XLD Requested Features List, Communicate ideas about the development path of XLD Options

[lmimmo]

- Add output MP3 (along with v0, v1, v2… presets) to command-line version, as well as being able to specify external JPEG album art.

I need a one stop solution in Mac OS X to batch convert CUE + FLAC to properly tagged MP3 (including album art).

I reply to myself: duh! the GUI can already batch export, although it does not embed album art (File > Open… choose multiple CUE files).

It'd be great if it did, speaking of which I'd like to choose whether to use the art embedded in the FLAC file or a sidecar JPEG with equal name (I'd actually use the latter).

[lmimmo]

Any way not to loose per-track comments when exporting/saving CUE sheet?

I was dismayed that it was happening after adding per-track comments (in classical music) to quite a few CDs.

Or else, any way to manually edit the CUE sheets to add per-track comments that XLD will recognize, and embedd into MP3's ID3 when exporting as such?

[Larson]

Here's my features request:

- Apple Lossless bit resample options (for instance to do 24 bit->16 bit along with frequency resample which is already present).
- Option to erase original files after conversion: if I'm transcoding my lossless collection to AAC and would like to automatically delete flac from hard drive there should be an option. Same if you go Apple Lossless -> AAC it doesn't overwrite it just like it would do on Windows, even with "overwrite" setting on. Maybe there is some setting i haven't noticed.

[Hero Kid]

I have a question before I bother going into my suggestions. Is this thread still being monitored?
It doesn't look like the OP maintains the first post but I wanto know if someone capable of implementing our suggestions is still watching.

[Larson]

I have a question before I bother going into my suggestions. Is this thread still being monitored?
It doesn't look like the OP maintains the first post but I wanto know if someone capable of implementing our suggestions is still watching.

I believe it is, i made a suggestion about the option to erase original source files after conversions and it was implemented in the latest update =)

[Hero Kid]

Well these are the things I'd like.

1. Different user profiles! (I know it has been suggested already - but it's by far the best suggestion I have seen/can think of.)
2. The ability to save a .cue by default (similar to the way you can automatically save .log files)
3. The ability to tag an album details from a MusicBrainz/Discogs catlogue number of your CD. (Foobar has a plugin like this - it's great.)
4. Fix the setting "Don't prompt if multiple candidates are found" - it doesn't work for me (currently).
5. Button to cancel rip in the progress window.
6. Accurate Rip v2 support (Already got it?)
7. Drag'n'Drop of image files (Has it already got this?)

It's already a fantastic program, and with the introduction of "profiles" it would literally be my one stop converting and ripping program.

This post has been edited by Hero Kid: Oct 9 2010, 04:55

[Hero Kid]

I found a serious flaw! XLD that allows the use of AccurateRip AND the ability to edit the read offset correction.
This will result is inaccurate rips, not good, nor acceptable.

I also have a suggestion stolen straight from EAC. Once AccurateRip is activated in the user cannot change the drive offset settings.
Also can I suggest stopping XLD from defaulting back to the last drive settings used if it can't find the new drives offsets (for users with more than one drive)?

[Larson]

Does XLD has any kind of "MP4 optimize" setting? It doesn't seem to automatically do that and I can't seem to find that setting anywhere.

[mscrutchin]

My request:

- for the GROUPING tag on FLAC files to be transferred to the MP3 conversions of those files

Most of the basic tags transfer perfectly from FLAC to MP3 via XLD (ARTIST, ALBUMARTIST, GENRE, COMMENT, etc.), but the GROUPING tag does not carry over to the MP3 files when transcoding from FLAC. Perhaps it has something to do with the naming of the GROUPING tag in Vorbis Comments vs. ID3?

[mscrutchin]

My request:

- for the GROUPING tag on FLAC files to be transferred to the MP3 conversions of those files

Wow that was fast. I post this, then three days later it appears in an update. I love XLD!

[CrEOF]

It would be wonderful if XLD would read the CD-Text information from the disc and include it in the CUE file. It doesn't seem that XLD is currently reading this information, as discs which I know have CD-Text information (verified using EAC or dBpoweramp) don't shown any track titles until after the CDDB query. I'm guessing at least some of the CD-Text is being read due to the "Don't detect pregap, ISRC, and MCN" option (which I have unchecked). For some reason the ISRC never makes it into the CUE file though. Browsing through the code it appears it's intended to. Bug perhaps?

I've also noticed that XLD will sometimes include the INDEX 00 marker and sometimes not. Using EAC with the same disc/drive the resulting CUE file will often have a number of markers which XLD missed.

Once the CD-Text can be read and included in the CUE file, having the option to disable CDDB data in the CUE file would be excellent - the goal being to try and reproduce the original as closely as possible. Having the additional option to include the CDDB data in the log would be a bonus.

Currently what I am doing to accomplish all this is rip a disc using XLD to a single file, then use EAC (in Fusion) with CDDB disabled to generate a CUE file. If there is no CD-Text I delete all the extra TITLE and PERFORMER lines from the EAC generated CUE file. For the whole process I use an old USB Plextor CD-RW drive.

@tmkk Thanks for the awesome work!

[mojojojo333]

The new build - Version 20101107 (124.1) - has a good idea - multiple format encoding at the same time. This is a great idea but unfortunately there are some issues with it's current implementation.

1. It places all the encoded files into the same folder - this is extremely inconvenient. Ideally they would be placed in different folders within the output directory, and the folder names appended with the encoder setting.

