Author Topic: Help transcoding mass amounts of music  (Read 4393 times)

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Offline jrgp

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Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« on: November 13, 2009, 03:32:25 pm »
So I've got roughly 30 GB (like 3000 songs) of music, and only a 16GB iphone. My music is a combination of FLAC, OGG, WMA, and MP3. It needs to be either mp3 or aac. And for it all to fit each file needs to have around 128kbs bitrate.

And before you people start chanting that I got my music via torrents/limewire, the majority of it is from ripped cd's, and the rest is from amazon's mp3 service, magnatune's cd library, and various albums my friends have sent me.

But yeah. I don't care what the app is or if it is for *nix or windows. How can I convert all this music easily? I've tried a few apps but they've crashed/failed/missed certain tags.

Any advice would be helpful.
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Offline danmer

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2009, 04:36:08 pm »
dbpoweramp is all you should need. Tag&Rename if your tags are in a really bad condition

Offline jrgp

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #2 on: November 13, 2009, 04:39:35 pm »
Tag&Rename if your tags are in a really bad condition

You see that's the thing. My tags are in perfect condition, but sometimes transcoders'll skip them or screw up the album track order. I need them preserved.

I'll check out that software you linked to. Thanks.
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Offline Hair|Trigger

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #3 on: November 13, 2009, 05:50:26 pm »
why not just put the stuff on that you want to listen to?  I cant say I know anyone with a fairly large library that listens to every single song in there. 

Also 128kbps is really bad quality, I cant stand music like that..  try converting to VBR quality (mp3). it tries to maintain a listenable quality and save file space by constantly changing the bitrate.  I'd go with ~256kbps VBR

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Offline Farah

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #4 on: November 13, 2009, 06:59:27 pm »
also DO NOT TRANSCODE LOSSY FORMATS like ogg mp3 and aac. you will completely fuck up the quality permanently. only transcode your lossless formats such as FLAC and ALAC etc.
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Offline STM1993

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #5 on: November 13, 2009, 08:38:48 pm »
Have you tried Switch?

It's got all of those formats listed in your post and I don't think it screws up the quality.

Download's at the bottom of the page, it's a free software.

Offline VijchtiDoodah

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #6 on: November 14, 2009, 02:54:00 am »
Tag&Rename if your tags are in a really bad condition

You see that's the thing. My tags are in perfect condition, but sometimes transcoders'll skip them or screw up the album track order. I need them preserved.

I'll check out that software you linked to. Thanks.

MusicBrainz also works. I haven't used it in years so hopefully nothing much has changed, but as far as I remember it'll compare your songs to a database and identify each one, then fix all of their tags.

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Offline Mangled*

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #7 on: November 14, 2009, 09:47:22 pm »
And before you people start chanting that I got my music via torrents/limewire, the majority of it is from ripped cd's, and the rest is from amazon's mp3 service, magnatune's cd library, and various albums my friends have sent me.

What difference does it make? Are you making a point that using torrents and p2p software is somehow methodically inferior to ripping from CD's and using legal downloads? Sometimes you baffle me... I can't even begin...

Well my advice is download it all again through p2p and torrents because that'll mostly be 128kb/s optimized mp3 files, which is precisely what you want.
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Offline a-4-year-old

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #8 on: November 14, 2009, 09:54:28 pm »
If they're ripped CD's why would they be FLAC?
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Offline {LAW} Gamer_2k4

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #9 on: November 14, 2009, 10:37:36 pm »
If they're ripped CD's why would they be FLAC?
To preserve the CD quality? Whenever I get a new CD I rip it to FLAC right away...
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Offline a-4-year-old

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #10 on: November 14, 2009, 11:07:48 pm »
But CDs are already really lossy and you won't lose any more than you already have going from live    > CD
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Offline Atticus

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #11 on: November 15, 2009, 03:14:26 am »
What is a CD?
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Offline Farah

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #12 on: November 15, 2009, 07:44:05 am »
But CDs are already really lossy and you won't lose any more than you already have going from live    > CD
What are you talking about? CDs are not lossy at all... unless you want to call 44.1KHZ sampling rate and 16 bit depth lossy...
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Offline croat1gamer

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #13 on: November 15, 2009, 08:08:01 am »
SUPER
Awesome program, lots of codecs and stuff, many possibilities to convert music, depending on how much you want the quality to be, use between 32 and 40khz, if you want the size to be really small use 16-20khz.
Reducing the properties between 1/2 and 3/4 would be good as you need to have really sensitive ears to notice any bigger differences,
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Offline a-4-year-old

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #14 on: November 15, 2009, 08:47:45 am »
But CDs are already really lossy and you won't lose any more than you already have going from live    > CD
What are you talking about? CDs are not lossy at all... unless you want to call 44.1KHZ sampling rate and 16 bit depth lossy...
Compared to vinyl it is fairly lossy.
If we hit the bullseye the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate. -Zapp Brannigan

Offline jrgp

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #15 on: November 16, 2009, 05:37:37 am »
Switch is working. Thanks - http://jrgp.us/screenshots/convert.png

If they're ripped CD's why would they be FLAC?
To preserve the CD quality? Whenever I get a new CD I rip it to FLAC right away...
Yeah depending on what it is I usually do this. Unless of course if it's something I think sucks but still want to have, like Nickelback or Lady Gaga.

But CDs are already really lossy and you won't lose any more than you already have going from live    > CD
What are you talking about? CDs are not lossy at all... unless you want to call 44.1KHZ sampling rate and 16 bit depth lossy...
Compared to vinyl it is fairly lossy.
Except vinyl is a shit medium... The records don't last long, and after a few plays they start to get all crackly and pop.
« Last Edit: November 16, 2009, 06:13:43 am by jrgp »
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Offline Farah

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #16 on: November 16, 2009, 05:11:20 pm »
But CDs are already really lossy and you won't lose any more than you already have going from live    > CD
What are you talking about? CDs are not lossy at all... unless you want to call 44.1KHZ sampling rate and 16 bit depth lossy...
Compared to vinyl it is fairly lossy.
what
do you understand what lossless means? lossy/lossless is not equal to the cd/vinyl...

cd's and vinyls are both usually encoded in lossless formats, and the only difference is that cds are digital and vinyls are analog. you can get mp3(i.e. lossy) music files transcoded from a vinyl losssless source or a cd lossless source.
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Offline Mangled*

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #17 on: November 17, 2009, 08:16:06 pm »
Farah do you encode vinyls often?

When you die will you have your information encoded on your headstone in a lossless format?

I heard the Egyptians were great at encoding tomb walls with lossless formats.
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Offline a-4-year-old

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Re: Help transcoding mass amounts of music
« Reply #18 on: November 17, 2009, 08:59:46 pm »
It appears you guys have a hardon for FLAC almost as much as audiophiles have a hardon for vinyls.
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