IdEst
	ID3 Editing and Scripting Tool	Sergey Poznyakoff

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8 Storing Tags in Different ID3 Versions

There are currently two major versions of ID3 format (see Intro). A file may contain tags in any format, or even in both formats at once. By default, the --set option will store data in the same format as found initially in the file. If the file did not contain any tags before running idest --set, new tags will be created in both versions 1 and 2. This choice can be overridden by setting the desired tag version with the --default-id-version (-U) option. This option expects a comma-separated list of version numbers (1 and 2) as its argument. For example, idest --default-id-version=1 will write new tags in version 1. The default setting corresponds to --default-id-version=1,2.

The --convert (-C) command line option takes a a comma-separated list of ID3 major version number and converts the existing tags to the given formats. If there is no existing data, the new tags will be created in these formats. Thus, for example:

$ idest --convert=1 *.mp3

changes the ID3 format in all ‘*.mp3’ files to version 1. The command:

$ idest --convert=1 --set artist='Jacques Brel' *.mp3

sets the ‘artist’ field on each file. Those files that already had ID3 data will be converted to version 1. Those that did not, will have it created in version 1 format.

The --id-version (-V) instructs the program to write new and changed tags in the specified ID3 format. In the contrast to --convert, this option does not affect files which underwent no changes. On the other hand, it differs from --default-id-version in that it sets new tag format unconditionally, whereas the latter does so only if the input file contained no ID3 tags.