...

  Opens a directory. All files matching the selected file name filter will be displayed in the file listbox.

Ctrl S File Save

  Saves all changed files in the directory. The changed files are marked with a disk symbol in the file listbox. If any file names have been changed, those files will be renamed.

File Revert

  Reverts the changes of one or multiple files. If no files are selected in the file listbox, the changes of all files will be reverted, else only the changes of the selected files are reverted.

File Import...

  The Import dialog can be used to import data directly from a freedb.org server, from the Web-interface of freedb.org, from a MusicBrainz server, from Discogs or other sources of album track lists in textual format.

  Import from a freedb.org server is possible using a dialog which appears when From Server: gnudb.org or TrackType.org is selected. The artist and album name to search for can be entered in the two topmost fields, the albums which match the query will be displayed when Find is clicked and the results from www.gnudb.org are received. Importing the track data for an album is done by selecting the album in the list. The freedb.org server to import from can be selected as well as the CGI path. The imported data is displayed in the preview table of the import dialog. To work in that dialog again, the gnudb.org dialog has to be closed - it can be reopened later by clicking gnudb.org again and its contents will be restored. When satisfied with the displayed tracks, they can be imported by terminating the import dialog with OK.

  A search on the Discogs server can be performed using Discogs. As in the gnudb.org dialog, you can enter artist and album and then choose from a list of releases.

  You can search in the same way in the release database of MusicBrainz using From MusicBrainz Release. The workflow is the same as described for From gnudb.org.

  Import from a MusicBrainz server is possible using the dialog which appears when From MusicBrainz Fingerprint is selected. The Server can be selected as in the freedb import dialog. Below is a table displaying the imported track data. The right column shows the state of the MusicBrainz query, which starts with "Pending" when the dialog is opened. Then the fingerprint is looked up and if it does not yield a result, another lookup using the tags in the file is tried. Thus it can be helpful for a successful MusicBrainz query to store known information (e.g. artist and album) in the tags before the import. If a result was found, the search ends in the state "Recognized", otherwise nothing was found or multiple ambiguous results and one of them has to be selected by the user. OK and Apply use the imported data, Cancel closes the dialog. The closing can take a while since the whole MusicBrainz machinery has to be shut down.

  For the import of textual data, several preconfigured import formats are available. The first two, "CSV unquoted" and "CSV quoted" can be used to import data which was exported by the Export dialog. The CSV data can be edited with a spreadsheet, and shall be written using tabs as delimiters. Import should then be possible using "CSV quoted", which is more flexible than "CSV unquoted". However, its fields cannot contain any double quotes. If you only export from &kid3; and import later, "CSV unquoted" can be used as a simple format for this purpose.

  The next format, "freedb HTML text", can be used to copy information from an HTML page of freedb.org. Search an album in freedb and if the desired information is displayed in the web browser, copy the contents to the clipboard. Then click the From Clipboard button and the imported tracks will be displayed in the preview table at the top of the dialog. If you are satisfied with the imported data, terminate the dialog with OK, which will insert the data into the tags of the current directory. The destination (ID3v1 or ID3v2) can be selected with a combo box. The files in the current directory should be in the correct track order to get their tags assigned. This is the case if they are numbered.

  The next preconfigured import format, "freedb HTML source", can be used, if the data is available as an HTML document. Import is possible using the From File button, which opens a file selector, or copying its contents from an editor and then importing from clipboard. This format can be useful for offline import, although the HTML document could also be opened in a browser and then be imported in the first format via the clipboard.

  More preconfigured formats, e.g. "Track Title Time", are available. A custom format is left empty to be set by the user. Two lines below the format name can be set with a regular expression to capture the fields from the import text. The first regular expression will be parsed once per document to gather per-album data such as artist, album, year and genre. The second line is tried to match from the start of the document to the end to get track data, usually number and title. The regular expressions include all the features offered by Qt, which is most of the what Perl offers. Bracketing constructs "(..)" create capture buffers for the fields to import and are preceded by &kid3; specific codes to specify which field to capture. The codes are the same as used for the filename format:

  - %s Title (Song)

  - %a Artist

  - %l Album

  - %c Comment

  - %y Year

  - %t Track

  - %g Genre

  - %d Duration

  For example, a track regular expression (second line) to import from an .m3u playlist could be "%t(\d+)\s+%s(\S[^\r\n]*)\.mp3[\r\n]". All formats can be changed by editing the regular expressions and the name and then clicking OK. They will be stored in the `kid3rc` file in the configuration directory. This file can be directly edited to have more import formats or it can be deleted to revert to the default formats.

