How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

[witsend]

This forum and hydrogenaudio are much appreciated. As a newcomer to ripping, I have now opted for FLAC, use dMC Ref for secure ripping, MM for tag management, and have them working routinely. It will be a slog getting through the CDs but that's life. It's for home use so no professional issues at stake.

a] It's fine when CD is on AccurateRip and rip matches - move to next CD.
b] If CD is not on AR or do not match rips by others and tracks are then ripped as 'Secure', - move to next CD. [I hope I'm right to be confident on this.]
c] If the report at the end of a rip identify a few tracks as 'Insecure', what do I do - how do I get onto the next CD without delay?

So I'd like advice on the following points.

1 Can any of the rip info be saved with the rip? There is a Copy to Clipboard feature but it doesn't look very flexible. I don't want to spend hours trying to improve one doubtful track before moving on to the next CD. How can I create a list of the Insecure tracks for later investigation? Can I get this into the fields on the MediaMonkey library for instance so I can sort on this field?

2 What do experienced rippers suggest as the best methodology for dealing with Insecures? Deal with them immediately? For example, do I just keep on re-ripping with dBa? I may have missed something about corrective 'surgery' on doubtful tracks. What time limit is reasonable? Frankly if I'm losing 1 song out of 20 by Joe Bloggs, I'm not bothered but if I lose 3rd movement of a Beethoven symphony, I am troubled.

3 Has anyone evaluated the 'quality' of insecure rips? If 90% of them will sound bad to the average human ear, they deserve special attention. If only 10% would cause offence, maybe they will get lower priority. I realise this is a subjective judgement and professionals are unlikely to tolerate the question, but practical views would be welcome.

My [possibly mistaken] rationale is that if I can capture 99% of my collection accurately in the first cycle, I'll have a full repertoire for Christmas and can refine things later on. Comments please.

[Spoon]

Re: How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

On the secure settings page you can save the log file.

Generally, when I rip for any track which is not verified by accuraterip I re-rip and check the crc column goes green to show the 2nd rip matches (you might have to show it). For insecure rips, and only for those I might try a secure rip with high retries, and watch if the track can be recovered.

[bhoar]

Re: How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

Assumption: you are using a drive that has a good C2 error detect/correct implementation and proper caching control...

General answer: use the new Batch Ripper feature in dbpa V13 alpha. It can store ripping notes for each CD in the output folder.

Specific answerS:

1. Yes, use the batch ripper. It keeps notes available for all past discs ripped in the user interface (as well as storing the rip notes with the tracks). Regarding mediamonkey, I don't use it so I can't help you integrating it into the workflow.

2. Using another batch ripping tool, I'd use a three wave approach.

First wave = assess and process the good discs. I put aside discs where either the metadata was missing or there were errors in ripping and discard anything ripped so far. Then I'd go through the pile looking for any dirty or scratched CDs and give them a light fixup.

Second wave = reprocess rejects after cleaning. I run these remaining discs again hoping that the cleaning worked and/or the temporary metadata outage has passed. Those that rip correctly went into the out pile. Those with missing metadata went into the metadata research pile (for that grueling task, which I consider separate). Those with problems ripping went into the time-to-get-out-the-buffing-wheel pile.

Third wave = Last chance pass. After some serious resurfacing work on the remaining discs, I run them through again. Those that fail to rip simply need to be replaced.

3. No, but I've thought about it. Perhaps Spoon (feature request alert!) could include a tool in the batch ripper that allows a post-batch opportunity to play back the insecure/suspicious areas and give each problem area a manual thumbs up or thumbs down? Since he already tracks all sorts of debugging data there, that seems like an immediate competitive win right there.

My suggestion: run a test of 10 discs of representative disc condition (for your collection) through the batch ripper. Look at the output log data and then listen to the obvious problem areas.

Only then will you be able to formulate your own recommendation about when to put discs aside for serious cleaning/polishing/ultra-secure-ripping.

