mpc encoding with Plextools as a ripper

2002-12-04 13:44:40

I am sure everyone using a plextor drive is aware of the major changes in PlexTools lately.

I am going to describe the procedure I use to rip with Plextools as encode with mppenc.
I am not sure it’s the shortest and simplest but I am trying to make it one. So please any comments and suggestions…

This is written for winxp, I don’t think there is much difference for windows 2000.
About all the 9x crap I think you need top define the path in autoexec.bat instead of in the environment variables.

First Configuring PlexTools:

In the DAE tab press preferences:
In the Digital Audio extraction Tab:

File Name options>
File Name construction: %N~%T~%A~%C
DAE Error Recovery>
First combo: 5. Recover the best bytes (least errors) per sector.
Retries: 99
Maximum Errors: Unlimited

Allow Speed Down
Error Log

Pause>
Check Pause

Setting up an extractor:
Create a new directory, we will assume it is: C:\musepack\

Download and extract the following into the folder:
mpc decoder
mpc encoder
ReplayGain
Mpc batch encoder
sweep
Tag

Create a new bat file in this directory called stamp.bat. just an empty notepad text document saved with the following name.
Open stamp.bat with notepad and past the following lines in it:

tag --rentag --scheme T *.mpc
tag --comment "PlexTools 1.17 Musepack 1.14" *.mpc

Adding the folder to your path:
Right click "My Computer" and click Properties
Go to Advanced tab
Click Environment Variables button
In system variables find the variable Path, Double click it.
In the variable vale text box, ADD,I repeat ADD, do not delete anything from this line, just add the following text after the last character in the box:

   ;C:\musepack
click all the ok buttons to commit the changes.
(I am not sure if you need a restart for this to take effect)

open MPC Batch Encoder.exe found in C:\musepack
go to encoder tab.
Check Add APE tags
Click tag configuration.
In File Scheme>
Select custom and past the following text in the textbox:

   N~T~A~L

You will have to enter the correct year and Genre everytime on your own since Plextools does not allow writing these anywhere:(

for ripping a cd:

rip the AudioCD with PlexTools with the settings given above into the final directory you want the mpc files to be in.
encode the files with C:\musepack\MPC Batch Encoder.exe
I wont go into how to do that, plenty of other discussions about that I belive..

After you finish encoding and deleted the WAVs (if you want too)
You have two options:

1. open a command prompt in the folder containing the mpc files. And type:

C:\musepack\stamp.bat

2. another option is to copy stamp.bat into the folder and double click it.

issues:

1.   think its possible to convince plextore Europe to implement a more generic encoding routine into plextools?
2.   even though the folder is defined as an accessible path, I am able to run exe file from it but not bat files. Bat files require a full path…. Strange.
3.   I know this all looks like an attempt to make a windows machine into a unix machine, but scripting is such a wonderful thing, and setting up an audio video encoding machine on linux is very time consuming (maybe someone can post a guide about that, it will be a great asset).
4.   I suppose writing a small app to automate this would have been more reasonable but by the time I write it some other better solution will probably pop up
5. if plextools can be operated as a comand line interpreter then i can write a tools to automate it ( i asume the batch encoder can).

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