How do I get PerfectMeta tags AFTER ripping?

[fastfwd]

I have a few hundred albums in ALAC format with no tags, either because they were originally ripped to tagless WAV and then converted to ALAC, or because they were ripped on a PC with no internet connection. They all have track numbers in their filenames and are sorted one disc per directory, so I can easily construct each album's list of tracks in the correct order.

How do I get PerfectMeta tags for those files without spending 25-30 hours re-ripping the CDs? If I have to insert each CD in the drive so dBpoweramp can read the TOC or something, that's cool, but I REALLY don't want to spend 3 minutes on each disc again.

And...

Similarly, I have some albums that were ripped to ALAC using iTunes, so those rips were never checked against the AccurateRip database. How do I check those ripped albums against the AccurateRip database now, without re-ripping them?

Thanks.

[dbfan]

Re: How do I get PerfectMeta tags AFTER ripping?

Both require that your CDs are ripped with dbpoweramp

[fastfwd]

Re: How do I get PerfectMeta tags AFTER ripping?

Some of the discs WERE ripped with dBpoweramp, but with no internet connection for communicating with the CD databases... But I guess you mean that PerfectMeta and AccurateRip can only be used while actually ripping the CD.

Is that a deliberate limitation, or is it possible that Illustrate will make it possible to run ripped files through the PerfectMeta algorithm or check them against the AccurateRip database?

[Spoon]

Re: How do I get PerfectMeta tags AFTER ripping?

The software is not designed to lookup after ripping.

[fastfwd]

Re: How do I get PerfectMeta tags AFTER ripping?

The software is not designed to lookup after ripping.

Yeah, I noticed. Ok, I'll write a script for fb2k or something.

Thank you.

[Porcus]

Re: How do I get PerfectMeta tags AFTER ripping?

Personally, I think that Discogs is a pretty good tag source, so whenever I need to retag, I use Mp3Tag or foobar2000 to retrieve from Discogs (except when Discogs changes its interface, i.e. twice a day or so :-/ ). But then, whenever I need to retag a CD I have ripped, then I have already used PerfectMeta upon ripping.


Anyway, you can speed up a fair bit:

1) Insert the CD.
2) Wait for metadata to appear.
3) Hit Rip. Then skip track, skip track, skip track etc.

I think you should now have each 'track' in a lot of well-named well-tagged unplayable file. Then transfer tags from these to your old ones. (You could for example use Mp3Tag -- its copy + paste function works on tag sets. Just be certain that you have the target files in precisely the same order as the source files.)

[fastfwd]

Re: How do I get PerfectMeta tags AFTER ripping?

Thanks, Porcus. I ended up using Foobar2000 to check CRCs against the AccurateRip database and to get tags for those discs that passed the AR check, and then I used dBpa to re-rip the discs that didn't pass. At that point I had 1000 discs originally ripped with dbPa/PerfectMeta, 200 re-ripped with dBpa/PerfectMeta, and 300 with only adequate tags and no artwork.

The 300 had all passed AR, so I knew they'd re-rip very quickly. Rather than spend 3 minutes hunting down art and fixing tags for each disc, I just re-ripped them all with dBpa/PerfectMeta. Took a few days, but now all my tracks have a full set of reliable tags and most of them have artwork.