Incremental mp3 mirror

[david_syer]

I have now ripped all my CDs to flac, and fixed the laughably bad track meta data on the most serious cases. So I switched on the mp3 mirror in order to have something to play on my iPhone. All fine (but slow obviously).


I plan to switch the mp3 mirror off again when it's finished the first pass, so that next time I rip a new CD there's no danger I'll have to fix the meta data twice. Is this a valid concern? What happens to the mp3 mirror if I change the flac meta data on a single disc - do I get two copies? If I de-activate the mirror and then re-activate it, will it update incrementally (i.e. only the new or changed tracks)?

[Ron Olsen]

david_syer said:

I have now ripped all my CDs to flac, and fixed the laughably bad track meta data on the most serious cases. So I switched on the mp3 mirror in order to have something to play on my iPhone. All fine (but slow obviously).


I plan to switch the mp3 mirror off again when it's finished the first pass, so that next time I rip a new CD there's no danger I'll have to fix the meta data twice. Is this a valid concern? What happens to the mp3 mirror if I change the flac meta data on a single disc - do I get two copies? If I de-activate the mirror and then re-activate it, will it update incrementally (i.e. only the new or changed tracks)?




My experience with the mp3 mirror has been mixed. It's great once you get all your CDs ripped, get the FLAC tags and cover art just the way you want them, and then do a massive mirror of the FLAC files to mp3.


It's not so great when you rip a new CD and just want to mirror that CD to mp3 -- the mirror process rescans your entire FLAC library, looking for changes to FLAC tags or cover art and remirroring those FLAC files that have changed since the last mirror.


If a FLAC file is remirrored, due to tag or cover art changes, the old mp3 file is replaced -- no duplicate copies.


Several users, myself included, have found this process to take a huge amount of time, even if nothing has changed. Andrew says this process should only take a few minutes if nothing has changed, but that has not been my experience.


I would much prefer having a way to just mirror the newly-ripped CDs, without having the mirror process rescan my entire FLAC library.


I now use dBpoweramp Music Converter on Windows to mirror FLAC to mp3s for newly ripped CDs. You can specify the exact directories and files you want converted to mp3. Laser precision instead of a baseball bat. See http://www.dbpoweramp.com for details. Well worth the $38 for the dBpoweramp Reference R14 package, which also includes the best CD ripper I have yet found.

[david_syer]

Interesting, and disappointing as well. I don't mind payng $38 if it's so good, but I do mind using Windows. I guess I'll just suck it up. At least if I understand what you are saying the mirror process will only re-copy tracks that changed or a new, even if it takes a while to do it.


What about the original question: is it OK to switch the mirror off most of the time, and only switch it on when s few new CDs have been added. Will that incur any worse penalty in terms of rescanning?


Is it OK to stop the mirror process while it is still copying (this is the third day now, and I might want to shut it down and see if it's affecting my playback, which is still spotty)?

[Ron Olsen]

david_syer said:

Interesting, and disappointing as well. I don't mind payng $38 if it's so good, but I do mind using Windows. I guess I'll just suck it up. At least if I understand what you are saying the mirror process will only re-copy tracks that changed or a new, even if it takes a while to do it.


What about the original question: is it OK to switch the mirror off most of the time, and only switch it on when s few new CDs have been added. Will that incur any worse penalty in terms of rescanning?



I think it's best to do all your CD rips with auto-mirror to mp3 turned off. That way, you can fix errors in the FLAC tags and get the cover art you want. Once your FLAC tags and cover art are the way you want, then mirror those FLACs to mp3.


I would never switch the auto-mirror on, but just manually do a mirror to mp3 after I'm satisfied that the FLAC tags and cover art are perfect.



Is it OK to stop the mirror process while it is still copying (this is the third day now, and I might want to shut it down and see if it's affecting my playback, which is still spotty)?



Yes, it should be OK. If you later do a manual mirror, it should pick up where it left off.

[andrew]

I leave the mirror on all the time. That way as I update tags and cover art they get updated in the mirror. Even if the mirror takes some time on your system its OK. If you rip 4 CDs in a row it will only run the mirror once.

[Ron Olsen]

Andrew said:I leave the mirror on all the time. That way as I update tags and cover art they get updated in the mirror. Even if the mirror takes some time on your system its OK. If you rip 4 CDs in a row it will only run the mirror once.


Checking the "Enable automatic mp3 mirroring" box causes the mp3 mirror to run when a new CD is ripped. When it has scanned your entire FLAC library, it stops.


So if you change FLAC tags or cover art for an existing album, but do not rip a new CD, the mp3s for the album will not be automatically updated with new tags or cover art. You have to click the "Start mp3 mirroring" button. Having "Enable automatic mp3 mirroring" checked does nothing for you in this case.

[dandaw66]

Hi David,


I had a very similar question on a very recent post:


http://vortexbox.org/forum/hel.....d-art-etc/


My VBA is new with a very out of the box config, and mine definitely does not mp3 mirror just the new CDs, it runs through all my 600 albums , seemingly updating some flag on every individual mp3 file, resulting in the process taking hours, not minutes as Andrew indicates it should. Plus of course then backup takes a long time as every mp3 has changed.


So, far now, similar to Ron, I use VB to rip to FLAC, but use Windows Media Player to rip to mp3 (its free) then copy across. I did use dBpoweramp for the FLAC rips that VB is not so good at (well to be fair, where the on-line databases give mixed results) and you need to play with the tagging (compilations, classical), but I used the trial period of 30 days to do my whole collection. Not sure if I'll need it going forward - for the odd poorly tagged VB FLAC I will use mp3tag - which again is free.




Saying that, I will PM Andrew just to ask politely for him to re-look at the mp3 mirror code as I'd much prefer it jsut works as he says it should.




Danny


(listening to my brand new amp/speakers: Arcam A18 with KEF Q500s + SB Touch & VBA Mini. Nice)

[avalx]

I do the ripping with VBA and if I want flac converted to mp3 I use xrecode: http://xrecode.com/. Great utility to convert from/to almost any format http://vortexbox.org/wp-content/forum-smileys/sf-cool.gif