How to Edit MP3 Tags and Metadata with Switch Audio Converter

Edit MP3 Metadata with Switch Audio Converter

How to Edit Metadata and Tags when Converting to MP3

When converting a track to MP3, you can edit the track metadata and tags to include title, artist, track artwork, producer, rating, genre, comments and more. If you record your own music, you may want to set up metadata and tags for your finished recordings before sharing. Editing your tags and metadata will ensure that your album artwork, artist name, and other tags show up correctly when your track is loaded into a new audio library. You can easily edit the metadata of MP3 and tags for audio files when converting with Switch Audio Converter.

Download Switch Audio Converter for Windows

Edit MP3 Tags

To edit the tags of an audio file, begin by loading the file into Switch Audio Converter. To import an audio file, click on the "Add Files" button in the top left hand corner of the program window.

After you have imported an audio file, you can right click on the file in Switch and select "Edit Audio Tags" to edit the audio tags.

This will open the Tag Editor for the selected audio file. Here, you can edit the audio track title, artist, album, genre, BPM, producer, rating, artwork, and more. For new recordings, many fields will be blank. If the audio file that you are converting currently has audio tags, the existing tags will be displayed in the Tag Editor.

To edit a tag, click on the field that you would like to edit and type in the new tag information that you would like to save for your mp3 file. You can edit the song Rating by clicking on the star value that you would like to assign to the audio file.

Add Artwork to an MP3 File

To add artwork to an MP3 file, click on the "Browse" button the the right of the artwork image in the Tag Editor. Then, select a file from your computer to use as the artwork for your audio file. 

Apply Changes

You can apply changes to converted files only, or you can apply changes to source files and converted files. To apply tag edits to converted files only, select the option that says "Apply changes to converted files only". This option will leave the file tags for the source file in their original state, while applying the tag edits to only converted files.

 To apply tag changes to the original source file as well as converted files, select the option that says "Apply changes to source files and converted files".

Convert to MP3 with New Tags

To convert your file to MP3 with the edited tags, click on the "Convert" button in the bottom right hand corner of the Switch program window.

Download Switch Audio Converter for Windows

Record Your Own Audio Book

Books on tape have been around a long time, when I was younger we would sometimes get an audio book to listen to in the car on a long trip. Now that people carry mp3 players almost everywhere there is no reason to wait for a road trip to listen to a good book. And, like ebooks, there isn't the pressure to sell huge volumes that is inherent when publishing a printed book, so it is much easier to get into. In fact with just some audio recording software and a high quality microphone you can get started recording your first audio book.

Once you have decided to record an audio book you can start getting prepared. You want to be very familiar with the text. Read first and record second. You can do some editing of the audio after recording, but you want to keep that to a minimum and keep a flow to the prose. Being familiar with the text will help you keep a steady pace. Keep your pace in check, you don't want to zip through it fast so that the listener can really appreciate and hear everything you are reading. In addition to keeping that slow pace, be sure to add pauses after sentences and paragraphs, and beware being monotone. Try to breathe some life into your reading, no one will want to listen to you drone on in a flat voice. Another suggestion would be to consider printing out a hard copy of the book. Unbound, single-sided pages will make page turning easy.

Once you are prepared you just need to schedule yourself a chunk of quiet time to sit down and start recording. You can estimate the total amount of time you will need by timing how long it takes you to read through a single page and multiply by the number of pages. For a longer book you might want to break it out into more than one sitting. A good choice for audio recording is WavePad Sound Editor. By recording directly into an audio editor like WavePad you can easily go in to the recorded audio file when you are done recording to cut out any places you might have stumbled or make any other adjustment that might be needed like amplifying or equalizing the audio file or eliminating any background noise that might have crept in. And if you recorded in more than one session you can merge the files together before publishing your final mp3 file and sharing it with the world.

Use What Works: Why a Podcaster Uses Switch Audio Converter Every Day

Guest post by podcaster Kole Ross www.koleross.com

We take it for granted that our tools do what we ask them to. If they didn't, we probably wouldn't use them anymore. What makes a piece of software great, however, is how easy it is to tell it what to do. For me, Switch Audio Converter is one of those great programs, and I rely on it daily.

I'm an underemployed podcaster, a part the digital serf caste. You see us around, the overweight or underweight bearded dudes with laptops, blogs, and opinions about why Facebook sucks.

I graduated from an Electronic Media program where I was surrounded by these digital serfs, and learned how to use lots of different pieces of media software. Final Cut Pro, Adobe Creative Suite, Pro Tools, the list goes on. If you have more than a passing acquaintance with these software suites, you probably have an opinion about which one works best.

