FLAC for beginners

[Lethevich]

Is it going to cause me problems to edit track names and album titles, info. directly (i.e., clicking on the folder and changing its title, or doing the same to individual .flac files) outside WinAmp? I don't always like the way it names albums and tracks, and sometimes they are too long--the ".flac" part is truncated and the filetype is not recognized. I have been changing these things after ripping.

It shouldn't be any problem, although I am not 100% how it'd affect the media library (I never use those things), but I can't imagine a rescan would take too long after renaming a few folders/files. Filenames and tags are seperate, though, but are generally ripped to have the same information in the tag and filename, so if you edit badly formatted titles out of the filename they will remain in the tag. As a result it may be worth editing them with a program like mp3tag which will allow you to edit the tags of an album and in one click transport the tag information to the filename. You can also generate a new m3u playlist with this method very easily.

Now, today in backing up some flac files to other hard drives, I'm getting error messages about file names being too long. After shortening them, they seem to work OK. Sometimes a given drive will have a problem with a particular file name length, sometimes it won't. Sometimes a different hard drive will have a problem that another one didn't have. I don't understand WTF is going on with this.

It's an OS limit imposed on files to have a max number of characters in the file tree, 256 total but I am not sure. The more subfolders they are in, the longer the tree will be. It's generally a good idea to keep filenames short due to this (for example if a folder has "symphony no.9" in the name, maybe remove the "symphony" part of that in the filename, as the "no.9" should make it obvious enough, etc).

Also, what is the .m3u file?

It's a Winamp playlist file (although I am sure other media players read it too) - they are dependant on filenames IIRC, so if you change the filenames, you need to generate a new one. You can do this via Winamp's playlist window, but it's faster to do with mp3tag.

[drogulus]

Is it going to cause me problems to edit track names and album titles, info. directly (i.e., clicking on the folder and changing its title, or doing the same to individual .flac files) outside WinAmp? I don't always like the way it names albums and tracks, and sometimes they are too long--the ".flac" part is truncated and the filetype is not recognized. I have been changing these things after ripping.

Now, today in backing up some flac files to other hard drives, I'm getting error messages about file names being too long. After shortening them, they seem to work OK. Sometimes a given drive will have a problem with a particular file name length, sometimes it won't. Sometimes a different hard drive will have a problem that another one didn't have. I don't understand WTF is going on with this.

Also, what is the .m3u file?

     The best thing is to find a program you're comfortable with and edit the folder/file names in it. The changes you make will then show up in the other programs you use, like iTunes. You aren't stuck with whatever tags the rip provided. Just change them so they work for you. I like to use Easy CD-DA Extractor because it really is easy and is a nearly universal transcoder:

     

      Ohh! See that "Berlioz" where "Munch - BSO" should be? All I have to do is type the correct entry in the Artist field on the right and that will do it. Then when I open the files in any program/player the tags will be correct. 

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

If you have a player that supports displaying any fields you want, you are free to introduce field names like you want. I personally have, besides the obvious: COMPOSER, WORK, CONDUCTOR, ENSEMBLE, PERFORMERS, LYRICS.

[drogulus]

     Can my Pod do this? If it can I don't know how to make it work.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

It shouldn't be any problem, although I am not 100% how it'd affect the media library (I never use those things), but I can't imagine a rescan would take too long after renaming a few folders/files. Filenames and tags are seperate, though, but are generally ripped to have the same information in the tag and filename, so if you edit badly formatted titles out of the filename they will remain in the tag. As a result it may be worth editing them with a program like mp3tag which will allow you to edit the tags of an album and in one click transport the tag information to the filename. You can also generate a new m3u playlist with this method very easily.

It's an OS limit imposed on files to have a max number of characters in the file tree, 256 total but I am not sure. The more subfolders they are in, the longer the tree will be. It's generally a good idea to keep filenames short due to this (for example if a folder has "symphony no.9" in the name, maybe remove the "symphony" part of that in the filename, as the "no.9" should make it obvious enough, etc).

