Riff tag cli

[mikehirst]

I have been using dBpoweramp for just over a month now. It's now one of the small number of tools I use every day. I use dBpoweramp primarily as a tool for adding, deleting and editing infotags in wav files. In particular I am interested in using dBpoweramp from the command line (cmd.exe using winXP Pro). I have been looking for a tool to edit tags in place (i.e. without copying to a new file). I've playing around with dBpoweramp for the past few days and have arrived at the following string, which seems to work

CoreConverter -infile="%infile%" -outfile="%infile%" -convert_to="Wave" -tag="tag1=value" -tag="tag2=value" etc.

setting the infile and outfile to the same value allows me to do in place editing, whilst setting the convert_to value to Wave means no change.

I have tested the files after editing and can see no change in sample count (wavecompare.exe form Karsten Ensinger - http://www.mrichter.com/cdr/files/wavecomp.zip - has been an invaluable tool here).

I am working with a body of 900+hrs archive material broken down into some 1800+ wav files. I have supporting metadata in an xml database which I would like to write as RIFF info tags.

I can use xslt to write a script to write tag info using the syntax indicated above. My question then has be, is this method 100% reliable; is this the best way to perform in place editing of RIFF tags; are there other (better?) ways do do command line editing of RIFF tags?

[Spoon]

Re: Riff tag cli

I see nothing wrong with your current method (if not efficient). If your program can access com objects (thnk visual basic, or c#) you can easily tag directly through our scripting object.

[mikehirst]

Re: Riff tag cli

Thanks for the reply. I didn't fully appreciate the true power of the scripting functions. I just had a quick play around with the sample vbs script on the dBpoweramp site and I managed to get something rolling quite quickly. I don't know vbs or c++, but I can see how useful they could be in this context.

The command string I quoted in my first post is just one line from a longer bat file. I'm reluctant to ditch this 'cos there's a lot more going on, but I'll certainly consider using vbs or c++ for any future projects.

[turnkit]

Re: Riff tag cli

Mike, thanks for posting this. It's VERY VERY HELPFUL!

FWIW to anyone else, instead using xslt I just use a spreadsheet like Excel (libreoffice) to create a cell formula that makes a command string I can put into MSDOS -- like this:

=char(34)&"c:\Program Files\dBpoweramp\coreconverter"&char(34)&" -infile=CASWP"&G2&".wav -outfile="&CHAR(34)&F2&".wav"&CHAR(34)&" -convert_to="&char(34)&"Wave"&char(34)&" -tag="&char(34)&"artist="&E2&char(34)&" -tag="&char(34)&"title="&F2&char(34)&" "&" -tag="&char(34)&"comment="&"Cassette tape conversion by www.TapeArchives.com"&char(34)&" -tag="&char(34)&"track="&G2&char(34)

So where the previous three columns contain Artist, Title and the Unique sequential number that the dbpoweramp Batch Ripper uses I end up with something like:
"c:\Program Files\dBpoweramp\coreconverter" -infile=CASWP12345.wav -outfile="Title.wav" -convert_to="Wave" -tag="artist=Artist" -tag="title=Title" -tag="comment=converted by turnkit" -tag="track=12345"

I then copy and paste that directly into a DOS command line window, or put them all into a batch file and run them. Viola! From having a spreadsheet listing all the contents with their serial numbers I now have wav files tagged.

Now if only the batch ripper would let me set the UNIQUE numbers manually and allow choosing DECREMENT vs. INCREMENT on them I could be much more efficient.

Thanks Spoon for such very useful tools.