I get them, I understand how to use them, and I know how powerful they can be. When I was starting out, though, I could never shake the feeling that they were "too much." If you're cutting a steak, you don't whip out a Swiss army knife. You use a steak knife, like a normal person.

I started podcasting in 2007, wanting to turn my internet radio show into a packaged, persistent product. This first podcast eventually turned into Stand Under the Don't Tree and Riddle Me This, a video game talk show with a bewildering name. Three years later, I started a second podcast, Those Damn Ross Kids, a NSFW comedy podcast that I do with my brother, Kris.

When you're a poor student (or even a poor graduate—feed me please) it's difficult to afford fancy software to fuel your hobbies. So, you use what works. To this day, I edit my shows in Garageband because it's free and simple. A friend of mine once criticized me for using "kiddie gloves," but my response remains: "It doesn't get in the way when I sit down to make things." I like a program that does one thing well. Every button and lever I don't use is just wasting my time.

The same goes for Switch, which simply does what I ask it to without putting up a fuss.

The end product of a podcast is always an MP3 file, but it goes through lots of different phases in its life cycle. The shows are recorded over Skype as high-sample rate stereo AIFF files. My voice is always on the right channel, while the incoming audio from Skype is on the left channel. I drop this file into Garageband to separate the tracks, and re-export them so that I'm able to do multitrack editing, making editing out overtalk a breeze.

The separated files are still in stereo, though, so I pop those back into Switch to squash them into mono AIFF files. These are easier to edit, and take up half as much space. I then put these files onto separate tracks in Garageband and go to town, making what we say clever and insightful.

When I'm done with that, I apply the Levelator to the AIFF. The Levelator's motto should be "Crummy thing go in, pretty thing come out." It doesn't work all the time, but it's better than spending an hour trying to configure a compressor.

The final step comes when I drop the finished file into Switch again, compressing it to a 96kbps mono MP3 file for distribution. This is the best compromise between sound quality and size. It's a quick download, and it doesn't waste all of that time I spent equalizing it to sound good. Switch made this easy to figure out. All I had to do was mess with the encoder options and re-convert until I got something good.

Voila, that's a podcast. Spank it on the bottom, FTP it, and let the world know that it's ready.

There have been other times in my professional and academic career where Switch has bailed me out... For example with how finicky Final Cut Pro is vis-á-vis what kind of audio files it will play nice with.

The moral of the story is this: Even though the aforementioned $1000+ media suites can probably spit out the kinds of files you want, I don't need all of the excess functionality that comes with it. Switch just exists. It's a box on my desktop that takes one thing and makes it into another thing, without complaint.

I don't need a Jaws of Life to open my beer, thanks. Just let me make something and get on with my day. My job is to be funny in front of a microphone, not fiddle with software.

Archival-quality Audio from Vinyl with Golden Records

Golden Records Vinyl to CD Converter is one of our more popular software programs, offering an easy step-by-step process for converting vinyl LP records and analog audio cassettes to CD or mp3 files. It seems the people at CNET agree, having recently given it high marks, saying, "We've tried many such tools, yet we've often gone back to [Golden Records], which also converts tapes and other analog audio sources." The reviewers went on to say:

"We transcribed several LP records ranging from audiophile quality to barely playable with Golden Records, achieving excellent, archival-quality results each time. The auto track splitter worked fine on scratchy old platters, though recording tracks in the highest possible quality and then splitting and converting them manually using a WAV editor proved the best method for better-quality discs. The sound files produced by Golden Records Vinyl to CD Converter sounded great, whatever the source."

– CNET

You can read the complete review of Golden Records Analog to CD/MP3 Converter from CNET on download.com. Or, download today to take advantage of the free 14-day trial and easy wizard based process to start digitizing your vinyl record collection.

One Click Converting

Some of the most useful software applications to have at the ready are file format converters. You never know when a file might land in your email or come across your desk in a format that you can't open. This can be exceedingly frustrating. With the right file converter you can solve this problem with a click of the mouse instead of having to go back to the source to see if they can re-save it for you.

Plus, in case having the convenience of a file converter on hand wasn't enough, for any formats that you convert to regularly, you can easily add a shortcut to your Windows Explorer right click menu for even faster conversion.

For example, if you constantly need to convert music for your mp3 player, you might want to create a shortcut for converting to mp3 with Switch audio converter. To do that, go to the "Right Click" tab in "Options," turn on one of the shortcut commands and select mp3 from the pull down menu. Once you've saved this setting, the next time you right click on a supported audio file you can "convert to mp3 using Switch" right then and there.

