Question

[mrcd]

So... I've ripped a CD to mp3. I wan to rip it to FLAC now. Problem I am presented with is this. When I put the CD in the drive all the meta data is very generic. The CD is a musical so under artist all that populates the artist fields is the person who wrote the musical.

Before I ripped it to MP3 I corrected all that data. What I want to know is this. Can I somehow source the data for the FLAC I want to do or do I have to manually enter it all over again because of the format change?

Please ask questions if you are unclear of what I want to do.

[schmidj]

Yes, you can copy metadata from one rip to another. Put enough basic metadata with the new recording so you can find the files afterwards. Then open two instances of Windows Explorer, one of the old MP3 another of the new FLAC, side by side on the screen. Open the right click "edit metadata" on each, copy and paste between them.

Another way that may be easier is to use the mp3tag software. Open both directories in mp3tag, all the tracks can be displayed, and you can copy from one to another.

Now whether that actually saves you any time over just re-entering the metadata from scratch for the FLAC files is open to question. I've been reripping many CDs that I ripped to m4a years ago, so I have the same issue. But I found that much of the time, it was faster and more accurate to do the metadata all over. My original metadata I found was often incomplete and inaccurate, and usually had no or wrong artwork, so I spent more time checking and fixing it than it took to massage the metadata from the online sources, or even to type it in from scratch. But you may have a different experience.

[garym]

Yes, you can copy metadata from one rip to another. Put enough basic metadata with the new recording so you can find the files afterwards. Then open two instances of Windows Explorer, one of the old MP3 another of the new FLAC, side by side on the screen. Open the right click "edit metadata" on each, copy and paste between them.

Another way that may be easier is to use the mp3tag software. Open both directories in mp3tag, all the tracks can be displayed, and you can copy from one to another.

Now whether that actually saves you any time over just re-entering the metadata from scratch for the FLAC files is open to question. I've been reripping many CDs that I ripped to m4a years ago, so I have the same issue. But I found that much of the time, it was faster and more accurate to do the metadata all over. My original metadata I found was often incomplete and inaccurate, and usually had no or wrong artwork, so I spent more time checking and fixing it than it took to massage the metadata from the online sources, or even to type it in from scratch. But you may have a different experience.

All good points. By the way, in mp3tag, to explain a bit more, let's say you have 500 mp3 files, all with good tags. If you then also load up your 500 FLAC files underneath these mp3 files (in the exact same order), then you can select all the mp3 files, right click, then select "copy tag" then select all the FLAC files, right click, then "paste tag". So you're doing all 500 files in a single batch rather than one by one. Again, it is important that both batches of 500 files are in the same order!