If any of you have large lossless archives and encode them to lossy how do you do this?
Is there software to make this process somewhat automotized? Gradually encoding to lossy, checking the collection is complete so newly "ripped" CDs get converted?
Is there software that manages tags jointly?
Grateful for assistance.
Certain media players such as RealPlayer 10.5 and J. River Media Center can transcode lossless files on the fly as they transfer to portable devices (including the iPod), so there's no reason to keep both a lossless and a lossy copy on your hard drive.
im not sure if i get your question." checking the collection is complete so newly "ripped" CDs get converted?"
i have flac archive of my own and use fb2k 0.9.2 w/the Nero AAC to convert files i need into m4a for use on my ipod. the new lossy files are tagged using the tags from the FLAC.
iTunes>Smart Playlist>Date added is after... [date you last transcoded to lossy]
I can recommend dbPowerAMP Music Converter for this... check it out on http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm)
I use it to convert my FLAC repository to Ogg Vorbis and MP3
I understand what you are looking for but I too have not found a solution. What I currently do is maintain a number of directories.
Archive - On external HDs - this is where I store FLACs that have been transcoded and will not need to be accessed on a regular basis
New FLAC - On the PC HD - this is the directory I rip to. When it starts to get to big I transcode them with foobar to mp3 and then move the files to the external HDs
MP3 - This is were I keep all my MP3 files
I think your best bet is to go over to dbpoweramp and let spoon know what kind of features you want and would be willing to pay for. Hopefully some sort of library management will be availalbe in the future.