FLAC for beginners

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Not really ontopic, but some input for you.
I do everything with fb2k. Rip with fb2k (or download), do basic tagging via freedb, change tags due to my preferences, finally I let fb2k automatically sort into the media libraries path:

if has Album Artist= "Various" tag:
Files go to ...\Classical\_Various\<album name>\

if not (example):
File(s) go to ...\Classical\Shostakovich, Dmitri\Symphony No. 8 (Sanderling - BSO)\

Of course everything is very conditional. Organisation into the file system is not too important because of the database backend. Also, as much booklet info as possible is kept. Least I have is a front cover, but often I keep the booklet as well. There's a plugin for columns UI which lets it display easily. E.g. in case of booklet pdfs (you get them from Chandos) I convert pages to jpeg quickly, in order to be able to have it displayed in fb2k. I use a software called "universal document converter" for this, but I think this can also be done with pdfcreator printer driver, this should be able to output pdf or tif etc...

[mc ukrneal]

Not really ontopic, but some input for you.
I do everything with fb2k. Rip with fb2k (or download), do basic tagging via freedb, change tags due to my preferences, finally I let fb2k automatically sort into the media libraries path:

if has Album Artist= "Various" tag:
Files go to ...\Classical\_Various\<album name>\

if not (example):
File(s) go to ...\Classical\Shostakovich, Dmitri\Symphony No. 8 (Sanderling - BSO)\

Of course everything is very conditional. Organisation into the file system is not too important because of the database backend. Also, as much booklet info as possible is kept. Least I have is a front cover, but often I keep the booklet as well. There's a plugin for columns UI which lets it display easily. E.g. in case of booklet pdfs (you get them from Chandos) I convert pages to jpeg quickly, in order to be able to have it displayed in fb2k. I use a software called "universal document converter" for this, but I think this can also be done with pdfcreator printer driver, this should be able to output pdf or tif etc...

How do you rip with foobar? I cannot even see this as an option on any menus (using 1.1.6).

[Opus106]

How do you rip with foobar? I cannot even see this as an option on any menus (using 1.1.6).

RTM: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Ripping_CDs_with_Foobar2000

[mc ukrneal]

RTM: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:Ripping_CDs_with_Foobar2000

Thanks. I was looking for a 'rip' button or command, but it is under open drive. Now I see it.

[Lethevich]

Woe!

I discovered an old 5 disc set I ripped has become corrupted at some point (every track uniformly thinks it's 3 hours long). Re-encoding fixes this but I will lose my tags in the initial decode to WAV. I also can't even keep the diacritic marks (the works are French) in the filenames, then convert filename to tag because FLAC's front end (at least my version of it) doesn't work with any filenames containing even mildly exotic characters, so to decode or encode I would need to alter the filenames manually or just wipe them.

The future wasn't meant to be this tedious

[drogulus]

Woe!

I discovered an old 5 disc set I ripped has become corrupted at some point (every track uniformly thinks it's 3 hours long). Re-encoding fixes this but I will lose my tags in the initial decode to WAV. I also can't even keep the diacritic marks (the works are French) in the filenames, then convert filename to tag because FLAC's front end (at least my version of it) doesn't work with any filenames containing even mildly exotic characters, so to decode or encode I would need to alter the filenames manually or just wipe them.

The future wasn't meant to be this tedious

     Have you tried reencoding the files with a different program? I stopped using FLAC front end years ago because it's too single purpose for me.

     

[Lethevich]

     Have you tried reencoding the files with a different program? I stopped using FLAC front end years ago because it's too single purpose for me.   

Non, I'm terrible with scripting, so only know the Googlable generic strings used for ripping directly to flac with EAC, and things like that

[drogulus]

Non, I'm terrible with scripting, so only know the Googlable generic strings used for ripping directly to flac with EAC, and things like that

     Any of the major well known programs will do what you want, with the exception of iTunes. You can use Winamp or dBPowerAmp, for example. Load the files and transcode to another lossless format. You might have to copy and paste odd filenames if they don't come through correctly, but I haven't had trouble with French titles. You'll need to experiment a little but it will work.

[Lethevich]

Danke!

[Gurn Blanston]

     Any of the major well known programs will do what you want, with the exception of iTunes. You can use Winamp or dBPowerAmp, for example. Load the files and transcode to another lossless format. You might have to copy and paste odd filenames if they don't come through correctly, but I haven't had trouble with French titles. You'll need to experiment a little but it will work.

With the non-English characters in tags, make sure when you set up the options that you chose to use ID3 tags in Unicode format. The Unicode means that it recognizes things like ü and á... The free version of dBpoweramp works perfectly for what you want. That's the reason I got it to start with.