-brendan

[witsend]

Re: How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

Brendan
Thanks for a brilliant answer. Just to clarify a bit further:

Batch ripping
1 Found page with
"2: Download Batch Ripper:
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/dBpo...atch-Ripper.exe "
I assume this is enough to get the functionality you describe.
Site also says "Currently meta data is only retrieved from AMG, a smart integration of others will follow shortly". I thought my R12.3 was getting the metadata from AccurateRip, can't tell. Will metadata capture be poorer with R13 over R12.3?
2 I have at my disposal a laptop drive [Philips DVD+-RW SDVD8431] being used for ripping. It is wirelessly networked to HP PC with Cyberdriv CW088D CD-R/RW and HL-DL-ST DVD-ROMGDR8161B. Do you suppose that 2 or all 3 can be used for batch ripping or should I stick with one drive? [I'm not seeking tech complexity]

Rip quality
1 Re my a]/b]/c] grades of outcome, is Secure with an 'i' alongside reliable in your experience?
2 Which [batch] ripper tool would you suggest as backup to dBa for Insecure tracks? [Hope the answer won't be EAC [more complexity] but can probably cope with it.]
3 Looks like I'll be buying a Skip Dr Automax for buffing up CDs - well reviewed elsewhere.

Thanks again. I feel I'm getting close to be in control of this project [ a dangerous feeling admittedly!]

Bill

[bhoar]

Re: How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

You need both the alpha of the Batch Ripper as well as the alpha of R13 of dbpoweramp. The batch ripper only works with R13.

All my comments are based on the Reference version of dbpa, and the alpha R13 at that, of course, as this contains all the features.

They can both be found stickied in the Beta subforum.

Metadata is generally defined as the human readable album information, such as artist, album, song numbers and titles, plus album art. There are free and commercial providors: freedb, tracktype, musicmatch for the former; GD3, Gracenote and AMG for the latter.

AccurateRip is something else entirely - it is a technology used to help you to determine how well your drive copied the original digital audio data from your CD. It is based on special mathematical "hashes" that are stored and compared against anyone else who ripped the same disc using dbpoweramp or one or two other ripping applications.

R13 itself has the same metadata sources available as R12 - in fact it has all the same features, plus some additional ones. The batch ripper, at the moment, is limited to only AMG usage. There are some technical (and perhaps contractual?) issues that spoon is working on right now, but he has stated that he plans to add more metadata sources to the batch ripper itself.

The batch ripper can use multiple drives at once. That's half of the primary purpose right there. Try it out. You'll need to set up each drive with an accuraterip recognized disc first, of course. A few more things:

1. If you enable secure or ultra-secure ripping, it might be best to avoid using USB-connected drives for technical reasons. If using external drives, always connect them via firewire, it's almost certainly going to give a better outcome.

2. I've read that laptop optical drives aren't engineered for the same level of wear and tear as standard desktop optical drives. So, you might want to avoid using that one for the majority of the ripping.

I'm not yet up to speed on how to handle the different track quality outcomes, so I will avoid giving you direct advice there. You're going to have to do what I plan to do, which is: look at the output of some discs that report questionable rips and compare that to the audio at the questionable parts. Only then will I/you know when to hold 'em or when to fold 'em.

Regarding a backup for dbA? The answer is dbA. There is no better ripper out there, and there is no other low-cost multi-drive batch ripper out there either (at least not in the Windows world, there might be a few in linux-land). If it cannot rip without audible error (again assuming a suitable drive, good drive condition and the right kind of connection if applicable), others will have more of a problem.

Now, you may find in practice that itunes or another program sound better in one of these situations. This is probably because you haven't enabled the option in dbpoweramp's secure ripping settings to "Interpolate Unrecoverable Frames", which is how most non-secure ripping tries to deal with scratches (or is one of the strategies).

-brendan

[witsend]

Re: How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

Thanks Brendan

Your answers have given me a lot to think through and implement. Hopefully you will have lifted me to a new level of understanding and capability when I get through it.

Other members are reading this and I feel sure they will benefit too.