  To check whether the imported tracks match the current set of files, the duration of the imported tracks can be compared with the duration of the files. This option can be enabled with the checkbox Check maximum allowable time difference and the maximum tolerated difference in time can be set in seconds. If a mismatch in a length is detected, the length is displayed with a red background in the preview table.

  It the files are ordered differently than the imported tracks, their assigned tracks have to be changed. This task can be facilitated using the Match with buttons Length, Track, and Title, which will reorder the tracks according to the corresponding field. To correct the assignments manually, a track can be dragged with the left mouse button and the Ctrl key hold down, and then dropped at the new location.

  Almost all dialogs feature a Save Settings button, which can be used to store the dialog specific settings and the window size persistently.

File Import from gnudb.org...

  Import from a freedb.org server using gnudb.org album search. This menu item opens the same import dialog as Import..., but opens directly the gnudb.org dialog.

File Import from TrackType.org...

  Import from the TrackType.org server. This menu item opens the same import dialog as Import..., but opens directly the TrackType.org dialog.

File Import from MusicBrainz Release...

  Import from the MusicBrainz release database. This menu item opens the same import dialog as Import..., but opens directly the From MusicBrainz Release dialog.

File Import from MusicBrainz Fingerprint...

  Import from a MusicBrainz server. This menu item opens the same import dialog as Import..., but opens directly the From MusicBrainz Fingerprint dialog.

File Export...

  The Export Dialog is used to store data from the tags in a file or the clipboard. The editor at the top shows a preview of the data to export. The data can be edited before exporting, as it is exactly the contents of the editor which will be stored. The data will be generated from the tags in the current directory according to the configured format.

  The format settings are similar as in the Import dialog: The topmost field contains the title (e.g. "CSV unquoted"), followed by the header, which will be generated at the begin of the file. The track data follows; it is used for every track. Finally, the trailer can be used to generate some finishing text.

  The format fields do not contain regular expressions as in the Import dialog, but only output format expressions with special %-expressions, which will be replaced by values from the tags. The whole thing works like the file name format, and the same codes are used plus some additional codes.

  - %s Title (Song)

  - %a Artist

  - %l Album

  - %c Comment

  - %y Year

  - %t Track

  - %T Track, without leading zeroes

  - %g Genre

  - %f File name

  - %p Path

  - %u URL

  - %d Duration in minutes:seconds

  - %D Duration in seconds

  - %n Number of tracks of the album

  A few formats are predefined. "CSV unquoted" separates the fields by tabs. Data in this format can be imported again into &kid3; using the import format with the same name. "CSV quoted" additionally encloses the fields by double quotes, which eases the import into spreadsheet applications. However, the fields shall not contain any double quotes when this format is used. "Extended M3U" and "Extended PLS" generate playlists with extended attributes and absolute path names. "HTML" can be used to generate an HTML page with hyperlinks to the tracks. "Kover XML" creates a file which can be imported by the cover printing program Kover. Finally, "Custom Format" is left empty for definition of a custom format. You can define more formats of your own by adding lines in the file `kid3rc` in the configuration directory. The other formats can be adapted to your needs.

  The source of the tags to generate the export data (ID3v1 or ID3v2) can be selected with a combo box. Pushing To File or To Clipboard stores the data in a file or on the clipboard. OK and Cancel close the dialog, whereat OK accepts the current dialog settings.

File Create Playlist

  Creates an M3U playlist. The file will be stored in the opened directory and have the same name as the directory, followed by an .m3u extension. The file simply contains the names of the files displayed in the file listbox, no special EXTM3U or EXTINFO lines are generated. If all files of an album are stored in a separate directory, this function can be used to generate a playlist for an album.

Ctrl Q File Quit

  Quits the application.

#### The Edit Menu

Alt A Edit Select All

  Selects all files.

Ctrl Shift A Edit Deselect

  Deselects all files.

Alt Up Edit Previous File

  Selects the previous file.

Alt Down Edit Next File

  Selects the next file.

#### The Tools Menu

Tools Apply Filename Format

  When Format while editing is switched off for the filename format in the configuration dialog, this menu item can be used to apply the configured format to the names of the selected files. This can also be used to check whether the file names conform with the configured format by applying the format to all saved files and then checking if any files were changed (and therefore marked with a disk symbol in the file listbox).

Tools Apply ID3 Format

  When Format while editing is switched off for the ID3 format in the configuration dialog, this menu item can be used to apply the configured format to the tags of the selected files. This can also be used to check whether the tags conform with the configured format by applying the format to all saved files and then checking if any files were changed (and therefore marked with a disk symbol in the file listbox).

Tools Rename Directory...

