How to edit ID3 tags in iTunes and have them show up in Engine Desktop

I try to maintain only a single copy of my music library, and that is within itunes on my PC. As others have commented, there is currently no way to view bitrate information from within the Engine Desktop program, so it was suggested that this data could be copied to the composer column as a workaround. I have been doing this successfully with all new music, and I edit the field using the free MP3tag software. However for the several thousand other mp3 files in my library, when I batch edit the columns in itunes, the data does not show up in the composer column in the Engine DJ Desktop software. Interestingly, I can see the bitrate data in the composer column when I refresh the itunes library from within Engine Desktop, but it’s only visible when viewing the itunes library in Engine. If I create a playlist in Engine and drag these songs into the Engine playlist, the edited bitrate data disappears (can no longer see it in the Composer column). For any mp3s that were edited with the Mp3tag software, the edit is viewable in Engine. Unfortunately, I cannot easily view and batch edit all mp3s in my library from within file Explorer window because iTunes creates subfolders for every artist and album, which make it tedious to see all mp3s at once. Can anyone suggest a way to make these edits more easily? Update I finally figured out how to do this, so I am going to share… All you need to do is go into either itunes or Serato DJ Pro and sort your collection by bitrate and then create playlists of songs by bitrate, e.g. 128kbps, 256kbps,320kbps. Next, go into Engine DJ Desktop and import those playlists. From within the Engine Collection, open the new playlist (eg. 320kbps), and select all tracks, be sure that the composer column header is checked and visible, now double click on a single file within the composer field to edit it, and type 320.0kbps, then hit Enter, you will get a pop up asking if you want to edit all tracks in playlist, and then click Yes… tada! all of these tracks are now labeled with the correct bitrate which is shown in the composer column.

Can you not just highlight all files, right click then select ‘rescan ID3 tags’ or whatever it’s called.

I did try to reanalyze the tracks, but that didn’t work. Maybe I missed the rescan ID3 data option. Anyway, if you reread my original post, I just updated it with another solution that is working now. Thanks for your response.

No, that’s the one I was referring to, ive only ever used it to load album art after adding it though so wasn’t sure it would work.

That’s a lot of hoops to jump through :wink:

Engine copies information from the iTunes/Traktor/Rekordbox/… library on import, and stores it in its own database. iTunes does write ID3 tags on edit however, and you can force Engine to look at the ID3 tag again.

To reload this MP3 tag in Engine: right click on a track, and choose “Re-import track information” to load ID3 tags again. This is something different than “Re-analyse tracks”, which just does the beatgridding from scratch…

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Thanks, that makes sense… will do it this way from now on

One last thing, this function will ofcourse overwrite any edits you made in Engine, as Engine doesn’t write ID3 tags itself (at least not always). If your ID3 tags are healthy this shouldn’t be a problem though…