Working with Audio Files

For information about playing music files, see Playing an Audio File.  This section is about viewing, editing, and saving the Artist, Title, and other information associated with a music file.

Identifying the Artist and Title

When you first load a music file into the Playlist, QCD tries to identify the Artist and Title information from tags in the file, and from the filename.

Here are the steps that QCD follows to try and identify the file:

  1. In the best of cases, the music file contains a special "CDDB tag" that let QCD look up accurate Artist and Title information from the CDDB Music Recognition Service.

  2. If the file does not contain this CDDB tag, but the file contains Artist and Title information in tags in the file, it displays that information.

  3. If the file contains no tags, QCD will display the filename of the music file in the Playlist and in the Track name display area.

Tip: The reason this procedure is useful to know is that you can often edit the file and re-tag it so that identification is faster and more accurate in the future.

Editing and re-tagging the file

Re-tagging the file with better information can help ensure that the file will be identified faster and more accurately in the future and if you send the file on to other people.

To edit and re-tag the file:

  1. In the Playlist, right-click on the track and choose Edit.

  2. In the box below Comments, check to see whether the file contains the "CDDB tag".

    If this box says File is CDDB enabled, then the file already contains the CDDB tag and you don't have to edit it further.

    If this box says CDDB ID not present, the file does not contain a CDDB tag, so you will need to enter some information to help the CDDB service identify the track.

  3. Enter or correct the information you do know about the track, such as the Title, Artist, source Album, Genre, Year of recording, Track number (in the source Album), and record Label.  Leave those fields blank that you don't know.

  4. Click the AutoTag button.

This re-tags the file with the information you entered, including the CDDB tag and any other information returned from a query to the CDDB service.

Viewing information about the source album

If a music file contains a CDDB tag, you can look up information about the source CD, including the other tracks on the CD, credits, album notes, and track notes.

To do this:

  1. In the Playlist, right-click on the track and choose Edit.

  2. In the box below Comments, check to see that this says File is CDDB enabled.

    If this box says     CDDB ID not present, the file does not contain a CDDB tag, and so you can't do a CDDB lookup.  See the instructions above to edit/enter the information you know about the file to help the CDDB service identify the track.

  3. Click the CDDB Lookup button.

This displays the information about the source CD.

To learn more about editing and tagging audio files, see How To: Use the Track Editor.  

For information about playing music files, see Playing an Audio File.