MP3 BPM Analyzer - SoftJock Audio Software - DJ, Jukebox and other music software

BPM ProScan

Scans and Detects BPM rates for MP3 files

This program will scan MP3 music files, detect the beats per minute if possible, and write them to the MP3 ID3V2 tag. This is a free program :) Look below for the download link, and instructions on how to use it. Works great for disc jockeys. Don't forget to take a look at our DJ and jukebox software with the links above.

Download : BPMProScanSetup.exe about 4 MB

Why use it?

Detecting the BPM of a song is a very math intensive (hence CPU intensive) task. Doing so "on-the-fly" while a track is playing, not only introduces latency in the playback, but can be the cause of sound drops in the playback as well. Taking that function outside of the player software, allows you to scan your files ahead of time, insert the BPM in the tag, and not have to worry about it causing any problems while you are on stage. You therefore, still have the BPM available in your songs, and can sort and search using that as a criteria, and, your DJ software will be more robust at doing the task at hand - playing the songs.

How to use it

Once you have downloaded the file to your computer, you simply double-click the downloaded file to run the install, which will guide you through the quick installation procedure. Once installed, you will have an icon on your desktop for BPM ProScan V1.0.

Once in the program, you can select the folders on the left navigation pane that you are interested in. When you click on a folder that has MP3 files in it, they will be displayed in the right file pane. If they already have decent MP3 tags, you will see the title, artist and BPM (if any is already in there).

Select the files you want to scan using the standard Window's key combos (Ctrl+left click, Shift+left click), or click the Select All button on the top. You can then click the Scan button on top, and the program will scan the selected files and attempt to determine the beats per minute of that song. If the program is unable to determine the BPM for whatever reason, it will display all zeros for that track.

Once all the selected files have been scanned, you can click the Save button, and the selected files will have their tags updated with the BPM information.

You can then load the tracks into your favorite DJ software (RockIt 2000 Pro DJ is a nice one :) ), and you should see the BPM information.

Options

There are three options on the lower left, they are:

Use Fast Scan: This will attempt to figure out the BPM using only the first minutes worth of samples for the song. It is quite fast, but not as accurate a scan.

Put Dots in Tag: This will write the tag data as xxx.xx, instead of xxxxx. RockIt can handle either/or, not sure if the other DJ software can handle the dots - try it on a couple. The ID3V2 standard doesn't really say for sure whether it should have dots (fractions), so we made both options available.

Write All Fields: This will write the three main fields (Title, Artist and BPM) to the tag. BPM ProScan has the ability to edit these fields by right clicking on the field you want to edit. If not checked, only the BPM will be written to the tag, which is the preferred method, as BPM ProScan is not designed to be a full fledged tagger.

Export

This will allow you to choose a filename, and export all the data to a text/CSV file for importation into MS Excel, or any other program that can read delimited files. You can then sort, print the list, etc.

Help

Will open this page in your browser.

Disclaimer/Notes

This is freeware, and therefore has no warranties, no telephone support, etc. If you find bugs or have suggestions, please post them to our support forum.

The frame that is written to the MP3 tag, is the standard TBPM tag. It is written in ASCII format, so virtually any program that can read TBPM, can read this. That is the main reason we wrote it, as the other programs out there seem to like to write UNICODE format, and many software packages are not UNICODE aware.

We've found the algorithm to be pretty accurate on most songs that have a dance type beat (which are the ones that most disc jockeys would be concerned with having the BPM for). On slower songs, rock, things with multiple breaks, it is so-so (but then so are the others). If you see for example, a known slow song, that turns up with a fast BPM, it is probably half of that, and you can edit it manually by right clicking the BPM field. By the same token, if you see a known fast song, with a slow BPM, it is probably double that.

Revisions:

10/13/2005 : Build 3 - Added flagging for read-only files.

Will show "ERR: Read Only" in BPM field, if attempting to write beats per minutes tag to a read-only file.

Have fun playing with it, and happy DJ'ing :)

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