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Topic: Need a good losless to mp3 mass conversion utility (Read 7827 times) previous topic - next topic
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Need a good losless to mp3 mass conversion utility

Hi. We have all of our CD's ripped in loss-less FLAC and WMA, but with my wife's iPhone and my Pre, I find I really need them in mp3 format as well.  I have been using media monkey to do on the fly mp3 conversion, and it works OK, but moving moving a pile of songs takes a long time to do the conversions, even in on a quad core system.  And a lot of the time, we're looking to move over a lot of music just before leaving on an outing, so it's too slow for that.

So since I have a ton of storage available on my home NAS, I would like to have a parallel mp3 archive of all the music, with automatic converting whenever new FLAC or WMA tracks are added.  For the few mp3 tracks I do have (downloaded from amazon), I'd like them just copied over.  I don't want to have both versions in the same library, since at home or over the network, I'd like to be able to only see the lossless versions.  The mp3 archive would not be indexed by anyone (except itunes) and just moved over on demand.  It's important that all the metadata be converted over as well.

Does such a tool exist?  I've looked through the archives here and can't find such a tool referenced, but if I've missed something, let me apologize in advance for that.

Thanks,
mike

 

Need a good losless to mp3 mass conversion utility

Reply #1
Mediamonkey, Foobar, dBpoweramp, Winamp, and countless others all do mass transcoding.

As far as having a program monitor a directory for files to transcode, I don't think anyone has ever wanted that feature. 

Need a good losless to mp3 mass conversion utility

Reply #2
For FLAC to MP3 conversion there is flac2mp3.pl, a perl-script which maintains a parallel MP3-library. It traverses the FLAC-library structure and transcodes any new files to the corresponding MP3-library. Updated tags on files will also be spotted and transferred, without transcoding if the checksum for the sound content is unchanged. Just launch this script whenever you have added new FLAC files or updated tags.

For some reason Robin Bowes' flac2mp3.pl site is down at the moment. There you will find more information.

The present release doesn't support embedded cover art but I wrote a modified version which adds this functionality (ticket #96). The released version also doesn't copy non-flac files (e.g. mp3 or jpg-files) in the FLAC library structure over to the MP3-library but I have made a modified version which handles that too.  If you are interested PM me here on Hydrogenaudio and I will send you my version.

Need a good losless to mp3 mass conversion utility

Reply #3
Nifty, but still not automatic.

Need a good losless to mp3 mass conversion utility

Reply #4
fb2k + foo_new_file_stamper_mod.dll component
elevatorladylevitateme

Need a good losless to mp3 mass conversion utility

Reply #5
What OS do you use? If it's Linux, mp3fs is a great utility: http://mp3fs.sourceforge.net/
bliss - fully automated music library management

Need a good losless to mp3 mass conversion utility

Reply #6
For FLAC to MP3 conversion there is flac2mp3.pl, a perl-script which maintains a parallel MP3-library. It traverses the FLAC-library structure and transcodes any new files to the corresponding MP3-library. Updated tags on files will also be spotted and transferred, without transcoding if the checksum for the sound content is unchanged. Just launch this script whenever you have added new FLAC files or updated tags.

For some reason Robin Bowes' flac2mp3.pl site is down at the moment. There you will find more information.


This looks great. One way to completely automate this process would be to use Windows Task Scheduler. Just schedule the script to run every night.

PM sent, I'd love to get a copy of the script that also moves over JPGs in the folder.

Need a good losless to mp3 mass conversion utility

Reply #7
The released version also doesn't copy non-flac files (e.g. mp3 or jpg-files) in the FLAC library structure over to the MP3-library but I have made a modified version which handles that too.  If you are interested PM me here on Hydrogenaudio and I will send you my version.

Many have asked for this version (which does embedded artwork and copying non-flac files) over the years. You will find it on my ftp server:

ftp://gnypp45main.dynalias.net/flac2mp3_wPics.zip




Need a good losless to mp3 mass conversion utility

Reply #8
If you are using Linux:

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

From the site:
MP3FS is a read-only FUSE filesystem which transcodes audio formats (currently FLAC) to MP3 on the fly when opened and read. This was written to enable me to use my FLAC collection with software and/or hardware which only understands the MP3 format e.g. gmediaserver to a Netgear MP101 MP3 player.

It is also a novel alternative to traditional MP3 encoders. Just use your favorite file browser to select the files you want encoded and copy them somewhere!


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So, that will allow you to simply maintain a FUSE mount of a virtual filesystem which mirrors your FLAC archive as mp3 files. When you operate on one of the mp3 files in that virtual filesystem the system will transparently transcode the file on the fly.