dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

[EliC]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

Can we have an option in the batch ripper to not look up meta-data until after the rip and an option to not look it up at all unless every track is accurate/secure? This would fix the problem with potentially paying for lookups on problem discs.

[Spoon]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

Hopefully we can go live on AMG at the end of this month, give or take a few weeks.

[peterfs]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

One way to do this is to select all the files you want changed, right click and choose "Edit ID-Tag" from the menu; this selects Edit ID-Tag for multiple files provided by dBpoweramp. Simply change the the metadata you want and hit the OK button to update the files.

Or you can use MediaMonkey to select all files in an album and right-click select Properties to change tag data. One really nice feature in MediaMonkey is that you can right-click select "Auto-Tag from Web" which parses information from Amazon and updates tags automatically. And best of all, this takes the album art if available and optionally updates each file's metadata and copies the image in the album directory as folder.jpg.

In either case, once you have the tags correct, you can use the dbPoweramp Arrange Audio utility codec to rename files en masse.

Or you can do what I did and pay for lookups using GD3; this seems to be the only higher quality service currently available for batch lookups. It works out to a bit more than $0.10 a lookup depending on how many you buy and while their database is not complete (e.g. artwork), it seems accurate, at least better than freedb. I have a lot of albums and I just didn't want to have to spend a lot of time finding and patching up incorrect metadata.

I don't mean to be a pest, but Freedb is returning quite a few errors on artist and disc titles. If there were an easy way to edit artist and disc titles globally--both in the metadata and in file names--it would save hours of manually editing that data for each track. Is there any program that allows one to take a ripped disc and correct the artist and title globally?

[latefordinner]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

I don't mean to be a pest, but Freedb is returning quite a few errors on artist and disc titles. If there were an easy way to edit artist and disc titles globally--both in the metadata and in file names--it would save hours of manually editing that data for each track. Is there any program that allows one to take a ripped disc and correct the artist and title globally?

Thank you for your help.

Is there a way to edit the metadata more uniformly, as one would do in a database program? Right-clicking on each file is extremely tedious. If Freedb gets the artist name and album name wrong on a 21-track CD, for example, the user would have to right-click on every file to edit its individual artist and album data. As far as I know, there is no way to change the artist and album name globally for a given album. Are there any programs that would allow global (or at least database-like) editing? iTunes and other programs make this type of editing fairly painless.

With the manual method, even after editing the metadata, one would then have to right-click on each file name to correct the erroneous entries.

Thanks for your help.

[latefordinner]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

I haven't yet been able to convert back to a WAV, but I did try something else. I replayed the FLAC file of the same song about a dozen times. Each time, it would stutter, but it did not stutter in the same place. I therefore believe that the stuttering problem stems from Windows Vista and not from the FLAC encoding. If the FLAC encoding were the problem, then shouldn't it stutter in the same place in the same song every time?

That said, a serious problem remains, though it does not appear to be the fault of Batchripper: how does one overcome Vista's stuttering problem, which is widely reported throughout the Web?

If the rips are shown as secure they are secure 100%, accuraterip would detect stutter. Check your playback system, convert the flac to wave and play the wave, does that stutter?

[Spoon]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

If the rips are shown as secure they are secure 100%, accuraterip would detect stutter. Check your playback system, convert the flac to wave and play the wave, does that stutter?

[latefordinner]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

I have discovered a potentially major problem. Having ripped over 400 CDs, I finally managed to hook up my computer to my stereo to listen to the playback of these FLAC recordings. There is considerable stutter in the playback. This is so even for tracks that are listed as accurate rips. I have tried using straight analog output as well as output through a dejitterer to an external DAC. What can I do to ensure that the music plays back correctly?

Or is it possible that the rips were bad, even though they were shown as accurate or secure?

It is likely that freedb went offline.

[Spoon]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

It is likely that freedb went offline.

[latefordinner]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

I have discovered an additional problem with the metadata lookups. From time to time, the program (in this case using Freedb) will return large, contiguous chunks of "No metadata." For example, in my last rip of 200 CDs, CDs 50 through 90 and 190 through 200 (I am making up the numbers) returned "No metadata," but when I reripped them in a second batch, 39 out of the first 42 did successfully obtain the metadata. It's as if the lookup is timing out.

I think the key is that its a batch ripper and the user does not want to sit around and watch to cancel tracks. That is why we need more power in changing settings to skip tracks and if something can be done to skip tracks or cancel rips more elegantly (software seems to temporarily freeze when stopping a rip) that would help too.

[latefordinner]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

Is there a way to edit the metadata more uniformly, as one would do in a database program? Right-clicking on each file is extremely tedious. If Freedb gets the artist name and album name wrong on a 21-track CD, for example, the user would have to right-click on every file to edit its individual artist and album data. As far as I know, there is no way to change the artist and album name globally for a given album. Are there any programs that would allow global (or at least database-like) editing? iTunes and other programs make this type of editing fairly painless.

With the manual method, even after editing the metadata, one would then have to right-click on each file name to correct the erroneous entries.

Thanks for your help.

Any CD ripper can rip live albums, gaps are prepended to tracks so if not there...there is no pause.