[witsend]

Moving from DBPoweramp to Batch Ripper

As a newbie, I've got the standard ripper [R12.3] working well in secure mode with Bhoar's good practices for managing bad rips. Simple stuff - FLAC only, ripping only, no conversion.

Now trying to move to Batch Ripper to use 2 drives on PC and one on laptop [wirelessly networked under Win XP]. On both machines, I have downloaded/installed dba R13 and also the Batch Ripper from the Sticky forum page of Spoon. This seemed quick and smooth. Both open from Start/Program and have been configured as with R12.3. Have created folder for Batch results.

At start-up, Batch Ripper screen displays 'Drives Configured: Auto Eject - Manual Load' and 'Post Load waiting for CD'.

When CD is inserted, Communicating with AccurateRip appears, then 'Retrieving metadata'. Over about 15 seconds, the track metadata is gathered, then I get messages like:
'Reject 1: Ripping error Track 21 of 22, then a display of 'X All [22] Error',

and the drive ejects CD. No ripping takes place. Same with both drives and different CDs.

Do I need to download anything else? Can you tell me what I am doing wrong/failing to do please.

[bhoar]

Re: Moving from DBPoweramp to Batch Ripper

1. Are you running under Vista or XP?
2. When you used the R13 CD Ripper (not the batch, you can verify you are not using R12 by the Rip as 1 icon in the top bar), do you have similar problems?
3. If you already had a registered version of R12 installed, did you install R13 without uninstalling R12 (that is the correct way to do it)?
4. Did you install all of the above R12, R13 and the Batch ripper as Administrator?
5. In the CD Ripper options, what communication method are you using (near bottom of dialog)? When not running as Administrator or equivalent user, you might not be able to use the SCSI Pass Through/SPTI option.
6. How are the drives connected? IDE/PATA vs. SATA vs. USB vs. Firewire vs. SCSI?

-brendan

[witsend]

Managing Batch Ripper process

Brendan
Firstly answering your Q's:

1 I run PC with 2 internal IDE drives [CDROM and CD-RW] and laptop with 1 internal drive [DVD-RW] under XP HE. Both machines operate wirelessly and ripped tracks are being stored on La Cie Ext drive [Edmini], again wirelessly. [I'm assuming this is not slower than ripping to computer's HD and then having to copy to La Cie later.] I assume this means Q5 & Q6 do not apply.

2 All ripping is done in Administrator mode of XP. [Q1 & Q4]

3 I have several times uninstalled and reinstalled r12.3 or r12.4 followed by r13 and the Batch Ripper program and now have them working. It wasn't obvious to me that it made much difference installing r13 over r12 rather than uninstalling r12, but I have followed that guidance. [Q3]

4 At present my PC is ripping Album A and Album B. I have tried to set this up by firstly creating a folder named A and a folder named B in the appropriate area of the La Cie; then with CDs inserted select each drive in turn in Batch mode, press Edit button alongside Profile button, and Set Path to the appropriate folder. I am waiting to see whether the tracks will go to the separate destinations I want or all to the last one I have selected.

5 When I press Edit, the dbpoweramp screen appears but I can't tell which version [there is no Help or 'About ....' toolbar such as one might access in a MS app to find the version]. I have seen a greyed '1' appear on one occasion which you are indicating is r13, but I don't know how to reproduce this. Is this crucial and there a problem here?

6 I will try to monitor whether the error frequency is higher in batch mode compared with normal r12 Secure mode both with CDs found in AR and CDs that rely on Secure passes - too early to say at present. [The quality/stability of the drives may be a bigger variable.] If I can get 3 drives putting tracks where I want them, then it's a useful step forward. However at least one CD failed under batch mode that had been recognised previously in r12.

7 Regarding identification of errors/Insecure, they can be spotted by selecting track 1 and hovering the mouse for dba info, then arrow through the tracks but this is slow. There is a page of results that appears with r12 but I think this disappears if the setting is to eject the CD after ripping.

