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	Onyx Tagger

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30-May 2007 : Onyx 5.1 is available.

Overview

Onyx 5.1 is a Windows application for reading and updating tagged mp3 and wma audio files. The application was developed over several months of hobby time and finally reached a working state by late July 2006. Onyx 5.1 replaces the old V4 which could only process restricted types of tagged mp3 files. Onyx is planned to be "general purpose" in that it can potentially process any type of tagged file (the technical notes describe this).

Onyx can currently read and update most popular types of tagged mp3 files and it can read (but not yet update) wma files. Only download and use this version if you are familar with using "beta" release software.

Onyx is planned to provide different "views" of the contents of tagged files, but the only working one at the moment is a "grid view" (see the following pop-up image) which presents a simple and familar way of bulk editing tag data.

Onyx 5.1 Grid Viewer Control

Editors exist for the different types of frames within tagged files. Click the following pop-up images to see samples of the text and track-number frame editors.

Technical Notes

Onyx 5.1 is being created using Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework version 2.0. Onyx only uses standard controls to avoid dependencies upon any 3rd party grids or other controls (Onyx V4 used the commercial TrueDB Grid from ComponentOne).

Onyx 5.1 uses a plug-in technique to find and load controls that implement the IViewerControl interface. Such controls are expected to know how to view (and possibly edit) the results of parsing tags from files. The main application scans folders of files, builds a summary of the parsing results and passes it to the view controls. Each control will display and manipulate the data in whatever way it wants. The first plug-in viewer under construction is the "grid viewer" which displays the data in a compact spreadsheet format for quick and simple editing.

The grid viewer contains further editors that allow you to drill-down into the tags and frames of individual files. Onyx uses a plug-in architecture to find and use editors for different tag frame types. The FramesManager project (a part of NTag) contains a dozen UserControl derived classes that implement the IFrameEditor and know how to edit specific frame types. There is one editor for text frames, another for picture frames, another for musician credits, and so on.

Download

Onyx 5.1.msi (818KB) - Setup file for the Onyx 5.1 application. You will need the Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package (a free 22MB download) to install this application

Version Notes

Version	Date	Notes
5.1.0.5	20‑Jun‑08	The tag type icon now correctly shows if an ID3 V1.x frame exists. The media frame now uses a specialised editor instead of the generic text editor. A Tools \| Processor Options menu now opens a dialog specifically designed to edit the options for each tag processor (they are not persisted yet). A Clear command will clear or reset the contents of selected cells. File scan processing has been broken into dedicated classes with a much simpler and more logical structure. A unit test project has been created for Onyx. A new Picture Manager dialog can bulk assign pictures to tags. A sample Tool is provided but it doesn't do anything yet. Hash code calculation bug in RowEditorWindow fixed.
5.0.0.5	10‑Sep‑06	A terrible bug was fixed: An audio file would be corrupted when it was copied to a new file for tag update. The copy buffer was not updating, so the same 10K block of data was copied continuously to the output file. The About dialog shows version numbers.
5.0.0.4	13‑Aug‑06	The Onyx grid editor no longer has a Pic/Lyric editor as it's subsumed by the general purpose frame editor. The save options processing has been totally replaced with a class of properties that control saving and are displayed in a Property Grid.
5.0.0.3	30‑Jul‑06	PictureFrame editor included (implemented in the NTag FramesManager library). One-to-Many frame editor included, which is currently the InvolvedPeople and MusicianList frames (implemented in the NTag FramesManager library).