Mirror entire library to another format?

[dsdreamer]

Hi,

I am a licensee of dBpoweramp and use the batch converter utility to convert from FLAC to a format suitable for my iPOD.

The initial conversion of a large library is not a problem, but keeping track of incremental updates to the FLAC library is difficult. The object is to mirror any changes in the loss-less master library to the lossy slave library that will be read by iTunes.

What I would like is a function similar to a programer's makefile, that would detect if there are new sources, or updated sources and 'build' my lossy library for me without me having to manually keep track of this (and without performing redundant conversions on already converted files).

It seems to me this would be a superb new feature for dMC some day. In the meantime does anyone have a good approach with scripts on a Windows platform?

--dsdreamer

[bhoar]

Re: Mirror entire library to another format?

You are requesting a "Skip conversion of this track if output file exists" type of dsp Effect, correct? That does sound like a great idea. I just looked and was surprised it wasn't there already.

-brendan

[dsdreamer]

Re: Mirror entire library to another format?

A dspeffect would certainly get the job done, but would be a bit less user-friendly than the idea I had in mind.

I think this usage model is relatively common, and should be explicitly supported as a feature of the program:

As a user, all I care about is that my two file libraries are equivalent and that every lossless file has an up-to-date lossy equivalent. From a UI perspective it could look something like Windows XP/Vista SyncToy, except that instead of file copy operations it would handle dMC conversion operations with all the usual options for conversion.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx

Another nice thing to be able to do is set up a mirror definition and add it to Windows Scheduled tasks, so that sometime in the middle of the night, any outstanding music file conversions get automatically done for me.

Implementing something like this as a dspeffect would be possible, but then it should be something like "convert only if target is missing or older than source". And if you do it that way, only geeks will find it and use it, whereas if it is a UI feature you can use it to draw in new customers who want a "set and forget" type of operation. Of course, doing it my way would require way more development work.

--dsdreamer

[bhoar]

Re: Mirror entire library to another format?

Implementing something like this as a dspeffect would be possible, but then it should be something like "convert only if target is missing or older than source". And if you do it that way, only geeks will find it and use it, whereas if it is a UI feature you can use it to draw in new customers who want a "set and forget" type of operation. Of course, doing it my way would require way more development work.

Do remember too that collections/chains of dspeffects can be saved via a dspeffect profile. So perhaps some common operations could be set as pre-set profiles in the music converter...

-brendan

[dsdreamer]

Re: Mirror entire library to another format?

Okay, good point. If you ever get a dspeffect that does what I am looking for, I would be an eager beta tester!

--dsdreamer

[bhoar]

Re: Mirror entire library to another format?

Mostly, I'd just like to see spoon say "good idea, I'll look into it."

-brendan

[Spoon]

Re: Mirror entire library to another format?

Not possible in a DSP effect. Try this select all files >> Convert and when asks to overwrite select 'No To All', only new files are converted.