  This dialog offers the possibility to automatically rename the currently open directory according to the tags in the files. Several formats are preconfigured to include information about artist, album and year in the directory name. It is also possible to set a custom format, the following special codes are used to insert tag values into the directory name:

  - %s Title (Song)

  - %a Artist

  - %l Album

  - %c Comment

  - %y Year

  - %t Track

  - %g Genre

  If a directory separator "/" is found in the format, multiple directories are created. If you want to create a new directory instead of renaming the current directory, select Create Directory instead of Rename Directory. The source of the tag information can be chosen between From ID3v1 and From ID3v2. A preview for the rename operation performed on the first file can be seen in the From and To sections of the dialog.

Tools Number Tracks...

  If the track numbers in the tags are not set or have the wrong values, this function can number the tracks automatically in ascending order. The start number can be set in the dialog. If only part of the tracks have to be numbered, they must be selected.

Tools Convert ID3v2.3 to ID3v2.4

  If there are any ID3v2.3 tags in the selected files, they will be converted to ID3v2.4 tags. Frames which are not supported by TagLib will be discarded. Only files without unsaved changes will be converted.

Tools Convert ID3v2.4 to ID3v2.3

  If there are any ID3v2.4 tags in the selected files, they will be converted to ID3v2.3 tags. Only files without unsaved changes will be converted.

#### The Settings Menu

Settings Hide Tag 1

  Toggles displaying of the Tag 1 section.

Settings Hide Tag 2

  Toggles displaying of the Tag 2 section.

Settings Show Toolbar

  Toggles displaying of the toolbar, which contains icons to open and save a directory.

Settings Show Statusbar

  Toggles displaying of the statusbar, which displays longer actions such as opening or saving a directory.

Settings Configure Kid3...

  Opens the configuration dialog, which consists of pages for tags, files, user actions, and network settings.

  Tag specific options can be found on the Tags page.

  If Mark truncated fields is checked, truncated ID3v1.1 fields will be marked red. The text fields of ID3v1.1 tags can only have 30 characters, the comment only 28 characters. Also the genre and track numbers are restricted, so that fields can be truncated when imported or transfered from ID3v2. Truncated fields and the file will be marked red, and the mark will be removed after the field has been edited.

  The check box Use track/total number of tracks format controls whether the track number field of ID3v2 tags contains simply the track number or additionally the total number of tracks in the directory. Text encoding defines the default encoding used for ID3v2 frames and can be set to ISO-8859-1, UTF16, or UTF8. UTF8 is not valid for ID3v2.3.0 frames; if it is set, UTF16 will be used instead. For ID3v2.4.0 frames, all three encodings are possible. Version used for new tags determines whether new ID3v2 tags are created as version 2.3.0 or 2.4.0. In the first case, id3lib is used as it was in earlier versions of &kid3; and TagLib is only applied when an ID3v2.4.0 tag is encountered. In the second case, ID3v2.4.0 (TagLib), TagLib is generally used for MP3 files; changed or newly created tags will then be saved in version 2.4.0. The combo box Comment field name is only relevant for Ogg/Vorbis and FLAC files and sets the name of the field used for comments. Different applications seem to use different names, "COMMENT" for instance is used by xmms, whereas amaroK uses "DESCRIPTION".

  Custom Genres can be used to define genres which are not available in the standard genre list, e.g. "Gothic Metal". Such custom genres will appear in the Genre combo box of Tag 2. For ID3v1.1 tags, only the predefined genres can be used.

  The list of custom genres can also be used to reduce the number of genres available in the Genre combo box to those typically used. If your collection mostly contains music in the genres Metal, Gothic Metal, Ancient and Hard Rock, you can enter those genres and mark Show only custom genres. The Tag 2 Genre combo box will then only contain those four genres and you will not have to search through the complete genres list for them. In this example, only Metal and Hard Rock will be listed in the tag 1 genres list, because those two custom genres entries are standard genres. If Show only custom genres is not active, the custom genres can be found at the end of the genres list.

  Tag Format contains options for the format of the tags. When Format while editing is checked, the format configuration is automatically used while editing text in the line edits. The Case conversion can be set to No changes, All lowercase, All uppercase, First letter uppercase or All first letters uppercase. The string replacement list can be set to arbitrary string mappings. To add a new mapping, select the From cell of a row and insert the text to replace, then go to the To column and enter the replacement text. To remove a mapping set the From cell to an empty value (e.g. by first typing space and then backspace). Inserting and deleting rows is also possible using a context menu which appears when the right mouse button is clicked. Replacement is only active, if the String replacement checkbox is checked.

  On the page Files the check box Preserve file timestamp can be marked to preserve the file modification time stamp.

