Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Primera's current offerings fall into the medium sized robot category. They'll definitely be the way to go if the batch ripper works for your needs and you need corporate warranty support.

-brendan

[PlanetMongo]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Rather than try to look at what you do now in detail, I'll take a simplistic approach with the question: can the Batch Ripper, with one or more non-automated optical drive(s) (built-in or external - we're ignoring the disc manual loading labor for now), give you the end results you want without per-disc manual intervention at the keyboard?

No idea, honestly. Batch Ripper doesn't appear to be supported using the Plasmons, but they're dead in the water at the moment anyway... :/

Ok, all the above digested?

Not even close.

If the batch ripper can do this for you, then your use of changers to automate the hand-loading part could be replaced with any devices that fit the batch ripper device model, either other changers or robots, correct?

I believe this is correct. I mean, with the current process, I can hand load through the slot if I really had a lot of time to work with it, but loading through the carts and then having the machine scan everything is much faster/efficient... Unfortunately, the mechanisms are the problem. They get out of alignment frequently (twice/three times a year) and cost big bucks to "fix".

I'd recommend two to four medium sized robots (for a total of four drives) for the kind of work you do.

Currently running with 2 robots (2 drives in one, 4 drives in the other) across a SCSI interface. However, due to some weird.. bug.. in the driver? Point software? Haven't pinned it down, but if a certain condition occurs with the drive scanning a disc while another is reading, it causes audio skips as the device seems to time-out for a second. Result: Shitty quality audio and have to rerip if I catch it. The solution has been to just use one drive and suffer, but it's an overnight batch and hasn't been too much of an issue.

For Batch Ripping I also recommend ripping to a lossless format (such as Wave, or FLAC), then overnighting the conversion to mp3/wma - possibly you could do it in one step (you would have to use the multi-encoder, but this complicates your filenaming by x25

What I currently do is rip to .wav and make sure the names are correct. Using a manual process, I rip using EZ-CDDA Extractor because it gives me an easy way to do my filenames correctly without an extra dialog box (unlike the dbpoweramp cd ripper.. :( a directly editable filename box might be awesome here.. ) I then set-up the multi-encoding in dbpoweramp batch converter with the bitrates I need and using the [origfilename] and appending whatever format code I need at the end. Easy Peezy once I got it down. (If I had any request, it'd be the ability to create an encoding "profile" with where I could add my 5 (soon to be 6) encoding formats to with checkboxes. Default to all, but with the ability to uncheck bit-rates I don't need if necessary.. Occasionally our back-end transcoder fails (I have no idea what they're using on the back-end) and I have to re-encode, for example, just the 128kb file, but it's easier for me to just have it re-encode everything rather than dig through and just do one. Anyway, I figure if I got serious enough about it, i'd just write a wxPython app or similar that would just call the encoder via command line stuff... On the other hand, I'm not being paid as a developer, so I'm on the fence about doing "real" dev work for "free" (the app would be able to pull metadata from the db and generate xml, encode the audio, setup ingestion queues, ftp files, etc.. Basically a gigantic script, but that's "real dev work" to me... )

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

PlanetMongo -

I think you missed my initial point which was to skip using changers and robots temporarily and try your hand at setting up the batch ripper and using it. That is, install dbpoweramp reference as well as the batch ripper, with the batch ripper configured to use multiple optical drives (using the default "Auto Eject - Manual Load" driver which does not require automation hardware) such as built-in or external (e.g. USB) optical drives.

Can this setup be tweaked to do all of the non-physical-automation tasks you need? If so, then pursue finding the automation hardware (changers or robots) that will be work for your workloads with this software. If not, then there's no point in pursuing dbpoweramp as a potential direction.

-brendan

PS - Also, a clarification: when it comes to disc (and tape) automation, the term "changer" is used to apply to devices where every media is individually addressible (e.g. your plasmon devices or the sony xl1b units can be told to get the disc in position 132...) whereas "robot" is somewhat less clearly defined, but I find it is usually applied to devices that handle discs in bulk (e.g. stacks or spindles) where each disc is not individually accessible, but rather accessed from the top (or bottom) of a stack.

[PlanetMongo]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

PlanetMongo -
PS - Also, a clarification: when it comes to disc (and tape) automation, the term "changer" is used to apply to devices where every media is individually addressible (e.g. your plasmon devices or the sony xl1b units can be told to get the disc in position 132...) whereas "robot" is somewhat less clearly defined, but I find it is usually applied to devices that handle discs in bulk (e.g. stacks or spindles) where each disc is not individually accessible, but rather accessed from the top (or bottom) of a stack.