It's a Winamp playlist file (although I am sure other media players read it too) - they are dependant on filenames IIRC, so if you change the filenames, you need to generate a new one. You can do this via Winamp's playlist window, but it's faster to do with mp3tag.

Thanks Lethe, this is very helpful information.

[SonicMan46]

Boy, last post here back in 2008 - must be something 'new' on FLAC these days - 

Now I do a lot of ripping to WAV to MP3 or download MP3 files occasionally, but to date have not gotten into FLAC (i.e. Free Lossless Audio Codec) - BUT, last night in wanting to obtain the old OOP recordings of the Beethoven Violin Sonatas (shown below), I ended up on a Russian website (paid $9) and downloaded 3 *.rar files - I was able after downloading a RAR extractor to 'unzip' each file into its many FLAC files - now I'm doing this on my Dell VISTA laptop in the den while watching an old Clark Gable & Jean Harlow film!   

Now this laptop is not an AV work station - has just Windows Media player & iTunes, neither of which play FLAC or can convert FLAC to MP3 to upload to my iPod if desired or to burn a MP3 CD-R (or to even convert FLAC to WAV to make 3 separate CDs).

So, my question(s):  1) How do I get FLAC into MP3 format (and for that matter into WAV); and 2) How do I keep the order of these files correct once converted to MP3, so if uploaded to my iPod, I won't have 3 different albums? Thus, what current programs are out there that can handle these issues, including the ID3 tagging?  Thanks for any help.   

[petrarch]

So, my question(s):  1) How do I get FLAC into MP3 format (and for that matter into WAV); and 2) How do I keep the order of these files correct once converted to MP3, so if uploaded to my iPod, I won't have 3 different albums? Thus, what current programs are out there that can handle these issues, including the ID3 tagging?  Thanks for any help.   

You can use foobar2000 to transcode between any of the formats it supports. If you have one huge FLAC file for the whole album instead of one for each track, check if you have a cue file. Foobar2000 can read cue files, and you have the option to transcode to separate files, one per track. Finally, you can also use it to edit ID3 tags.

[Bill H.]

Foobar2000 is my main conversion/listening software, and I recommend it as well. 

If you have long FLAC (or MP3 for that matter) files and you don't have a .cue file for them, you can do basic sound/track editing if you have some multimedia software package, such as Roxio Creator.  I use their Sound Editor package to insert track points for long files, and even to do some modest noise reduction and/or re-equalization on older recordings derived from 78s or pre-stereo eras.  Then you can save the music as individual tracks on your computer, or burn disks with them.   

[SonicMan46]

Thanks Guys for your responses and recommendation of Foobar2000 - I looked at the program and saw a bunch of beta releases and apologies, so was a little reluctant to give it a try, but I'm sure there would have been no problem.

There are SO MANY options out there, both free & paid - for whatever reason, I gave the program HERE a try - the interface can't be simpler and the FLAC files were converted quickly and renamed identical to their original names, i.e. I'm assuming that the ID3 tags were maintained.

Bottom line - I was able to transfer the files to my iPod which played then fine on my den speakers; burned a MP3 CD-R and will give that a try in the morning; of course all 3 discs w/ the 10 sonatas fit easily onto the 1 CD-R - 

[Opus106]

Dave, you can download the latest stable release of foobar2000 from their download page. Also, here's something to keep in mind: Ubuntu plays FLAC out of the box. To convert files (assuming you have the required codecs installed), I suggest Sound Converter.

[drogulus]

     Another thing (here I go again ) is that lossless formats are inherently gapless, that is the music coded directly to FLAC from the CD will have no gaps between tracks where the music isn't supposed to have gaps. When you make mp3s from the lossless files you can preserve the gaplessness provided you use a good LAME encoder, which the better programs like foobar and dBPowerAmp use. In iTunes you can also preserve gaplessness if you're using .aac/.m4a to transcode from Windows Lossless (Nero AAC encoding does, too, with the advantage that you can use FLAC sources, which iTunes doesn't handle).

[Sylph]

This is an old version of the software! v2011 beta was released a few days ago.

[drogulus]

This is an old version of the software! v2011 beta was released a few days ago.

