UI Scripting iTunes

Applescript can't do that, it is harder that you think and you should give up now. Instead, get started by using a shell tool "id3tool":

This instruction is given as an exercise, in reality iTunes doesn't use the ancient version 1 tags. Most people have no idea of all the crud lurking inside their music files in obsolete tags, some of it embarrassing or incriminating.

id3tool can only read tags, it can't change them. If you get this far and want to know how to manipulate the newer version of tags iTunes uses, respond here and I will explain more.

EDIT:

I forgot to say that in order to install shell tools you probably need to have Xcode installed.

Message was edited by: Gnarlodious

After running the above commands, you will get a text file containing all the IDv1 tags in all your MP3 files.

Even though it's obsolete for iTunes, ''id3v1'' tags seem to still be used. Older MP3 desktop players and in-dash units use ''id3v1'' tags to display song and artist while playing MP3 disks. You can remove the old tags entirely, or leave them in with the proper information so it will display in these older disk players.

If your file doesn't even have the id3v1 tag, you will see output like this:

Filename: ~/iTunes Music/Air/Moon Safari/01 La Femme d'Argent.mp3

No ID3 Tag

A minimal tag ready for MP3 players would look like this:

Filename: ~/iTunes Music/Al Stewart/Past, Present and Future/06 Roads to Moscow.mp3

Song Title: Roads to Moscow

Artist: Al Stewart

Tags with useless cruft from illegal downloads might look like this:

Filename: ~/iTunes Music/Dark Moor/Dark Moor/07 Attila_ Overture.mp3

Song Title: Attila Overture

Artist: Dark Moor

Album: Dark Moor

Note: Ripped by wish*master-tw

Track: 7

Year: 2003

Genre: Metal (0x9)

For the purpose of CD players, any data beyond artist and title is superfluous, since iTunes doesn't use these old tags anyway. My solution was to delete them entirely and put the new data in minus the cruft. Or optionally you can just leave out the id3v1 and put your data in a newer format of tag. But to do that you need to install more shell tools.

Hi Bernard,

Maybe you might want to try the following GUI script. This beta version assumes your iTunes window is open in list view and a track is selected.

Unfortunately, I was unable to avoid using Cliclick.

tell application "iTunes"

activate

if selection is {} then return

tell application "System Events"

tell process "iTunes"

set theSelectedRow to row 1 of outline 1 of scroll area 3 of window "iTunes" whose selected is true

set {x, y} to position of theSelectedRow

key down control

tell me to do shell script "/usr/local/bin/cliclick " & x & space & y

key up control

keystroke "Convert ID3 Tags" & return

delay 1

if (not (exists window "Convert ID3 Tags")) then return

click checkbox 1 of window "Convert ID3 Tags"

click button "OK" of window "Convert ID3 Tags"

end tell

end tell

end tell

Hope it can help.

Message was edited by: Pierre L. (replaced “Convert” with “Convert ID3 Tags”)

Many thanks, Bernard, for your feedback.

You're right, I was using an old version of Cliclick. I've now dowloaded version 2.0, made available yesterday.

There's one small issue with the last version of the script: it doesn't work when the selection contains tracks that don't have any ID3 tags. The following version fixes that issue (using an if clause) and also incorporates some other very minor changes.

tell application "iTunes"

activate

if selection is {} then return

set theSelection to selection

repeat with thisTrack in theSelection

reveal thisTrack

tell application "System Events"

tell process "iTunes"

set {x, y} to position of (row 1 of outline 1 of scroll area 3 of window "iTunes" whose selected is true)

key down control

tell me to do shell script "/usr/local/bin/cliclick c:" & x & "," & y

key up control

keystroke "Convert ID3 Tags" & return

delay 1

if (exists window "Convert ID3 Tags") then

click checkbox 1 of window "Convert ID3 Tags"

click button "OK" of window "Convert ID3 Tags"

end if

end tell

end tell

end repeat

end tell

P.-S. May I dare suggest that you use any other color than red in your future posts. 😉

Message was edited by: Pierre L.

It sounds like you managed to transfer the old id3v1 tags to the new id3v2 tags that iTunes uses. But iTunes can't remove id3v1 tags, it can only transfer existing data while leaving the old tags there. The shell tool id3lib has what you need to edit those tags:

However, id3lib can't delete tags. To totally remove the obsolete id3v1 tags install the shell tool id3v2:

The id3v2 command uses the id3lib library, so they both need to be installed. Note that the following command only removes MP3 "id3v1" tags, it does not touch the "id3v2" tags that iTunes uses. It is strongly recommended to back up your MP3 files before running any file modifying scripts! First make sure you are in the "iTunes Music" folder as your working directory:

If you dump the contents of all version 1 tags you may see all sort of oddball data fields that software added over the years. These fields cannot be individually deleted, you can only delete the entire id3v1 tag and write a new tag adding the fields you want. In addition, id3v1 tags only support something like 30 characters, so long strings will be truncated. For these reasons, it is usually best to leave the id3v1 tag out of the file unless you want it there for backwards compatibility.

After doing all this, you can run the command line I gave earlier and you should see all your old MP3 tags have been removed. In another post I'll explain how to scriptomatically edit the id3v2 tags.

I just copied it out of the inspector, so didn't really make a choice...

That's a good reason. I should have written “a less aggressive” instead of “any other”. Would you read a newspaper written in red? Well, maybe it's all a question of personal taste…