Tag: correct

Easily add Meta Tags to your music with Musicbrainz Picard

The Webernets0 comment

musicbrainz-picardThere’s nothing I hate more than dropping new music into my iTunes library only to learn once it has finished importing that it doesn’t have meta-tags (No Song Name, Artist, Album Title etc etc). So now, before I add new music, I run it through MusicBrainz Picard. Here’s the programs description from their site:

“MusicBrainz Picard is a cross-platform (Linux/Mac OS X/Windows) application written in Python and is the official MusicBrainz tagger.

Picard supports the majority of audio file formats, is capable of using audio fingerprints (PUIDs, AcoustIDs), performing CD lookups and disc ID submissions, and it has excellent Unicode support. Additionally, there are several plugins available that extend Picard’s features.

When tagging files, Picard uses an album-oriented approach. This approach allows it to utilize the MusicBrainz data as effectively as possible and correctly tag your music. For more information, see the illustrated quick start guide to tagging.

Picard is named after Captain Jean-Luc Picard from the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

To get started, download and install MusicBrainz Picard HERE. Once you are up and running, drop the music files you want to tag anywhere in the window. They will then populate the list on the left called unmatched files.

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When you have finished adding files, click the line of text with the folder icon next to it that says “Unmatched Files” to make it active. When it is active it will become highlighted. Now, go ahead and press the “Lookup” button, and MusicBrainz Picard will start scanning your music and comparing it to their database for identification.

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Once MusicBrainz Picard has identified the album and added all of the songs to it, the CD icon next to the album name will turn gold in color. If you don’t have all of the songs from the album, it doesn’t matter, you can still proceed, but the CD icon stays silver. The next step is to click Album Name next to the CD icon to make it active, and highlighted. You can now click “Save”.

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MusicBrainz Picard will now write the Meta Tag Data directly into your music files. Once it has completed, you can close out of the program, and then drop your music files into iTunes, and everything will be correctly categorised and ready to play.

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Easily Watch or Fix Aspect Ratio Problems in MPEG Video with MPEG Streamclip on Windows and Mac

The Webernets0 comment

Earlier this week one of my favorite movies “The Scorpion King” was on TV, and as I recently bought a new digital set top box with USB recording capabilities, I thought I would give it a try. I remember when I saw The Scorpion King at the movies it was in a very widescreen aspect ratio, and it looked great! But, as soon as it started on Sunday night, I could tell something was not right. Rock Johnson looked more like a character from Avatar than the WWF! He seemed over 10 feet tall and as skinny as a broom handle, which as we all know, isn’t the case!

My suspicion is that someone at the TV station got lazy, or maybe a setting in my set top box was wrong, but the bottom line is I have a 2+ gigabit video file of one of my favorite movies, and it is virtually unwatchable because the aspect ratio is way off.

Thankfully, there is a nice easy way to straighten things out. Now, If I intended to watch the video file on my computer, I would use VideoLAN’s VLC Player, because it’s free, it plays practically everything, and it has nice built in feature’s that amongst dozens of other tricks, will adjust your movies aspect ratio on the fly, so no re-encoding is required.

VLC Player falls into my “I can’t Believe it’s free” category. No matter what OS your running, they have a player for you that will knock your socks off. But if you want to watch that distorted video file on something like a WDTV, or plug a USB key into your flat screen TV, your gonna have to re-encode it and repair the problems.

Luckily, my set top box records in MP4 format, so my tall and skinny video file will drop straight into a really cool, and again FREE program, called MPEG Streamclip, which is what I am going to use to fix my aspect ratio problem in my video file.

Thankfully, MPEG Stream not only fixes tall and skinny video’s, but short fat ones too 🙂

To get started, if you don’t have it already, get your free copy of MPEG Stream clip right HERE! You can do a bunch of cool stuff with it, it’s free, so there is no reason not to have it in your video tool kit! Once your installed, FIRE IT UP!

MPEG Streamclip Screen CaptureOnce the main window is open, drag your wonky video clip into it, and you will see a preview window.

MPEG Streamclip Screen CaptureTo begin reshaping, open the file menu and select “Export to MPEG-4”, or if you want to cross encode to another format, you can choose it here instead.

MPEG Streamclip Screen CaptureOnce you have selected your preferred export format, a new window will pop up where you can adjust your settings, and de-distort your movie.

MPEG Streamclip Screen CaptureAs you can see from the above capture, my video was recorded in 720px wide by 400px high, so I am now thinking I really do need to go and take a look at the default settings on my set top box. To start repairing the problem, I clicked “Other”, left the width at 720px, and started to play with the vertical height. After I changed the setting, I clicked “Preview” to see if my changes made the aspect ratio better.

MPEG Streamclip Screen CaptureA new window popped up and the movie started to preview, and I noticed a secondary window which looked like it had already begun encoding, but this doesn’t appear to be the case. It seems to me that it is just encoding your preview while you are watching it, but its not the final pass.

MPEG Streamclip Screen CaptureIf the preview looks good, or even if it doesn’t, click the stop button after you have assessed your changes. If you want to re-adjust your settings, you can go back and do so, or if you are happy with your changes, go ahead and click “Make MP4” in the bottom right hand corner, and give your FIXED video a new unique name.

MPEG Streamclip Screen CaptureLike most video encoding, it will take some time to process the file and apply your changes. But when it’s done, everything will look like it should again.