MP3 Manager features

About MP3 Manager

Main features:

• Quick - The database engine assures the quickest possible access to your MP3 files.
• Capable - No limits. Buy the biggest hard disk available, burn lots of CD's and MP3 Manager will be always with you.
• Advanced - Since the time MP3 Manager was born in March '97 there were many advanced features added.
• Stable - The stable code has been always my highest priority.

Short history overview:

• End of 1996 - I found mp3:-). There was established an "ID3 Tag" which is based on adding 128 bytes of text to end of MP3 file. These 128 bytes are divided into sections: song name, artist, album, year, comment, genre.
• March 1997 - when I found this tag standard on the net, there was only small step to the idea to develop a database application based on this standard. I got this idea on beginning of March 1997... and on March 26, 1997 was born MP3 Manager, version 1.0. At that time only 16-bit version of MP3 Manager was available.
• July 1997 - I made first 32-bit version of MP3 Manager.
• October 1997 - last 16-bit version released. The 16-bit part of project has been discontinued.
• January 1998 - in effort to add more flexibility to ID3 Tag, I've created first version of "Lyrics3 Tag" system, which was designed as an extension to ID3 Tag simply adding lyrics capability to the tag.
• April 1998 - version 2.00 of Lyrics3 Tag has been developed and used since version 3.8 of MP3 Manager. I have to mention Alon Gingold here, author of lyrics plugin for Winamp, who has helped me a lot with specifications.
• June 1998 - introduced CD Cache as an unique support for multiple CD in version 3.9.
• March 1999 - introduced versatile Create List Wizard in version 4.2.
• February 2000 - MP3 Manager 32 is not limited to MP* files anymore - added VQF, WMA support in version 4.50. Introduced command line options, "On Screen Display", mass renaming engine.
• March 2000 - Drag & Drop support, HTML help.
• November 2000 - Filtering, MP3 Manager becomes shareware.
• January 2001 - ID3v1.1 support.
• March 2001 - Treeview filter added.
• May 2002 - Lyrics download, support for video files.
• December 2002 - Multilanguage support, ID3v2 Tag import/export.

... For detailed history see the help file.

General features

Only main features are listed.

1. Supported players:
   1. CoolPlayer. Only basic support
   2. Sonique. Only basic support (no API commands, only few commandline options available).
   3. Winamp. Although Winamp3 is partially supported by external Winamp3 component, currently only using Winamp2 you can enjoy maximum features in MP3 Manager.
   4. ZoomPlayer. Video and audio player with support for Lyrics3 Tag.
2. Automatic recursive search for MP*/WMA/VQF files on up to 99 independent drives or directories. Program can be used for really big collections of media files. Reading of tags at startup can be switched on/off from "Media files setting" screen. Default option for "intelligent" reading of tags at startup - check only new/changed/deleted files plus caching CD's will shorten the update time to minimum.
3. Full support for ID3 Tag and Lyrics3 Tag:
   1. Lyrics - up to 99999 characters
   2. Music/Lyrics Author - up to 250 characters
   3. Other info - up to 99999 characters
   4. Extension for title/artist/album fields of ID3 Tag. Each field can keep up to 250 characters.
   5. Images - almost unlimited number of (links to) images in BMP/JPG/GIF format can be added into one track (up to 99999 bytes of data). Of course, it is possible to display them as well:-)
   6. Genres - extension to genres field in ID3v1 tag allowing any genre.
4. Selections:
   1. Unique, simple selection for play by artist, album, genre, year etc. by right-click menu
   2. Favourite selections subsystem, including batch commands for handling favourites.
5. List Wizard (export data) to file in TXT, HTML (include link!), DBF, XLS (MS Excel), CSV file format.
6. Define own rules for sorting - there is quadruple compound sorting index available. Or simply click on any header for quick sorting (first click sorts up, seconds down, right click resets to default).
7. Remote control of all players (skip to next/previous song, pause), 20 seconds skip function for Winamp
8. Volume control with coloured scale
9. CD Cache as a complete subsystem supporting multiple "mp3 CD" (playing, searching, creating list, copying files from multiple CD's...).
10. Many mass editing functions: Copy/Paste ID3 Tag, ID3 Tagger, Image Linker, Autoformatter.
11. Copying/moving files to any folder with option to create folders as Artist\Album. Just select and go.
12. Unique, reliable subsystem for bitrate/song length detection.
13. Mass renaming
14. On Screen Display - advanced, independent visual mode
15. Command line options
16. Drag and Drop capability
17. Advanced track filtering.
18. Lyrics download.
19. Multilanguage support.
20. ID3v2 import/export.

Features added in latest version

Bugfixes

1. Bug in grid+right click menu handling.
2. Bug in export Lyrics3 tag into ID3v2 tag (big tags only).
3. Crash when deleting held file instead of error message.
4. Some multilingual problems fixed (be sure to get latest language files).

New features in 5.00

1. Multilanguage support
2. File properties can be displayer like in Explorer.
3. ID3v2 import/export (thanks to Alon)
4. Multiple tag deletion
5. Partial compatibility with Winamp3. You have to install free component "Winamp 2.x Plugin Manager for Winamp 3". Main commands will work, but that's all for now. Other things have to be enabled by author of this component. Get the component at http://members.telocity.com/~schweitn/wa3/wa2mgr/main.html. (Anyway... for the time being I recommend to use old good Wa2)
6. Own genres - new addition to the Lyrics3 tag which keeps genres which are not included in ID3v1

Changes

1. New error handling

Bugfixes

1. Bug in editor/move to next