Hi All,
I have a huge HDD with tons of MP3's, all of them assorted, no proper directories or filenames. I need a program(preferably free) to automatically rename the files,sort it into their respective directories and also try getting the album cover art if possible. I have tried several programs like mp3tag,fixtunes,picard by musicbrainz...but none of them seem to work....i hope someone here can help me out with this....im so frustrated with so much of cluster all over the HDD.

The GodFather is what I use. I also let WinAmp keep track of where they are and edit the tags in WinAmp too, if they only need small changes.

I use Tag & Rename. I absolutely love it. I know one of your requirements said "free" but I had to throw this out there anyway. $29.95 is a little steep but there's a 30 day trial with the only limitation being a nag screen on startup if you want to give it a shot.

http://www.softpointer.com/index.htm

i have a huge mp3 collection as well and didn't start organizing them until i had about 8000 or so files with missing or inaccurate tags. just take it slow at first...it's a LOT of work.

cover art is a tricky issue...you REALLY need to do some research on how the program you're using approaches it. itunes stores covers in its own database and adds a code into the "comment" field of the mp3 that calls the cover when you use itunes. Obviously, not many other programs understand this garbled comment and covers don't show up. you need the image actually inserted into the "album art" field of the ID3tag.

I'm not totally positive how Tag & Rename's cover feature stacks up. I know it can access amazon and other sites (like most programs that say they retrieve covers do).

I've been adding covers manually mostly because a lot of my albums are rare and I have to scan them in from my personal collection anyway

Hi,
I did try The Godfather, but unfortunately im not able to make it work the way i want it to. I tried with about 10files but it isnt renaming the files accordingly. Its using the same Tag info that was already present on the file. Any idea why????

Again im not able to install Tag&Rename since i dont have admin rights at my office system, need to try it back home.

Hopefully things should work. Wish me luck guys.

I usually correct the id3 tags first (synchronize, edit, clean up extraneous data, etc.) then automatically rename the files in the rename module. My file name preference is 'Title - Artist - Album'.

Hi max,

A vote here for mp3tag. Free, very easy to use. After you're done w/ tagging, you might want to even up the volume on all those assorted mp3's;

Another freebie, mp3gain
is the "only" normalizer to use!

Good Luck & Have Fun!
katzz