Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

[prpixel]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

Ran a test last night on 5 Albums. It took about 6 minutes to process them. I had to play around with directory structure; the first time it grouped 3 albums from one artist into one folder. So, got that figured out and it did copy of metadata and album artwork. The one thing that it won't do is delete the old directories because they still contain that "junk" from WMP. So, it looks like a lot of time deleting old directories. I think that I'm going to do the conversion in small batches, that way I can go back and clean things up before continuing. Doing 2800+ albums, with conversion on 2600+, is going to take a few weeks.

[garym]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

Ran a test last night on 5 Albums. It took about 6 minutes to process them. I had to play around with directory structure; the first time it grouped 3 albums from one artist into one folder. So, got that figured out and it did copy of metadata and album artwork. The one thing that it won't do is delete the old directories because they still contain that "junk" from WMP. So, it looks like a lot of time deleting old directories. I think that I'm going to do the conversion in small batches, that way I can go back and clean things up before continuing. Doing 2800+ albums, with conversion on 2600+, is going to take a few weeks.

did you use the DSP "delete source file" or something similar. Look at the DSPs. I thought there was something that would do away with the empty directories left behind. Although I thought you were going to convert from the WMA to a NEW location where you had the FLAC, and keep the old WMA, at least for now. So why would you have empty directories??

[prpixel]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

did you use the DSP "delete source file" or something similar. Look at the DSPs. I thought there was something that would do away with the empty directories left behind. Although I thought you were going to convert from the WMA to a NEW location where you had the FLAC, and keep the old WMA, at least for now. So why would you have empty directories??

Yes, I'm using DSP "Delete source file". However, there are some hidden Windows Media Player files in each directory, so batch converter will not delete them. I'm actually converting from "my music" directory to an external HD. Reasoning being is that I have about 200 albums, purchased online, that are hi-res FLAC. Batch Converter is set to only convert WMA files so it's skipping the Flac albums. So, I look in each directory and if it is "empty", I delete it. If not, I cut and paste it over to the external HD. I have three additional copies of the WMA files. When the conversion is done, I'll replace two copies with the FLAC version and I'll keep a copy just in case I ever need to access the original files again. External USB drives are cheap, and I never want to re-rip these again.

The computer has been running for about 9 hours now and I'm just starting the E's. I figure it should be done around 10 am Friday. It's been going pretty smoothly. Sometimes it divides up albums if there are guest artist. Other than that, no problems yet.

[garym]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

got it. at least this is a one time job!

[prpixel]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

got it. at least this is a one time job!

Yes! I figure actually time sitting at the computer and deleting directories, copying the hi-res FLAC files manually and fixing the few mistakes is going to be 4-5 hours. Well worth the $39 cost of the software. Re-ripping would take months! I've done it three times, but never again.

[garym]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

Re-ripping would take months! I've done it three times, but never again.

I'm curious. First ripping to lossy (Yes, I did that too, over 5,000 CDs). Second ripping to Lossless? If that's true, why the 3rd rip?

[prpixel]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

I'm curious. First ripping to lossy (Yes, I did that too, over 5,000 CDs). Second ripping to Lossless? If that's true, why the 3rd rip?

First rip to lossless with DRM turned on. Second rip to Lossless with DRM turned off. Third rip because music hard drive failed and backup misplaced by wife while cleaning. Now you understand why I multiple backups. On average 2500 CD's, still doesn't equal your 10K.

[garym]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

First rip to lossless with DRM turned on. Second rip to Lossless with DRM turned off. Third rip because music hard drive failed and backup misplaced by wife while cleaning. Now you understand why I multiple backups. On average 2500 CD's, still doesn't equal your 10K.

Aha. feel your pain! (and this is why I maintain 4 backups across 3 locations). p.s. I'm still slowly but surely ripping the rest of my CDs to FLAC (that were ripped to mp3 originally).

