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Topic: Automating MP3 conversion (Read 4200 times) previous topic - next topic
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Automating MP3 conversion

I have started ripping my CD library using FLAC format, as my main music archive.
Once done minor adjustments are performed: tags editing and cover art.
As the FLAC archive will have its MP3 counterpart for portable devices usage, I was wondering if there's a tool (command line would be fine as well) to automate generation of MP3s.
The tool should:
- scan the FLAC archive (folders & subfolders)
- generate MP3s only for new/changed FLACs (since last pass), creating the same folder/subfloder structure

Any idea?

 

Automating MP3 conversion

Reply #1
Since you do not mention any OS, should you use linux, there is the wonderful mp3fs filesystem which produces a virtual MP3 directory tree out of your flac archive and does the flac-mp3 conversion on-the-fly when accessing the files. It works very good for me. Since the resultant MP3s are aften written to slow flash memory of portable devices, the format conversion does not bog the copying procedure.

http://khenriks.github.com/mp3fs/

Automating MP3 conversion

Reply #2
Since you do not mention any OS, should you use linux, there is the wonderful mp3fs filesystem which produces a virtual MP3 directory tree out of your flac archive and does the flac-mp3 conversion on-the-fly when accessing the files. It works very good for me. Since the resultant MP3s are aften written to slow flash memory of portable devices, the format conversion does not bog the copying procedure.

http://khenriks.github.com/mp3fs/

Forgot to mention : Windows 7

Automating MP3 conversion

Reply #3
Since you do not mention any OS, should you use linux, there is the wonderful mp3fs filesystem which produces a virtual MP3 directory tree out of your flac archive and does the flac-mp3 conversion on-the-fly when accessing the files. It works very good for me. Since the resultant MP3s are aften written to slow flash memory of portable devices, the format conversion does not bog the copying procedure.

http://khenriks.github.com/mp3fs/

Forgot to mention : Windows 7


Robin Bowes' flac2mp3.py, hasn't been updated for a while but variations are still in wide use, and as a Perl script easily adapted for your needs.

Note by the way if only tags have changed on the "master" FLAC side, you don't want your tool to actually re-encode the audio portion, just update the tag differences, which is exactly what this tools is designed to do.

Here's a version that adds some missing features - tag-stored graphics and non-audio files - but I believe it may be based on an older-than the most recent version of Robin's original?

Finally, I believe the VortexBox project is where more recent updates/adaptations on this idea have been taking place, and perhaps their conversion scripts are also based on the same historical one from Robin. Note that although they claim to be an open-source project they're not really, I think you have to actually install the product (e.g. in a VM) in order to get to the relevant scripts, I haven't found an accessible code repository.

PS if you haven't got Perl on your W7 box (say via MSYS or Cygwin), I highly recommend Strawberry in portable mode.

If you don't know Perl but want to start learning it, Padre is a good IDE/editor for noobs, in which case the not-too-old but much easier DWIM distro is the way to go.

Automating MP3 conversion

Reply #4
Hans, thanks for your reply.

Will the mentioned tools use a database to keep track of new/changed/unchanged flacs?