  Filename Format contains options for the format of the filenames. The same options as in Tag Format are available.

  The User Actions page contains a table with the commands which are available in the context menu of the file list. For critical operations such as deleting files, it is advisable to mark Confirm to pop up a confirmation dialog before executing the command. Output can be marked to see the output written by console commands (standard output and standard error). Name is the name displayed in the context menu. Command is the command line to be executed. Arguments can be passed using the following codes:

  - %F File paths (a list if multiple files selected)

  - %f File path to single file

  - %uF URLs (a list if multiple files selected)

  - %uf URL to single file

  - %d Directory

  - %s Title (Song)

  - %a Artist

  - %l Album

  - %c Comment

  - %y Year

  - %t Track

  - %T Track, without leading zeroes

  - %g Genre

  - %b Command to start the web browser

  The command which will be inserted with %b can be defined in the Web browser line edit above. Commands starting with %b can be used to fetch information about the audio files from the web, for instance

      %b http://lyricwiki.org/%ua:%us

  will query the lyrics for the current song in LyricWiki. The "u" in %ua and %us is used to URL-encode the artist %a and song %s information. It is easy to define your own queries in the same way, e.g. an image search with Google:

      %b http://images.google.com/images?q=%ua%20%ul

  To add and delete entries in the table, a context menu can be used.

  The Network page contains only a field to insert the proxy address and optionally the port, separated by a colon. The proxy will be used when importing from an internet server when the checkbox is checked.

Settings Configure Shortcuts...

  Opens a dialog to assign keyboard shortcuts for most of the program functions. There are even functions without corresponding menu or button available, e.g. next file, previous file, select all.

#### The Help Menu

Help Kid3 Handbook

  Opens this handbook.

Help About Kid3

  Displays a short information about Kid3;.

## Credits and License

&kid3;

Program written by Urs Fleisch ufleisch@users.sourceforge.net

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain Kid3

&kid3; can be found at http://kid3.sourceforge.net.

### Requirements

&kid3; needs Qt. KDE is recommended but not necessary, as &kid3; can also be compiled as a Qt application. &kid3; can be compiled for systems where these libraries are available, e.g. for GNU/Linux and Windows. To tag Ogg/Vorbis files, libogg, libvorbis and libvorbisfile are required, for FLAC files libFLAC++ and libFLAC. id3lib is used for MP3 files. These three formats are also supported by TagLib, which can also handle MPC, MP2, Speex, TrueAudio and WavPack files. mp4v2 is required for MP4 files. For MusicBrainz support, libtunepimp is used. As there does not exist a tunepimp SDK for Windows at the moment, the Windows version is compiled without MusicBrainz import.

&kid3; is available for most Linux distributions, Windows and Mac OS X. Links can be found on http://kid3.sourceforge.net.

### Compilation and Installation

You can compile &kid3; with or without KDE. Without KDE, &kid3; is a simple Qt application and lacks some configuration and session features.

Go into the top directory and type

    % ./configure
    % make
    % make install

If the sources are downloaded from Subversion, the `configure` script can be built with

    % make -f Makefile.cvs

To compile for different versions of Qt or KDE, set the corresponding `configure` options.

To speed up compilation, &kid3; can use precompiled headers with GCC 3.4 and above. Start `configure` with the option `--enable-gcc-pch` (and setting CC and CXX to gcc and g++ of GCC 3.4 if it is not the default compiler). Then create a precompiled system include file with `make pch`.

If not all libraries are present, &kid3; is built with reduced functionality. So you should take care to have all desired development packages installed. On the other side, `configure`-options control which libraries are compiled in. The default is `--with-kde --with-id3lib --with-vorbis --with-flac --with-taglib --with-musicbrainz`. These options can be disabled using `--without-`.

Generation of RPM-Packages is supported by the file `kid3.spec`, for Debian-Packages, a `debian` directory is available.

To build &kid3; with KDE 4, use `cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/lib/kde4/ .` and `make`.

To build &kid3; as a Qt application without KDE, use `configure` and `make` from the `kid3-qt` directory. The `configure` script can be generated with `autoconf`.

The Qt application can also be compiled for Windows. `buildkid3.bat` can be used to configure and build.

### Configuration

With KDE, the file name filter and format, the import formats, the filename and ID3 formats, the toolbar and statusbar settings as well as the window size will be be saved in the standard location in file `kid3rc`. As a Qt application, this file is in the `.qt` directory, with Qt 4 in `.config/kid3.sourceforge.net/Kid3.conf`, with older releases of Qt, a file `kid3.cfg` is created. On Windows, the configuration is stored in the registry.

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