[drogulus]

    Yeah FLAC front end is a fossil, really. I stopped using it for the same reason HAL9000 did.

[Opus106]

You might have to copy and paste odd filenames if they don't come through correctly, but I haven't had trouble with French titles.

I don't know about other programs, but MP3Tag lets you copy tags -- all of them -- in a batch and transfer them to other files. It was so wonderful to see, when I had to re-rip some discs due to a single corrupted file (OCD and all that), I simply copied the tags (of the 96 files [guess the works!]) from the corrupted batch and simply pasted them on the new ones.

[drogulus]

I don't know about other programs, but MP3Tag lets you copy tags -- all of them -- in a batch and transfer them to other files. It was so wonderful to see, when I had to re-rip some discs due to a single corrupted file (OCD and all that), I simply copied the tags (of the 96 files [guess the works!]) from the corrupted batch and simply pasted them on the new ones.

     Obviously you refer to the 96 lost Kazoo sonatas by Hieronymus Ambergris. At long last the world will hear and understand.....

[Opus106]

     Obviously you refer to the 96 lost Kazoo sonatas by Hieronymus Ambergris. At long last the world will hear and understand.....

Indeed.

[Lethevich]

I don't know about other programs, but MP3Tag lets you copy tags -- all of them -- in a batch and transfer them to other files. It was so wonderful to see, when I had to re-rip some discs due to a single corrupted file (OCD and all that), I simply copied the tags (of the 96 files [guess the works!]) from the corrupted batch and simply pasted them on the new ones.

wat. I use that app all the time but never noticed that feature ;___;

[Gurn Blanston]

Well, this is only peripherally a question about FLAC, really it's about... App..... dammit, Apple Lossless. I have a friend who uses Apple stuff and I want to send him a piece of music. I use XRE Code II to convert formats with, and when I chose 'Apple Lossless' as a target format for the FLAC conversion, the resulting file was actually an M4A file. I figure it has to be lossless since it's even bigger than a flac where most m4a's that I've had are <> the size of a 320 MP3. So is that the real deal? My friend will be able to deal with that file and it will also be lossless if he wants to burn it to audio?

[Opus106]

Well, this is only peripherally a question about FLAC, really it's about... App..... dammit, Apple Lossless. I have a friend who uses Apple stuff and I want to send him a piece of music. I use XRE Code II to convert formats with, and when I chose 'Apple Lossless' as a target format for the FLAC conversion, the resulting file was actually an M4A file. I figure it has to be lossless since it's even bigger than a flac where most m4a's that I've had are <> the size of a 320 MP3. So is that the real deal? My friend will be able to deal with that file and it will also be lossless if he wants to burn it to audio?

Yes, it's likely the real deal. (I say likely because I haven't 'seen' the file. ) MP4, which is a container format, has the extension .m4a when using codecs like ALAC and AAC. All my Apple Lossless files have that extension.

[Gurn Blanston]

Yes, it's likely the real deal. (I say likely because I haven't 'seen' the file. ) MP4, which is a container format, has the extension .m4a when using codecs like ALAC and AAC. All my Apple Lossless files have that extension.

Well, that's good enough for me, Navneeth. I guess I was expecting the 'F' to turn into an 'A' and was taken aback when it didn't....

Thanks!

[mahler10th]

I recently bought a download of Atterberg by Jarvi from Chandos in FLAC format.  The CD itself, when released on 01 March 13, is an SACD.  When I burn the FLAC  files to CD, does that also make the CD SACD, or must I buy the CD for that quality?  Reason I'm asking is I'm messing around with audio hardware, and hope to get an SACD unit over the next couple of weeks.  Thanks for your help.   

[SonicMan46]

I recently bought a download of Atterberg by Jarvi from Chandos in FLAC format.  The CD itself, when released on 01 March 13, is an SACD.  When I burn the FLAC  files to CD, does that also make the CD SACD, or must I buy the CD for that quality?  Reason I'm asking is I'm messing around with audio hardware, and hope to get an SACD unit over the next couple of weeks.  Thanks for your help.   

Hi John - probably cannot answer your question, but a Hybrid CD/SACD has 2 layers; the CD layer is the standard 700 MB of the original 'red book' CD standards; the SACD layer is similar to a DVD w/ 4.7 GB capacity.  So, if you are 'burning' your FLAC files to a standard CD-R, this would be just a 'regular' CD.  Now whether your download had both the standard CD & also the SACD data is uncertain to me, and not sure if the FLAC codec can be used to compress the SACD data?  Not much help but will look forward to others' responses - I've been ripping & burning for years (both standard CDs and DVDs) and always want to learn more!  Good luck - Dave