Order of converted files

[Peter11]

When converting classical music files from CD to MP3, prior to downloading to my portable player, I want to keep the movements of Concertos, Symphonies etc. in their correct order. Can anyone suggest how I can do this? I use dbPowerAmp converter, with the registered version of Power Pack.

[Wayne]

Re: Order of converted files

Are the Concertos, symphomies etc. treated as different tracks on the CDs? If they are, could you not change dMC so that it prefixes created MP3 file names with a 2 digit track number.

Wayne

[Peter11]

Re: Order of converted files

Thanks, Wayne.
Yes, each movement of the symphonies, or concertos is treated as a separate track, but I am not clear what dMC is.
I usually name the file by album, artist and then track. I would not want to start with track number before album, which would make the music more difficult to find.

Peter11

[Wayne]

Re: Order of converted files

dMC is dBpowerAMP's Music Converter. In what way do you want to keep them in order? How are you looking for the files? Do you have a particular music program which you use to play them on your PC?

Wayne

[Peter11]

Re: Order of converted files

Once converted, I download the music files to a portable MP3 player (Jukebox - like an iPod, but in fact made by PoGo). The files are arranged in styles of music folders, with subfolders for composer and further subfolders for the particular eg. concerto. I would then like to be able to be sure that I can listen to each movement in the correct order.
Peter

[xoas]

Re: Order of converted files

How to best achieve this depends a lot upon your listening habits, your portable player, what other resources you have available, and the amount of time and patience that you are willing to devote.
Easiest is simply to make sure that each file name is arranged so that the files will automatically arrange themselves in alphabetic/numeric order. So you could make sure that the file name for each track reads album-artist-work-movement # (followed, if you like by the movement description-e.g. allegro). This will work fine if you never use random play (if you did, your player would be starting with any old movement of any old piece).
If your player supports Playlists, you could organize each separate piece as a Playlist and load the Playlists and supporting mp3 files and just play the playlists. This would assure that each piece gets played in its entirety.
If you have the right wave editing software you can glue together the movements in order so that each piece is a separate mp3 file.
You can achieve a similar result with dMC and the Power Pack. Load the cd you are ripping from in your drive, open dMC and get your Freedb track info. Then Click on the Options menu arrow and select Standard CD Player Emulation, and click on Audio CD Parameters. Here you will see a listing of each track on the cd in order. Find the last track for the piece you are ripping and delete every file after that on the cd. Click on OK (the deleted tracks will disappear from the dMC screen. Then click on Rip As One. If the piece you are ripping is the only piece on this part of the cd you can go ahead and rip to mp3 and your piece will come out as a single file. If there are one or more pieces before the piece you want to rip then make a note on your new screen as to the starting point on the cd (in minutes and seconds) of the piece you are ripping. Then navigate to the Rip With Options menu, click on the DSP effects button and select Trim. Use Trim to prevent pieces earlier on the cd from ripping. Then rip your piece as a single track. (As an alternative, you could use Trim to cut off both everything before and after your piece, this would avoid the steps involving deleting later tracks but you would have to do the math involved in figuring how much to cut off at the end).
Again this will insure that each piece is ripped in its entirety. But you would have to decide whether to rip a complex work (like The Four Seasons) which is made up of smaller works. For optimal flexibility you could rip each component piece but then make sure that you title the files so that they appear on order (e.g. "Vivaldi-Four Seasons-Concerto 1 Spring", "Vivaldi-Four Seasons-Concerto 2 Summer" and so on).
Hope this helps.
Best wishes,
Bill Mikkelsen

[Peter11]

Re: Order of converted files

Many thanks, Bill and Wayne - I think this subject is now exhausted - I will follow the advice given.
Peter