Batch ripping - questions

[Greg_R]

I have used dbpoweramp's products in the past for single disc ripping and am familiar with the overall quality of each rip. I want to re-rip about 1800 discs and it would be nice if that could be done in an automated fashion :D. I have a few questions:

1) Is perfectmeta available for the batch ripper? What does it cost?
2) For those who have used the batch ripper and just AMG for metadata, how much tag cleanup remained after the ripping and encoding process?
3) Will one of the small auto-loaders be adequate or is a larger machine recommended? Is there a post on the forum talking about the amount of processor required for X number of drives? (i.e. dual quad core for 8 drives, anything for 2 drives, etc.)
4) Can batch ripper encode to 2 formats (say FLAC and MP3) + include the album art in both directory structures?
5) Are the larger stand-alone autoloaders supported by BatchRipper (MF digital director series, etc.)?

Thanks!

Greg

[LtData]

Re: Batch ripping - questions

1. http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthre...ewpost&t=18100
4. Use the Multi-Encoder, I'm not sure about album art, though.

[bhoar]

Re: Batch ripping - questions

3a. An example - a friend has a 50-disc loader and my driver for it. In about a week and a half he did about 900 CDs without really changing his schedule at all. You could use this kind of schedule with similar hardware: set up a 50 disc batch in the morning before work, and then do about 100 to 150 in the evening if you set it up the next batch when you get home, mid-evening if you're not already booked and, of course, before bed. Figure do four weekdays at 150 per (600), plus 200-300 per weekend, you can do 800/900 a week without breaking a sweat with a small loader.

3b. I'd say one core per drive is probably an appropriate rule of thumb. Depending on setup, you might really only need 75% of a core per drive CPU wise, but when you start using a lot of optical drives in parallel, you end up more with hard disk IO and other IO request limitations.

5. Most of the larger MF-Digital/Mediatechnics units are supported by my driver, but I charge for those now.

There are free basic drivers for the smaller one-drive robots available on the batch ripper download page, though future updates to them I will charge for (PM me for a pricing schedule, I'll also be selling some units at consumer friendly prices starting in January).

However, since I already released the basic drivers for these, people can choose whether they want to use the ones spoon has posted for me for free or buy later versions from me. The existing free drivers covers the kodak/microboards, amtren/discmakers and primera composer units. Spoon also produced his own drivers for the baxter-type 25-disc units and the sony xl1b/powerfile (and perhaps other changer devices).

-brendan

[Greg_R]

Re: Batch ripping - questions

ltdata, you posted a link talking about AMG licenses... NOT perfectmeta availability with the batch ripper. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something?

Any comments regarding question #2? I don't mind _some_ metadata cleanup but the amount of cleanup resulting from freedb lookups is too much for this size of a project.

bhoar, PM on the way.

[bhoar]

Re: Batch ripping - questions

Perfectmeta is available for both the cd ripper and the batch ripper.

AMG is available for both the cd ripper and the batch ripper.

However, the AMG licensing is different for each ripper.

The CD ripper gets a consumer-level one-year licenses. Purchase of dbpa gets you one year, and it is $5 / additional year to re-license.

The Batch ripper license is considered a commercial license and therefore has a per lookup fee from AMG. Purchase of dbpa reference gets you 400 "free" AMG lookups, and it is about 7.5 cents per lookup after that, which you buy in packs of 100/1000/10000.

---

I'm just going through ripping my CDs for the first time in a couple of years now - as in today, using three kodak kiosk units (with three different drives in them) ganged together to a dual core machine.

I'm using AMG + PerfectMeta in the batch ripper with the knowledge that after 400 discs are ripped (as above, only 400 AMG lookups come "free" with the batch ripper), I'll need to buy an additional package of 100 AMG lookups...or do the last 100 or so of my 500 or so discs by hand using the cd ripper.

So, regarding #2...uh...I'll let you know?

That's why I skipped #2 earlier, no experience: the last time I did this rip, I was using Ripstastic! with a hacked together "tray watching" "driver" script for the Discmakers Pico 25-disc robot. I even whined about reloading that little robot 23-24 times, which led me to the current robo-obsession.

I could be doing this the easy way with one of my larger robots, but I needed to familiarize myself with the kodak units and tweak the scripts for them a bit.

-brendan

[LtData]

Re: Batch ripping - questions

I posted about using AMG and GD3 with the Batch Ripper, which requires commercial licenses. Using these services along with FreeDB and MusicBrainz, you can then use PerfectMeta.