[prpixel]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

Aha. feel your pain! (and this is why I maintain 4 backups across 3 locations). p.s. I'm still slowly but surely ripping the rest of my CDs to FLAC (that were ripped to mp3 originally).

I would rip like a dozen or two every morning while checking email and drinking my morning almond milk; just let them do their thing in the background.

Batch rip is really fragmenting some albums and artist. Even though I have it set to preserve directory structure, it wants to break soundtracks up by artist. Also, some artist that do a lot of guest appearances like Nora Jones, are being re-arranged. It's been running for about 24 hours now and encoding speed has dropped to 29X from about 150X. It's estimating 22 more hours to go. I think the big hindrance to processing time is the speed of the hard drives and having to write the output over USB3. The internal drive is a 5400RPM "green" drive. Running eight encoders at once has got to be maxing out the throughput.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

Batch rip is really fragmenting some albums and artist. Even though I have it set to preserve directory structure, it wants to break soundtracks up by artist. Also, some artist that do a lot of guest appearances like Nora Jones, are being re-arranged.

What exactly are your folder & dynamic settings (perhaps you could post a screenshot)? It sounds like your albums are being organized by ARTIST in at least some cases, when they should be organized by ALBUM ARTIST. This can happen because either (1) your folder & naming settings are set to do it that way, or (2) many of your files are missing ALBUM ARTIST tags and dBp is defaulting to ARTIST for organization.

[garym]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

What exactly are your folder & dynamic settings (perhaps you could post a screenshot)? It sounds like your albums are being organized by ARTIST in at least some cases, when they should be organized by ALBUM ARTIST. This can happen because either (1) your folder & naming settings are set to do it that way, or (2) many of your files are missing ALBUM ARTIST tags and dBp is defaulting to ARTIST for organization.

I agree. And my dynamic naming is using ALBUM ARTIST if it exists but ARTIST otherwise. Plus automatically deals with Compilations. It's here:

[IFCOMP]Compilations\[album] [IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title]-[artist][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album][IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title][]

[prpixel]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

I agree. And my dynamic naming is using ALBUM ARTIST if it exists but ARTIST otherwise. Plus automatically deals with Compilations. It's here:

Well, I wish I'd known that before I started. Didn't actually read your post until I was 90% complete. Wasn't that big of a hassle to "reconstruct" compilations. Every once in a while, there would be a album with a guest artist and it would split out just one or two tracks. I used Windows Folder Search to track down the errant tracks. Some albums like Santana Supernatural, which has a lot of guest appearances, was a bitch. Also, Some of my wifes country stuff had some issues; Vince Gill and Reba seam to be on everything. I then went through the completed folders looking for folders containing only one or two tracks; a sure sign that it was a "guest artist". I also looked for names I've never heard of before.

Overall, it took about 10 hours to correct/verify the folders. Total convert time was just under 48 hours. Found out some interesting tidbits about my collection; guest artist include Jeromy Irons, Jon Stewart and Jimmy Duranti among others.

I'm now copying the finished product, over the network, to my music server. Once the copy is done, I'll re-index and see how it works.

Thanks,

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

Just as with the recommendation to test small batches when converting, I'd suggest the same caution with moving files to the "final" destination (the network server). You discovered the ALBUM ARTIST vs ARTIST issue. That's just one metadata snafu that can pop up....unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee there will be others. And although you can edit files over your network, it's much more efficient doing it on the local HDD.

I think you'd find a good metadata editor handy when these situations arise. It makes much quicker work of all that after-the-fact editing. (Which raises one more tip: go ahead and bring your issues here first!....we would have recommended mp3tag, and all that clean-up could have been much faster.)

[prpixel]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

Can you recommend a good metadata editor? I do all my work on my main machine and the sync it over to the music server. The server runs headless in a closet. It's a fanless Gigabyte NUC look-a-like with a Celeron 2807; plenty to serve up audio.

[mville]

Re: Batch conversions of WMA lossless to Flac - preserve tags

Can you recommend a good metadata editor?

MP3Tag.

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/