I can’t swear if this is because of something that WMP12 has added to Windows7, or if it is the result of some other system upgrade, but I discovered tonight that Windows7 (64 bit) now can edit the file information on WAV files. Track numbers, titles, artists…all of it!
Which may be old news to some folks, but is new news to the rest of us. And about time they got that right.
I’m guessing that the edit process must also involve computing a checksum or something else beyond just an ‘edit’ because the changes still post damned slowly, you could recomputed a huge spreadsheet in the same amount of time.
So are you talking about Windows Explorer editing the tags or Windows Media Player?
Yes I think you could always use Explorer in Windows 7 to edit some tags, in the pane at the bottom of Explorer, or (more flexibly) right-click over the file > Properties.
I don’t know that Properties > Details tab shows all the possible tags, and it only shows LIST INFO tags in WAV, not ID3.
Gale-
I’m talking about Windows7 itself, i.e. Windows Explorer. I can tell you for a fact that neither Win7, as it was shipped or patched last year, nor WMP11, was able to edit WAV file tags at all. I had tried all over to get the ability to fix bad WAV tags (because WMP11 often ripped CDs with “unknown album” and “track 1”, etc.) and literally was about to buy a program you had recommended (dbpoweramp) after the trial version of that had worked so well for me. Except, I happened to open some files last night and not realizing I was looking at Wav instead of MP3, I said “WTF?? I just fixed that??”
This is something new. Windows Explorer very definitely did NOT do this only months ago. The fix has been quietly slipstreamed into something in the constant patches, either in Win7 or with WMP12 “touching” the system somehow. I only mention WMP12 because I allowed that upgrade to run last week as well, and I wouldn’t put it past MS to somehow entangle the two.
Sure. I just opened a folder that had an album in it. Single click to highlight and select one WAV file. Now the Properties display across the bottom of the window populates with all the WAV tag properties: Album name, date, genre, artist, contributing artist, title…all that stuff. Note that depending on how you have sized the Properties box, it shows more or fewer of them.
Now you can click on any of the Properties that is shown, and simply type in new information. You MUST select SAVE or hit ENTER in order to save the changes, if you simply select the next track, the changes you made go away.
Pretty much the same as changing the properties for any MP3 file, except Windows never did this for WAV files before.
You can also select a group of tracks, in which case the common properties show up, again same as with MP3 files. If you change something like the genre or album name while a dozen tracks are selected, you may think the system has frozen up. It can literally take a minute or two before the changes post and the system comes back to life.
On Windows 8.1 Enterprise (without dBPowerAmp) the tags in the Explorer pane and the right-click > Properties > Details tab are editable for MP3 but not WAV.
On Windows 7 Starter (without dBPowerAmp) the tags in the Explorer pane are editable for MP3 and WAV. The tags in the right-click > Properties > Details tab are editable for MP3 but not WAV.
All I can tell you is that when I asked about editing WAV tags last year, the answer was “you can’t” from everyone, except for one high priced professional app. And this year’s mention of dbpoweramp from you. Whatever changed, whenever it changed, it is possible to edit them directly in Win7 now, and that’s really great.
Now, if MS would only cure WMP of that nasty habit of “unknown…track 1” from CD’s that other software have no problem reading.