Our other conversion software have similar options to help save you time. Try our full range of converting software including:

• Prism video converter
  
• Switch audio converter
  
• Pixillion image converter
  
• Doxillion document converter
  

Streaming Audio Recorder Saves Time for Radio Producers

Izi Mann has been a radio personality and producer for decades, including work on the NPR show Voice of Israel, he now also produces Internet radio shows.

Using a variety of audio files from different websites is key for an Internet radio show to offer a digest of varied, newsworthy content. When Mann found SoundTap streaming audio recorder, it saved him so much time he was able to do more shows than before while offering much better content.

Mann estimates that he spends at least 30% less time recording audio files with SoundTap than with other comparable programs he has tried. "I use SoundTap to 'catch' audio files from different websites. The software does this so cleanly and smoothly, and without the numerous time consuming requirements that appear in some other programs I have tried. Just one click!"

The challenge Izi Mann faced before finding NCH Software's SoundTap was that many software applications were time consuming and demanding. He was searching for an efficient audio recorder but many of the other programs he tried did not actually work, or asked so many questions before recording the audio he found them impractical for what he wanted to do. "When you have a show to produce, it is important that it’s done perfectly, but also immediately,” Mann said. “Actually, who does have time to waste?"

When his search was coming up dry, he suddenly remembered a colleague from the BBC had introduced him to NCH Software’s Switch Audio Converter software, and how smoothly it converted CD music files to wav files. So he went to NCH looking for an equally capable solution for his audio recording problems. He found that solution in SoundTap Streaming Audio Recorder.

SoundTap saves Internet radio producers like Izi Mann time, creating high quality audio files at the click of a button, and this is just one example of the many uses for this versatile streaming audio recorder. Download SoundTap to capture any audio playing through your computer and convert that audio to mp3 or wav files. You may well find that like Izi Mann, after you have used SoundTap, you'll be willing to recommend it to anyone.

What you need to know about copying or editing someone else’s music

You might find yourself editing music and wondering, am I allowed to do this? Whether you’re making your own music mashup with the MixPad multi-track mixer, adding a soundtrack to your home videos with VideoPad video editor, or making a new ringtone for your phone with WavePad audio editor, there are some rules you need to know about your music, and how you’re allowed to use it.

What’s mine isn’t yours and what’s yours isn’t mine

That is the legal stance as far as copying or editing someone else’s music is concerned. With the increased popularity of the MP3 music format in the late 1990s, the sharing of copy written music without authorization became much more prevalent, causing an increase in concerns about copyright infringement. Today, copyright infringement isn’t something to take lightly. If you’re caught copying or editing someone else’s work you may be forced to pay heavy fines. Just ask former Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum - he had to pay $675,000 in fines for illegally downloading music.

Copying Music

According to The Copyright Act of 1976, you are allowed to copy someone else’s work if it falls under fair use. Fair use is described as using limited portions of a work, including quotes, comments, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports.

Editing Music

Since it is legal to create software to edit music, shouldn’t editing music be legal? There is a lot of talk about reselling and downloading copyrighted music, but not too much about edited music. The most important thing to know is you can edit music as long as you do not intend to use it for commercial use. Also, once you purchase music you inherit the rights to share that music with your friends, and you are also allowed to edit that music as long as you keep a copy of the original.

For more information see the following articles:

• Legal myths in the battle over peer-to-peer
  
• 10 Big Myths about copyright explained

Using Edited Music on YouTube

For quite some time now, posting copyrighted or edited music to original videos on YouTube has been a problem. However, as of June anyone who wishes to put music behind their videos can, you just have to follow these simple rules. First, it is important to know that YouTube has signed a deal with Rumblefish, allowing users access to a library of music. Therefore, if you use music from this library you can edit it any way you like without worrying about YouTube removing your video. All you have to do is purchase the song for $1.99 and you will have a lifetime license to use and edit that song on YouTube.

Basic things to remember

1. Always purchase music legally either at a music store or online
   
2. If it’s not your original music, using it may be violating someone’s copyright
   
3. If you aren't sure something is copy written, check with the US Copyright Office
   
4. Selling or redistributing music without the copyright owners permission is a violation of the owner's rights
   
5. If you edit or mix song you’ve purchased, you have to keep a copy of the original song
   
6. Only the owner of copy written work has the right to prepare or authorize someone else to create a new version of that work
   
7. When using someone else’s work, even just a portion of it for a video or any other project, it is always a good idea to credit the original artist(s)