ASF Tag Editor

Most files have some sort of code or details hidden underneath, so developers or analysts can know more about them, or simply for safety reasons. For instance, audio files also come with related details to the author and copyright. You can view and edit these sets with Windows default features, or specialized applications like ASF Tag Editor.

The application can run right after it’s downloaded, but before doing so, you need to make sure that your computer is fitted with Java Runtime Environment because it’s a required component for functionality. It can be carried around on a thumb drive, to use on other computers, without worrying that the target PC gets affected in any way.

With the main window up, all that’s left to do is load a file to view and edit its tag. Unfortunately, you need to rely on the browse dialog, which becomes a little difficult to use, especially because supported formats are not filtered. Drag and drop is not supported, and there is no context menu integration for a faster approach.

Disappointment might shortly kick in unless you haven’t paid attention to the name. This is because the application can only work with files like ASF, WMA, and WMV. Sure enough, it lets you load any kind of file, but editing isn’t possible, even if the one you import is an audio file of the supported type.

The number and variety of fields you get to manage also leave more to be desired. The title, author, copyright, description, and rating are the only ones you get to view if already filled in, and edit. You can lock them individually, so you don’t accidentally hit the clean button and remove everything. Saving is done on the spot, but without batch processing, it can take a while to process an entire audio collection.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that ASF Tag Editor comes with good intentions, but it feels rather incomplete, starting with the poor files support, and ending with the small variety of tags you can edit. Moreover, deciding to update the tags of an entire audio collection quickly becomes a pain, because batch processing is not possible.