To edit meta data, right click on a ripped album and select show files, select files >> right click >> edit id tags.

[Spoon]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

Certain CDs have manufacturing defects, a normal CD player might sound fine, but reading the data in a CD drive, sometimes can be a stuggle.

[latefordinner]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

I just experienced a similar problem. Batchripper had ripped 69 discs, but when I came home I found out that Windows Vista had rebooted after installing Microsoft's latest updates. When I ran Batchripper, it showed that it had ripped the 69 discs and had rejected about seven.

Ideally, I could have ripped the remaining 124 CDs--Batchripper would have simply picked up where it had left off. But I ended up having to tell it to rip all 200 CDs in the changer. If I had told it to rip 124 CDs, I feared, it might rip the first 124 CDs, including the 69 it had already ripped, stopping at disc # 124 and leaving the final 76 unripped.

I could have manually ejected all 200 CDs, removed those that had been ripped, sorted out those that had been rejected, reloaded the unripped CDs, and placed the previously rejected CDs into a pile for manual ripping, but those steps would have defeated the automated-ripping process. Was there an easier route?

Separately, there are some CDs that have one or two tracks that both Batchripper and CDRipper simply cannot rip--or that do not, in any event, appear as "accurate" when ripped. These discs seem to tend to come from multi-disc boxed sets, though I cannot say that there is a causal relationship: a large portion of my collection comes from boxed sets. I cannot see any defects on the CDs. Is it hopeless to rip these errant tracks?
:teufel8:

Hmm. Let me give you a part-actual/part-hypothetical example, Spoon. I did the following with other software, but let's imagine I'm doing it with yours:

I loaded the last 800 CDs of my sister's ~2000 CDs into one of my machines last month. I set the unit to reject discs that were damaged or missing metadata. Over a day and a half, it ripped about 650 of them and rejected about 150 (I was manually clearing the reject pile and also right-click rejecting discs that were ripping for over an hour with no progress).

I then had 150 discs that might have been rejected due to one of several reasons: a) missing metadata, b) disc damage, c) disc needs cleaning, d) temporary network outage between me and metadata providor(s) or e) unknown and/or unrepeatable cause (e.g. transient problem due to drive firmware bug). I manually check the read sides to put b and c type discs into my clean/buff pile and take care of those, returning them to the reject stacks when done.

However, I don't want to manually run the CD Ripper on the remaining 150, I want to use an automated process. And, of course, I don't want to have to pay to re-lookup these 150 either when using premium metadata.

Of course, what I want and what I get aren't always the same.

But I suspect that ripping services will have a similar workflow: first let the device sort out the problematic discs in the first run, do some quick hit cleaning/buffing (if service offered), resubmit rejected discs and then...(decision tree will differ here)...

-brendan

[Spoon]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

Any CD ripper can rip live albums, gaps are prepended to tracks so if not there...there is no pause.

To edit meta data, right click on a ripped album and select show files, select files >> right click >> edit id tags.

[latefordinner]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

When the metadata is incorrect for a particular album (a problem that seems most prevalent with Freedb), is there an easy way to edit the metadata manually? Sometimes, for example, freedb will simply make up an artist name or will throw in some kind of junk, such as "art," for the name. I would hate to have to re-rip in CDRipper each erroneous album.

Also, does Batchripper recognize live albums, which should not have pauses between tracks?

Yeah, that's similar to what I suggested a few posts back: postpone metadata lookups until a disc rip is successful. Or more specifically, postpone *premium* metadata lookups until a disc rip is successful. Where successful = all accurate or all secure.

Perhaps pre-success the freedb information would be shown, and then the premium info could be gathered and applied after success?

A slight variation of the above, which would be both a "network polite" and "lookup saving" approach, would be to use a local freedb/tracktype database cache. Support for this could be integrated directly into dbpoweramp batch ripper or it could be supported via one of the java-based local server apps. If dbpoweramp allowed the batch ripper to have configurable freedb lookup information, little to no additional coding would be necessary to allow power-users to set this up on their own.

The reject column would, of course, have no album art, but that's ok with me.

-brendan

[bhoar]

Re: dBpoweramp Batch Ripper: Discussions

Ideally, in the future I would like the batch ripper to be able to move problematic discs between the 4 different drives in my robot and see if any of them can rip the disc without my intervention. This would potentially cost 8 lookups.

One possible solution is that the metadata is not downloaded by the batch ripper until AFTER a successful rip...

Yeah, that's similar to what I suggested a few posts back: postpone metadata lookups until a disc rip is successful. Or more specifically, postpone *premium* metadata lookups until a disc rip is successful. Where successful = all accurate or all secure.

Perhaps pre-success the freedb information would be shown, and then the premium info could be gathered and applied after success?

A slight variation of the above, which would be both a "network polite" and "lookup saving" approach, would be to use a local freedb/tracktype database cache. Support for this could be integrated directly into dbpoweramp batch ripper or it could be supported via one of the java-based local server apps. If dbpoweramp allowed the batch ripper to have configurable freedb lookup information, little to no additional coding would be necessary to allow power-users to set this up on their own.

The reject column would, of course, have no album art, but that's ok with me.

-brendan