Retrieving properties of a file name...

I

ironwall22z

My goal is to write a program in C# that will take the Artist and Title of
an MP3 file and change the name of the file to a concatenated combination of
the two. In order to do this, I am trying to find the correct object or
property to
implement. I have found information about the file name itself and the
extensions (among other things), but not specific details about an
individual file.

In case what I am explaining may seem somewhat vague, basically, in Windows
XP, you can right-click on a file and retrieve the properties of that file.
In addition, certain files that XP recognizes as having distinct traits will
respectively have their own properties available for modification in a tab
called "Summary", according to the file's extension. If a file is a text
document (of file extension .txt), it will make available fields like Title,
Subject, Category, Keyword, Comments, etc. What I am referring to can be
accessed by clicking a tab called "Summary" and a button called "Advanced",
after gaining access to the file's properties.

If anyone can help me with this, please let me know...Thanks.
 
M

Mitchell S. Honnert

The Artist and Title of an MP3 are stored in a specialized file header
called the ID3 tag. Early versions of the ID3 standard stored a small
number of fixed-width fields, whereas later versions allowed the storage of
dozens of different specialized properties, including binary data such as
pictures. (See www.id3.org for details.)

In order to read these data, you'll need to use one of the ID3 tag editor
libraries available. There is one in the Media Player SDK, but it's not
managed code, so you'll have to write a .NET wrapper. (I don't have a link,
but a search on "ID3" on MSDN should get you there.) Or...you could try out
my library. ;-) I've written a free, yet comprehensive ID3 tag editing
..NET library called UltraID3Lib. It was written from the ground up in fully
managed code and implements most of the ID3 standard's seventy-four Frames
as individual classes with properties specific to the data it contains.

If you are interested in UltraID3Lib, please go to
www.hundredmilessoftware.com and click on the UltraID3Lib. More details and
download instructions are available there. Again, UltraID3Lib is free.

- Mitchell S. Honnert
 

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