Workflow for ripping large CD collections

[socistep]

Hi All

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I ripped my collection on quite an early version of vortexbox, I think the ripping quality has improved since then - however on my rips there was a lot of manual work required to correct the collection of about 600 CDs, it was very much a case of quantity/time v quality. I did debate whether it was better to have manual ripped with dbpoweramp and get the tags 100% as I wanted them from the start but with the vortexbox the CD collection was boxed and in the loft a lot quicker!!

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Now on new CD's it works well but there are manual tagging required, mainly with 'unknown artist' and when genre/year/cover art is wrong but its quite a minimal overhead.

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generally on my collection I am still correcting year and genre however I decided to concentrate on my 'Top Rated Tracks' as opposed to the entire collections.

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I use mp3tag as my main editor via wine on Ubuntu, I also have used bliss and know that Dan the owner of bliss is working on some good stuff which will improve and automate genres for example

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Cheers

Ian

[malibujeff]

Very good information.* Thanks for posting.

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Ron,

If I edit the ripit config to store the ripped CDs in an artist/album/ hierarchy, will it change all of the CDs I have already ripped or will I have to manually change them?

[Ron Olsen]

malibujeff said:


If I edit the ripit config to store the ripped CDs in an artist/album/ hierarchy, will it change all of the CDs I have already ripped or will I have to manually change them?


Changes to /etc/ripit/config will apply only to new CDs that you rip.

To change the directory structure for previously ripped CDs, you have several choices:

1. Do it manually.

2. Install bliss (http://www.blisshq.com) and let it reorganize the structure for you. *bliss is a paid app and will require a purchase after an initial number of free fixes.

If you restructure the /storage/music/flac directory, you should also restructure the /storage/music/mp3 directory for mirrored mp3 files, or delete the mirrored mp3s and have the mp3 mirror regenerate them for you (costly in processor time, but less costly in personal time).

You'll also have to have SBS "clear library and rescan everything" when you're done.

[marcellevi]

Jeff-
I had to manually reorganize both FLAC and MP3 directories to the Artist/Album hierarchy. It took about 1 hr to do 38 Artists/100 Albums in both folders.

Any more than that, and I would have been looking for some type of automation. It goes fastest if you create all the new Artist Folders first in FLAC, then copy them all (empty) to MP3. Then just drag-and-drop the existing Artist-Album folders into the proper Artist Folders. Lastly, rename to chop off the Artist- portion (for both FLAC and MP3 directories).

I ran the Mirror script, but it didn't re-transcode anything.
Marcel

[kwatson703]

I must be more of a n00b than I thought, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get permissions to add tags to my flac files.* I've tried mp3tag, but the flac folder says it cannot be opened for writing, and when I try the files folder, mp3tag says there's nothing there to be found.* I've also tried chmod +rwx and rebooting VB, but permissions didn't seem to change.

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What am I doing wrong?

[marcellevi]

You're sure your attempting to edit /files/music/flac (not /music/flac)?

[kwatson703]

Well, I can modify the files in /files/music/flac, but then after mirroring to mp3, trying to access them from a Windows machine with Windows Media Player is terrible.* Tags only survive on a few tracks of an album, so that when I search for "other libraries" I get one or two tunes with proper names and cover art, and the rest are "unknown artist" etc.

I have double-checked the albums, tracks, and cover art from the Windows machine using mp3tag, but somehow that doesn't translate to the mp3 copies.* And of course, WMP can't play flac files.* Even worse, mp3tag can't "see" the mp3 copies to just fix them directly.

Is this an error in mirroring or are some of the flac files not completely tagged?*

My goal is one-click simplicity for my wife on her Windows machine.* She should be able to just open WMP, click on an album, and set up her own playlists.

[Ron Olsen]

If you modify tags in FLAC files, you have to rerun the mp3 mirror to get the updated tags in your mirrored mp3 files.

If you change the FLAC directory structure, you have to change the mirrored mp3 directory structure to match the FLAC directory structure, and then rerun the mp3 mirror to get the mp3 tags updated to match the FLAC tags.

[kwatson703]

I tried to "dummy-proof" my process by deleting all the mp3 files first, before modifying the flac files.* Then I ran the mirror process and then tried to access them from the other computer.

[Ron Olsen]

Then your mirrored mp3 files have the same tags as their FLAC equivalents.

You can check this with mp3tag -- point it to files > music > flac ... for the FLAC files, and files > music > mp3 ... for the mp3 files.