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Media Rage 3 – Tidy up your chaotic music collection!Normally: $29.95 ZOT Price: $12.95 |
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Who else wants to get their audio files organized?Have you noticed how many different audio file formats are being used these days? Each format has its own unique scheme for embeddiing “metadata” that stores useful information about the file, such as who wrote or performed a piece of music, where a photograph was taken, and more. Managing these files can be a bit confusing at times. Media Rage 3 makes organizing your audio files simple! Media Rage 3 is a collection of powerful tools that assists any media enthusiast with a Macintosh using Mac OS X, which would be you. Right? Media Rage 3 can read and write information stored in MP3, AAC/MP4, FLAC, AIFF, WAVE, BWF, and Ogg Vorbis audio files as well as EXIF (read only) tags in digital images. You will be able to catalog, organize, sort, and update thousands of audio files with ease. Media Rage is the perfect companion to any audio player, including iTunes, Audion, and more! Media Rage requires Mac OS X, version 10.4 or later. “This app is just so incredibly packed with features… It pretty much automates anything you need to do with music files.” Just some of the features in Media Rage:
For more information, visit www.chaoticsoftware.com.
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March 27th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Okay, it can read and display EXIF tags in image files. But can it access and play audio/extract annotations? Some of my Panasonic digicams have this feature but I’ve never been able to figure out how to extract the audio.
March 27th, 2008 at 5:06 am
Well I’m extremely disappointed with this product. What I found:
QuickEdit:
1. displays Basic metadata but didn’t display the Extended data (like Sort Album) that was already set & displayed in iTunes for my sample file.
2. seems unable to edit multiple audio files at a time – only appeared to be able to edit 1 file’s data at a time
Using QuickEdit I edited an AAC file I ripped from CD using iTunes. In the Extended tab, I changed the Sort Album property and saved the file.
1. the Sort Album field in iTunes did NOT display the updated date.
2. after I deleted the file from iTunes and tried to re-add it, I could no longer bring it into iTunes. it appears to have corrupted the file somehow. very nice.
3. in QuickEdit I opened the file which I’d edited and it didn’t show the updated info. What the?
basically a very simple test. MR did NOT do what it was supposed to do, and corrupted my audio file so iTunes could no longer import it. why?
note I also tried the above test with Data Changer, which appears to update the metadata across multiple audio files. this didn’t work either. in fact it produced the exact same results.
I’d like to like this product, but it simply doesn’t seem to work and I can’t trust my music collection to this if my files end up corrupted, or if it doesn’t even work. I’m not sure why this happened, but unless I can get this sorted out I’ll have to give it a miss.
March 27th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Keep in mind that iTunes keeps all the metadata in an XML file. It doesn’t re-read ID3 tags if you change them.
(That doesn’t explain all the problems you’re having. Just the first one, maybe.)
March 27th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Can it batch classify TV shows (from Movie to TV)? I was able to change one at a time, but didn’t see a batch way to do that. I’m using MetaX now, but I like the MR interface. I’ve just moved my 80 GB iTunes library from an XP machine to an external HDD and I’m at the stage of adding things back manually to my iTunes library on my Mac. If it can do the batch season, title, TV, episode, ect… this will be a ZOT for me.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:39 am
I see no reference to Apple Lossless. Anyone have any experience using Media Rage with ALAC?
March 27th, 2008 at 8:11 am
I work as an audio editor. I have a lot of arrows in my quiver, and this is one of them. It is more a Swiss army knife for audio. At ~13 bucks it’s a worth while tool. I work with a lot of audio files and some of the things this does, like batch renaming chained with conversion are pretty good. Much of what I work with are not music files. I think it is a worth while tool , but not a one shot fix. I still use the Bias batch utilities and SoundConverter, as well as a lot of AU plug-ins. It’s worth the try, but again- it’s isn’t the best tool for all applications.
As a side note. If one modifies items in iTunes, unless you alter the XML file, you have to re-import the audio. As a second side note, for you old-schoolers this is the same company that coded Mac Army Knife.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:16 am
“Sort Album” and other sorting fields are disappointingly not stored in the metadata information, but ONLY in the XML file for AAC files. For MP3s they are properly being stored in the tags. I don’t know why iTunes decided to do it this way for several pieces of information they store for various files.
Also, other posters are correct – iTunes will not re-read the file data once it has changed, unfortunately, unless you “Get Info” on each track.
If MR corrupted a file, please send it to us. We cannot replicate this on our end, and have edited thousands of files.
Thanks for your support on the ZOT!
March 27th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
@Chaotic
“Can it batch classify TV shows (from Movie to TV)? “
March 27th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Chaotic in name and Chaotic in nature…
Unfortunately you get the feeling someone who makes this should just sit down and shake this baby about a bit. It’s so un-mac-like and so ugly to look at and use. If you just want to tag a few errant MP3 files this is just overkill without ever really be as easy as it so obviously should be. Everything but the kitchen sink attitude without the ease of use we come to expect from a Mac application. It’s the Windoze world of programming and looks like it belongs on the dark side. Bad planning, bad design and poor management. I’ll pass.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Well for some reason this morning, iTunes is OK reimporting the edited files.
Yes I know about the xml database, which is why I deleted and reimported into iTunes. The updated tags are still not showing up, so there has to be something strange going on at my end.
@Barney, yes the UI is a shocker, and I think this is the perfect example of an app that users will rarely get the best use of because the design is so bad. An alternative UI which prompts you with q’s about WHAT you want to do, and then presents an interface to do that functionality would be a big step forward. While it’s great the dev has visited this blog, they haven’t really said much about how they’re developing this app going forward. Interestingly their website is also a shocker in design and lack of info / discussion forums etc.
I’m tossing up now whether to take advantage of this extremely generous discount and purchase, and work through any prob’s with the dev, or just put it in the too hard basket and give it a miss. Decisions, decisions…
March 27th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Comments by ozron are useful — thanks.
In any event, since this developer ignored my questions and bug-reports for another program (Web Devil) I licensed from him, I am predisposed to urge others to ignore his work.