The data 'dumped' by the batch ripper does not seem to be a lot more useful though I accept that a combined listing of rips is achieved. As far as I can tell, this can only be obtained as Unicode text in Notepad or equivalent and the info cannot be pasted into Excel or similar in order to sort the tracks and create a Re-Rip list of failures. This to me is a logical way of managing problems - it is the insecure tracks that will take up a lot of time, based on experience so far.

If you can spot any mistakes I'm making in trying to use the batch ripper, esp point 5 above, I'd be grateful.

Bill

[EliC]

Re: How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

I would suggest investing in a CD repair kit for discs with errors. Visually inspect them for label side damage. If there is none, do a repair. Its much faster and more successful then attempting to secure rip a disc with scratches.

[bhoar]

Re: Managing Batch Ripper process

Ripping to a network drive will almost always be slower. Doubly slower if you do it over wireless. Sorry.

There's a recent option somewhere in R13 or the associated codecs to perform ripping to the local hard drive, then pass the locally ripped data to the encoder which writes to the network drive. That should be less slow than ripping directly to the network drive. I suggest searching for the word "local" (as a guess).

I don't understand what you are doing in #4 above: if your configuration is set up correctly, dbpoweramp (both the cd ripper and the batch ripper) will automatically compute the right pathnames without you having to keep changing them.

In #5 - if Rip As 1 (greyed out or not) isn't showing up at all in the cd ripper when you click edit, then you are running the batch ripper R13 with the cd ripper R12. Which will be a big problem, I think.

In #6 - batch ripper just calls a hidden instance of the cd ripper (one per drive) and uses whatever cd ripper setting you have related to burst/secure/etc., so there should be no difference..

For number 7, the batch ripper keeps track of all your results. In the bottom half of the pane, there is a drop down box for each batch session. When you pick a session, you can look at the graphical results in the top tab of the bottom section or the textual results in the bottom tab of the bottom section.

If the data there is sparse, you haven't properly configured the batch ripper.

-brendan

[witsend]

Re: How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

Thanks again.
Now have the batch ripper working well. Outcomes are presented well even if I have not found an easy way to convert them directly into an excel sheet [or similar] to manage failed rips. Have found it simplest to create an excel file manually with one row per album in which AR, S[ecure], I[nsecure] and M[issed] tracks are counted and bad track numbers recorded.

Useage became easy once I found that 'Edit' in Batch Ripper leads to dba Ripper which, when closed, leads back to Batch mode for start of rip. Once a batch starts, selective ripping is not possible. Help info on these simple processes would be useful.

Re the naming of folders, you are right and I now rely on dynamic naming of dba.

Having processed about 150 CDs, I now have to deal with a pile that declare 'No Meta Data' due to age or production method. I assume that deselection of 'Eject if NMD' option will make this possible.

Then I'm left with the other pile with I[nsecure] and M[issed] tracks. I have learned from this forum that if my Automax cleaning won't solve the problem, there is probably no solution. Is there an option of simply copying the tracks from the CD to the relevant folder? These residual tracks would be uncompressed but not too numerous, possibly of poorer quality, but can be tested by listening. Otherwise one scraps either the track or the whole CD [if it is a complete work].

Overall view: I'm delighted I went the dBa route even though I still have a lot to learn.

[Spoon]

Re: How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

Retry those cds with no metadata, freedb has been added to Beta 2 which might have those cds.

[witsend]

Re: How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

Re freedb and no meta data:

Yep, a lot have now gone through as good as gold - I knew there had to be a reason!

[bhoar]

Re: How Best to Manage My Ripping Schedule

Now, you may find in practice that itunes or another program sound better in one of these situations. This is probably because you haven't enabled the option in dbpoweramp's secure ripping settings to "Interpolate Unrecoverable Frames", which is how most non-secure ripping tries to deal with scratches (or is one of the strategies).

I retract this recommendation. You will have to test with a damaged disc to figure out if this feature handles damaged frames better or worse when enabled with your equipment and music.

-brendan