If you want to view and edit ID3 audio or MP3 tags in VLC Media Player, then it has been really made simple. The quickest way to view/edit it is by using the CTRL + I shortcut key on your PC or by navigating to Tools > Media Information. It brings up a simple pop up where you can view all the information like MP3 song title, artist, album, date, genre, track number, now playing, publisher, copyright, encoded by, comments and album art. You can simply view or input your own values in the text fields of these corresponding metadata information.
ID3 tags allow you to view different information about a song and it is primarily used by MP3 files exclusively. Song information like artist, album etc. are stored in the MP3 file itself. It is used by different players in different ways. For example: In VLC, you can see the “Artist – Song Title” data used in the title bar of the Player.
If you navigate to your playlist [CTRL +L] and view it as a detailed list, then all the metadata information is visible. The same feature can be seen in Windows Explorer as well. One quick perk of this information within VLC playlists is that it allows you to sort your MP3 files according to the ID3 tags helping you play the songs that you want in a certain order.
The steps to access and edit ID3 audio tags are quite simple, but here are the steps with screenshots:
Go to Tools > Media Information.
The screen shown above will pop up. View and edit from here. Close the window and what you entered will be saved automatically.
Note: To edit album art, right click on the picture or VLC icon in the bottom-right corner of the Media Information screen.
View Comments (33)
How can I access and edit the MP3 metadata using VLC on an iMac?
(This was sooo easy on a PC. Why can’t you do anything on a Mac?)
(macOS: Sonoma 14.4.1) (VLC Version 3.0.20 Vetinari (Intel 64bit))
Mac OS 12.6 - VLC 3.0.17.3
Album tag does not show up on mp3 file - and there is no "comments" section in media info - not good - not good at all .......
I have a library of WMA files that I ripped from purchased CDs. I am using VLC to convert them to MP3 because my new phone no longer supports WMA. The WMA files contain the metadata and I want VLC to copy the metadata to the MP3 files when I perform the conversion. Is this possible/supported? Otherwise a huge time suck to recreate the metadata manually and my phone doesn't recognize album, artist and track number without the metadata.
VLC Player 3.0.14 Tools/Media Information edit and Save does not work with aif files as before.
Downgrade to 3.0.10 fixes the problem.
I am running OS X Catalina 10.15.5 and just downloaded VLC 3.0.11 to put pictures on all my M4A/AAC files. I can't get anywhere after CMD-I and getting to the Media Information and clicking every way imaginable on the image in the bottom right corner--with no response at all. The Media dropdown doesn't even pickup the name in the Title or its duration so I assume it isn't working at all. However, the same file played fine from the Playlist. I also tried an MP3 file and got the same result. Is there another step I am missing? I see Pictures listed but it seems to want to see them as audio files as well and lists their duration at 10 sec??!! Very disappointed because I have about 100 songs with pictures to associate and hoping this app could work.
Is there a way to do this without having to select each individual item one by one? Isn't there some way to simply edit them one after the other?
Yeah, I would want that as well. But it seems like we can only do it one by one.
Consistent issue:
Rip from CD to MP3 with MS Media Player
Edit the tags with MP3Tag editor (tried setting it to write ID3v1, ID3v2.4 and APEv2 as well as only ID3v2.4)
Load all the songs within that single CD to play and it appears to read different tag types for each song... some songs show (within VLC) the Album information with track #, some show only the file name with no tag information. (Other apps/players show all tag information correctly)
Is there a way to tell what tags are being used, and/or force VLC to read a particular tag set?
Similar issue to what Jim has noticed: I created the metadata tags for some albums I have located on an external HD that is usually attached to my Linux system, and was later glad to see the tags survive a journey to my Windows PC (the former has more RAM and the latter which is my movie server/streamer has a better sound quality). The mp3 files were displaying Title, Track#, Artist, etc uniformly when I viewed the HD in Windows' File Explorer - but strangely enough this wasn't the case in VLC's "View Playlist" mode. Most of the tracks were displaying Artist-Track-Title.Filetype lumped together in the Title field and differed from the editable values in file explorer's music folder view, and a random few tracks were instead displaying metadata values individually which was my preference. Is there some embedded information in some of these files that VLC is somehow accessing? Seems unlikely since I compressed the MP3s from tracks that I ripped and tagged myself with consistently applied (OCD inspired) uniformity. As I spend time editing these aberrations one by one in VLC, (because I must), I can't help but wonder if this time-consuming tag editing effort will have been time wasted - once my HD migrates back over to the Linux machine. Sigh...
I created the metadata tags for some albums I have located on an external HD usually attached to my Linux system, and was later glad to see the tags survive a journey to my Windows PC (the former has more RAM and the latter which is my movie server/streamer has a better sound quality). The mp3 files were displaying Title, Track#, Artist, etc uniformly when I viewed them in Windows' File Explorer - but strangely enough this wasn't the case in VLC's "View Playlist" mode. Most of the tracks were displaying Artist-Track-Title.Filetype lumped together in the Title field and differed from the editable values in file explorer's music folder view, and a random few tracks were instead displaying metadata values individually which was my preference. Is there some embedded information in some of these files that VLC is somehow accessing? Seems unlikely since I compressed the MP3s from tracks that I ripped and tagged myself with consistently applied OCD inspired uniformity. As I spend time editing these anomalies one by one in VLC, (because I must), I can't help but wonder if this time-consuming tag editing effort will have been time wasted - once my HD migrates back over to the Linux machine. Sigh...
Can VLC save metadata in ID3 version 1 format?
Great, Can I edit the tags and convert wma to mp3?
Can I bulk edit the tags and give the same album name and artist to all the file I convert?
You can try to convert the file types but bulk editing of tags seems to not be supported.
Thanks, editing of tags for file is enable?
Does editing metadata and saving cause loss of MP3 quality?
Also, is the metadata actually saved in the MP3 file? Or is it saved in VLC, associated with the file, sort of like a cookie in a browser?
Thank you.
It is saved to the file.
Thank you for your reply.
Does editing metadata and saving cause loss of MP3 quality?