     It's not available in 2008, unless I miss my guess.

     I use the Elitist Snob version. When you go to the site there's a link and a sign to warn off the peasants.

[Tapio Dmitriyevich]

Long time fb2k user. I recommend it as well. As for the audio files, use proper encoders and no bullshit. Get lame as the mp3 encoder from rarewares.org. It will be easy to use from inside fb2k. If you need lossy codecs and if you can afford better/modern codecs, prefer ogg vorbis ("lancer" has super high encoding speed) or nero m4a which is also freely available. Both seemlessly from inside fb2k.

As for the lossless source, personally I rip to 1 file per album with the cuesheet embedded into the flac file. If you do proper tagging, you may also be interested in storing tags in seperate files. I wrote a batch script for this. You drop a folder on it and it recursively exports a) all tags (of flac and tak files) and b) the embedded cuesheet to the same folder where the audio file resides. You need tag.exe and set the path to tag.exe inside the script as needed.

BTW. TAK is a better codec as flac, because of better compression plus better encoding speed. BUT, not much support outside the fb2k world. Plus, in times of 1TB+ hard disks, no one does really care if a classical album compresses to 370 or 400 MBytes.

Code Select Expand

@echo off

set tagexe=M:\Musik\foobar2000\encoders\tag.exe

FOR /R %1 %%G IN (cd*.flac) DO CALL :ExportOrigCue1 "%%G"
GOTO :EOF1

:ExportOrigCue1
if not exist "%~dp1\%~n1.cue.txt" (%tagexe% --hidetags --tostdoutn "CUESHEET" %1>"%~dp1\%~n1.cue.txt")

:EOF1

FOR /R %1 %%G IN (cd*.tak) DO CALL :ExportOrigCue2 "%%G"
GOTO :EOF2

:ExportOrigCue2
if not exist "%~dp1\%~n1.cue.txt" (%tagexe% --hidetags --tostdoutn "CUESHEET" %1>"%~dp1\%~n1.cue.txt")

:EOF2

FOR /R %1 %%G IN (cd*.flac) DO CALL :ExportTags "%%G"
GOTO :EOF3

:ExportTags
if not exist "%~dp1\%~n1.alltags.txt" (%tagexe% %1 2>"%~dp1\%~n1.alltags.txt")

:EOF3

FOR /R %1 %%G IN (cd*.tak) DO CALL :ExportTags2 "%%G"
GOTO :EOF4

:ExportTags2
if not exist "%~dp1\%~n1.alltags.txt" (%tagexe% %1 2>"%~dp1\%~n1.alltags.txt")

:EOF4

[SonicMan46]

Thanks All for the additional comments and suggestions - not sure 'how far' I want to take this digital conversion/downloading at my age, so a lot to 'digest' and mull over, I guess; I do have an Ubuntu laptop, and did not think about using it for the FLAC conversions - will give that a look soon, also.  I'm sure that some of our 'younger' and less experienced, i.e. in digital audio, members will be quite interested in these posts - thanks again!

[Sylph]

     It's not available in 2008, unless I miss my guess.

     I use the Elitist Snob version. When you go to the site there's a link and a sign to warn off the peasants.

[Sylph]

Unfortunately the best way to do it will be slightly time-consuming...

This guide details how to use EAC to its maximum effect, but it's a bit heavy going. Fortunately most of it is just how to set EAC up, so only needs to be done once.

Lossless is nice in theory, but it's a nightmare to produce glitchless rips (mainly the fault of the PC, CD drive, CD surface, admittedly), this is the best way to do it ATM.

The guide is now here:

http://rc.vc/files/docs/flac/#tracks

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Another Foobar user here (just for the record).

[drogulus]

     

     Your move....

     

     

[ClassicalWeekly]

Using EAC and LAME can be a bit of a beast (I know -- I wrote a book about it)  -- but once it's up and running it's wonderful. 

And to the OP, if you still need software for organization, you may find the Bulk Rename Utility very helpful for your files and folders, and mp3Tag for your mp3tags. Both are free to download.