5.1. Interactive mode
flactac should be executed from a linux console prompt, giving the path to the FLAC files to tag as its arguments as follows:
flactag victory.flac absent.flac
(filenames can be quoted if they contain special characters to avoid having to 'escape' these characters).
If the flactag utility does not find information for your CD, a URL will be provided to submit information for it. Often the MusicBrainz server will have information about the tracks and artist, but cannot match this up to your CD. In these circumstances, it is simply a matter of 'associating' your CD's DiskID with the correct album data on the MusicBrainz server. In other instances, you may be required to enter the track and album information into the MusicBrainz service. Once you have entered this information, you can re-run flactag, and the data should be downloaded from the MusicBrainz server.
If the flactag utility finds information for your CD at the musicbrainz server, the application's main window will be shown.
This contains three main areas:
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The 'Albums' window. This will contain a list of albums that match the DiskID for your FLAC file.
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The 'Tracks' window. This contains a list of all the tracks on the currently selected album.
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The 'Tags' window. At startup, this will contain a list of the tags currently found in your FLAC file. If there are no tags present, then an empty set appropriate for the album will be displayed. If you make changes to these tags, an asterisk ('*') will be displayed to indicate that this information has been changed.
The currently active window will be highlighted by the border and window title changing colour. To switch between the three windows, press the TAB key. To scroll around the active window, use the cursor UP and cursor DOWN keys (to scroll one line at a time) or the PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN keys (to scroll half a page at a time). Scrolling in the 'Albums' window will update the information in the 'Tracks' window appropriately.
Once the appropriate album has been selected, pressing c will copy the tags for that album into the Tags window. These tags can then be saved to the FLAC file by pressing the w key.
Pressing r will rename the file based on the settings in the configuration file (~/.flactag - this file is created automatically the first time you run flactag). Note that this facility uses the tags that are actually written to the file, so should generally be performed after the new tags have been written. This option will be unavailable if the filename and location are already correct.
Pressing q will move to the next file specified on the command line. If all files have been processed, the application will exit.
5.2. Batch mode
Alternatively, flactag can be used in batch mode to automatically check tags, write them and rename the file. Care should be taken when using these options.
The following command line options are understood:
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—discid (-d) - Display the calculated disc ID for the specified FLAC file and exit.
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—check (-c) - This option will compare the file's tags against those returned from the MusicBrainz service. A message will be displayed indicating where the tags match or not.
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—write (-w) - This option implies —check. If the files tags differ from those returned from the MusicBrainz service, the tags will be written to the file.
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—force-write (-f) - If —write is specified then tags will be written even if they appear to match those already in the file
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—rename (-r) - The filename will be compared with that specified by the rename rules, and if it doesn't match, the file will be renamed.
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—force-multi (-m) - If the MusicBrainz service returns more than one release for the DiskID of the FLAC file, then the software will not make any changes unless this option is specified. This applies to —check, —write and —rename. When multiple releases are returned, the first release found will be used to update the tags and rename the file as appropriate.
Example uses of these options could be as follows (note the use of the find option '-print0' and the xargs option '-0' to handle filenames containing spaces):
5.2.1. Report on the tags of all FLAC files
find /var/spool/music -name "*.flac" -print0 | xargs -0 flactag —check
5.2.2. Tag and rename all flac files
find /var/spool/music -name "*.flac" -print0 | xargs -0 flactag —write —rename —force-multi