That's interesting. They call ours "robots" in the service agreements, but every disc is accessible. Basically, it scans everything and mounts each disc as a directory in, say, Z:\ (user selectable). So if I have 100 discs in the changers, I have 100 directories in Z. If I browse to a specific disc in Explorer, the mechanism will pull the disc and load it into one of the drives for access, which a little 'downtime' for the swap-read. I suppose this would be the issue with bulk stacks and how that gets managed: how does the system know what the disc is (I'm guessing this is where the AMG, etc comes in) and how would I reassign naming conventions on the fly... This really could be something I can't get around this way... It's a nice thought, though.

[dbuser]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

I just downloaded dbpoweramp with batch ripper and media changer support, unable to make it work with my sony vaio media changer, am I missing something (beside IQ!), thanks!
dbuser

[fphredd]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Hi Brendan,

Remember the MF Digital Ripstation you provided drivers for? Well, after a brief hiatus, been ripping away happily and suddenly having issues with pickups from the tray post rip. Seems to only be happening on the left tray, if that means anything. Can't predict when, but generally after somewhere btw 10-30 discs, it tries to pick up twice, then ends the batch with a COM error. Any idea what would cause this issue, and do you have any suggestions????

Thanks for any help!

[fphredd]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Brendan,

Ooops, forgot to mention in the "suddenly" part, it did have some issues with some purchased from the band live Phish discs that ended up loading two at a time at some point. Don't know if this makes a difference, but wanted to mention it.

Thanks again...

[fphredd]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Well, the above issue seems to have resolved itself, so feel free, Spoon, to delete my previous two posts if you see fit.

As my machine seems to be having occaisional "issues" and I still have about 3,000- 4,000 discs to rip, I'm wondering if it's possible to use the MF Digital EC Series or the MF Digital Scribe SA Series.

Thanks for any feedback.

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Well, the above issue seems to have resolved itself, so feel free, Spoon, to delete my previous two posts if you see fit.

As my machine seems to be having occaisional "issues" and I still have about 3,000- 4,000 discs to rip, I'm wondering if it's possible to use the MF Digital EC Series or the MF Digital Scribe SA Series.

Thanks for any feedback.

What's the name of the driver you're currently using again?

-brendan

[fphredd]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

What's the name of the driver you're currently using again?

-brendan

"_MF-Digital Ripstation Two or Four Drives (Test For Bill Sxxxxl 2)"

xxxx'd out part of my name...

[bhoar]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

"_MF-Digital Ripstation Two or Four Drives (Test For Bill Sxxxxl 2)"

xxxx'd out part of my name...

The driver might work as-is with these other units.

If they don't: cost of driver (if any) will depend upon status of previous payment, whether you resell service, if you plan to use multiple machines etc. Contact me via email.

-brendan

[fphredd]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

What's the name of the driver you're currently using again?

-brendan

The driver might work as-is with these other units.

If they don't: cost of driver (if any) will depend upon status of previous payment, whether you resell service, if you plan to use multiple machines etc. Contact me via email.

-brendan

when/if this machine dies (any day, week, month, "hangs on" forever) I will. Just wanted to be sure it can be done in case the need arises for another purchase.

Thanks Brendan!

[skolapper]

Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Id actually love to get in on this if theres any possibility of doing so i.e. if someone wants to back out. Im going to have plenty of time for maybe the next 6-7 weeks after which Ill be off for a while.

[flodderator]

Re: Discussion of Automated CD Loaders

Hello,

i got a cheep Panasonic LF-J100 Jukebox (4 CD drives and robotic for 100CDs)
It is SCSI controlled.
Are there any possibility to use it with Batch Ripper?

Flodderator

[olskool]

DTP-1000 scsi to serial conversion notes

Thanks to DarkBane I was able to get my dtp-1000 running off the serial port yesterday. Here is the link in case anyone wants to follow along.

http://blog.tinyenormous.com/2009/09/28/cd-robot-v-2-0-adding-serial-control-to-an-old-scsi-cd-duplicator/

I have a few questions:
Has anyone figured out a bigger command set? Especially the disc loaded command.
Has anyone else run into a problem where the machine stops responding to the serial port after issuing the "R" command?
And lastly, how many people are out there working on these things? I was amazed to see that not only did other people still possess these, but that they were also working on modernizing them!
Keep it up dBPoweramp forums!