2. Most annoying of all - it alters the filenames! It adds the encoder setting to each individual filename - this is very undesirable. Ideally it should leave the filenames unchanged.

If these issues were resolved and XLD behaved as I suggested (each encode to a different labelled folder), then XLD would be the only encoder required on ANY platform.

Many thanks!

[Insilin1i]

The new build - Version 20101107 (124.1) - has a good idea - multiple format encoding at the same time. This is a great idea but unfortunately there are some issues with it's current implementation.

1. It places all the encoded files into the same folder - this is extremely inconvenient. Ideally they would be placed in different folders within the output directory, and the folder names appended with the encoder setting.

2. Most annoying of all - it alters the filenames! It adds the encoder setting to each individual filename - this is very undesirable. Ideally it should leave the filenames unchanged.

If these issues were resolved and XLD behaved as I suggested (each encode to a different labelled folder), then XLD would be the only encoder required on ANY platform.

Many thanks!

I agree with this, a great feature but needs some minor changes to put them in folders and just edit the folder names.

[Larson]

Will XLD be updated for native 64 bit code?

[fadsplat]

Please, could you improve the AccurateRip reporting, like EAC. With EAC it's easy to tell if the entire album passed AccurateRip, because EAC inserts a line at the end of the log: "All tracks accurately ripped"

With XLD, you must look through the confusing record of each individual track, with all that non-useful stuff about errors that were not found. If the XLD developers would only insert a summary line at the bottom it would make checking logs much simpler.

[Billytheonion]

Version 20101117:

Fixed a disc open failure on some drives
AccurateRip summary section has been added in the log

[fmurell]

The new build - Version 20101107 (124.1) - has a good idea - multiple format encoding at the same time. This is a great idea but unfortunately there are some issues with it's current implementation.

XLD has been able to do that for some time now.

1. It places all the encoded files into the same folder - this is extremely inconvenient. Ideally they would be placed in different folders within the output directory, and the folder names appended with the encoder setting.

Again, I've been doing things this way for ages now:

%a - %T (%y) [%f]/%n - %t

Moreover, when you select multiple formats to output in preferences, you can edit the string that appears in %f. Just to make sure I wasn't losing the plot, I've just ripped the first three tracks from an album that happened to be on my desk. I accepted the defaults for the multiple decodes, so the strings would need tidying for a full rip.

CODE

Steven Wilson - Insurgentes (2009) [FLAC (level 8)]
Steven Wilson - Insurgentes (2009) [LAME MP3 (VBR-new quality 0.0)]
Steven Wilson - Insurgentes (2009) [MPEG-4 AAC (CVBR 256kbps)]

And the tracknames all read as they should, which is <track number> - <track title>.<suffix>

2. Most annoying of all - it alters the filenames! It adds the encoder setting to each individual filename - this is very undesirable. Ideally it should leave the filenames unchanged.

Works perfectly for me using the above. Maybe I'm missing something?

Edit: typos

This post has been edited by fmurell: Nov 23 2010, 01:46

[fmurell]

By far the biggest issue for me with XLD, as much as I love it and use it often, is the lack of profile selection. Switching from ripping to transcoding is a royal pain in the backside.

[fracai]

By far the biggest issue for me with XLD, as much as I love it and use it often, is the lack of profile selection. Switching from ripping to transcoding is a royal pain in the backside.

Agreed, I periodically switch between FLAC image ripping and ripping to individual FLAC and AAC tracks. Then there are the times when I want to encode that FLAC image to individual AAC. Being able to quickly switch between profiles of encode and naming settings would be a great addition.

I suppose this would be possible now by manually swapping out the prefs file, though that's less than ideal.

[fmurell]

I suppose this would be possible now by manually swapping out the prefs file, though that's less than ideal.

That's how I'm doing it at the moment, but it's not a pleasant workflow, particularly when you forget to copy the prefs back before the next session.

[fmurell]

I agree with this, a great feature but needs some minor changes to put them in folders and just edit the folder names.

See my comments above, it works fine out of the box with a little tweaking.

[kawaiigardiner]

For the progress shown, is it possible instead of using percentage to maybe say what sector is being read and whether it is retrying to read something? I'm sitting here with '2938:37' remaining and wondering what is happening - is the drive retrying many times? is is stuck on a sector or has it slowed down reading it? I hear a lot of people talk about XLD 'hanging' when in reality the lack of feedback and lack of obvious progress is giving the appearance of 'nothing happening'.

[fmurell]

I suppose this would be possible now by manually swapping out the prefs file, though that's less than ideal.

I just had a thought. Assuming the CLI version isn't horribly out of date, and it can transfer tags from files during transcodes, it would be relatively easy to write a script to transcode files to iTunes, leaving XLD to do the heavy lifting of ripping.

[fracai]

I just had a thought. Assuming the CLI version isn't horribly out of date, and it can transfer tags from files during transcodes, it would be relatively easy to write a script to transcode files to iTunes, leaving XLD to do the heavy lifting of ripping.

The CLI is very out of date (last updated over 3 years ago). I'd love it if I could rip, convert, and compare to the AR database (including checking for alternate offsets) with the CLI tool.

[fmurell]

The CLI is very out of date (last updated over 3 years ago).

I figured that, but also wondered if it mattered.

I thought that maybe the CLI just manages the transcode/encode and passing the tags, but it's the GUI that's had the most work and not the encoding engine.

Would be nice to get the author's feedback on this one.