Omni Encoder 1.0 Released, A graphical, multi-format front-end and EAC plug-in Options

[Jebus]

Omni Encoder is a graphical, multi-format front-end and EAC plug-in.

Supported Formats:
Lame MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, FLAC, WavPack, Monkey's Audio, Nero and iTunes AAC, Apple Lossless

Features:

• Graphical interface (no editing config files)
• Optional EAC integration (like MAREO, REACT or WACK et al.)
• Automated album art downloading from Amazon.com
• Album or track ReplayGain analysis, adjustment and/or tagging
• Tag conversion between formats
• Directory layout creation based on tag info
• Extendible, modular design (only install the features you want)
• Open source license (GPLv2)

A lot of improvements have been made since the early betas last summer - please check it out and give me feedback!

Download it here (requires the .NET 2.0 runtime)

08/30/07: Updated to version 1.4.2.

This post has been edited by Jebus: Jan 4 2008, 21:47

[Jebus]

The main window:


The new "converting" dialog:


Lame's configuration panel:


This post has been edited by Jebus: Sep 18 2007, 23:52

[KarnEvil9]

Looks good - thanks!

[audiomars]

Looks good, Jeremy. Just downloading it to evaluate.

Cheers
audiomars

[Jebus]

Please upgrade to version 1.0.2 if you've already downloaded. 1.0.1 fixed a couple of fairly substantial bugs, and 1.0.2 addressed some issues with the iTunes encoder specifically.

Hope it is working out for everyone who's tried it!

[audiomars]

@ Jeremy: Just a small thought. The following may not be a very common situation but I thought I might mention it. If you are transcoding a file to the same format and to the same destination folder, OmniEncoder overwrites the original file. This is correct logically.

However with a nod towards user-friendliness, maybe you could have a dialog box that warns the user that a file with the same name exists already and give an option to rename the output file. This is what dMC does and it is quite useful for forgetful people like me

Would it be possible to add WavPack support? That would make it perfect for me!!

Otherwise, it runs perfectly on my machine. Thanks for the tool, Jeremy.

[Drunk 24/7]

Pretty sweet proggy but it doesn't see my FLAC tags and thus when it converts, the end file is taggless.

[Jebus]

@ Jeremy: Just a small thought. The following may not be a very common situation but I thought I might mention it. If you are transcoding a file to the same format and to the same destination folder, OmniEncoder overwrites the original file. This is correct logically.

However with a nod towards user-friendliness, maybe you could have a dialog box that warns the user that a file with the same name exists already and give an option to rename the output file. This is what dMC does and it is quite useful for forgetful people like me

Would it be possible to add WavPack support? That would make it perfect for me!!

Otherwise, it runs perfectly on my machine. Thanks for the tool, Jeremy.

Wavpack and MPC are on my 1.1 todo list. I'll put a delete confirmation box in as well. Thanks for your feedback!

Pretty sweet proggy but it doesn't see my FLAC tags and thus when it converts, the end file is taggless.

Edit: Non-standard Vorbis tag reading has been fixed/added in 1.0.3.

This post has been edited by Jebus: Dec 22 2006, 09:00

[Jebus]

Updated to version 1.1:

* Musepack (MPC) support has been added (Wavpack will be in version 1.2, I promise!)
* Various trivial fixes vs. 1.0.3.

This post has been edited by Jebus: Dec 23 2006, 01:06

[Josiah McGuckin]

I've already used v1.1 to run a FLAC-Vorbis conversion of over 1000 files, and I have yet to find any difficulty with it! Very fast, very efficient, very minimalistic... I like those kinds of options in a program .

[Demonanya]

I've just decided to give this a try and so far it's working out very nicely. Just one request though, will it be possible to add in the Album Artist tag, especially for use within iTunes?

[=trott=]

Will ape support also be coming soon?

[Demonanya]

I've just tried to convert some of my Japanese albums and none of the Japanese characters are showing correctly. I assume this is because the program is not Unicode aware, if so are you planning on implementing Unicode in a future version?

[Jebus]

Will ape support also be coming soon?

Yeah, eventually I'll support everything

APE will probably be right after Wavepack, which I think will cover all the major codecs.

I've just tried to convert some of my Japanese albums and none of the Japanese characters are showing correctly. I assume this is because the program is not Unicode aware, if so are you planning on implementing Unicode in a future version?

I'll add it to the list. Its tough though - while C# is internally unicode-aware, the console programs I'm accessing (lame.exe, id3.exe etc) aren't, and I don't even think you can use unicode with console apps. Will do some reading on it though.

I've just decided to give this a try and so far it's working out very nicely. Just one request though, will it be possible to add in the Album Artist tag, especially for use within iTunes?

At least not to the main interface... I've never understood what the hell an "Album Artist" (vs a normal artist) actually is. I might add the ability to add custom fields though somewhat later on.

[bhoar]

Just a hint, probably off the mark since the original question was about tags, not filenames, but I seem to recall some example batch files that allowed working around some of the CLI issues with unicode using stdin-aware encoders that might choke on unicode filenames...

Ah, here they are. Don't remember who the original author(s) were...greynol? synthetic soul?

Anyway:

CODE

@echo off
set encoder="C:\Program Files\flac-1.1.2-win\bin\flac.exe"
set tempfile=%random%%random%%random%%random%
type "%1" | %encoder% -8 - -o "%~d1%~p1%tempfile%"
ren "%~d1%~p1%tempfile%" "%~n1.flac"

and

CODE

@echo off
set encoder="C:\Program Files\flac-1.1.2-win\bin\flac.exe"
REM "remove --no-seektable if you need faster seeking"
type "%1" | %encoder% -8 --no-seektable - > "%~d1%~p1%~n1.flac"

Just posting them so that when you do work on the unicode support, should you come across charset issues in filenaming and/or encoders being able to locate the file using a unicode path, you'll have seen some potential solutions in front of you recently.

At least not to the main interface... I've never understood what the hell an "Album Artist" (vs a normal artist) actually is. I might add the ability to add custom fields though somewhat later on.

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...d_Tag_Standards

CODE

ALBUM ARTIST

Basics:

* the tag-fieldname used for declaring and describing albums/split-EPs or split-singles which contain various artists is "ALBUM ARTIST" (separated with space, not underscore)
* tag should only exist if an album contains various artists. It should NOT be created when an album does not contain various artists.
* the tag can contain the overall artist of an album (like e.g. "the foo-bar collective",) multiple artists (e.g. with split-EPs) or if an album does not have a clear overall artist (for example with compilations) just "Various Artists". Simply said: you're free to enter whatever you like as long as it describes the overall album-wide artist(s).
* every track in a V.A.-album has to contain this tag with the same value
* the track-specific artist should be entered into the ARTIST-tag
* the TITLE-tag should only contain the track-title

Reasons for this standard:

* it solves all issues regarding albums which contain multiple artists with just one tag
* it is already in widespread use
* sortable and searchable with low effort
* keeping the ARTIST-tag trackspecific allows to find tracks in V.A.-albums as well when searching for a certain artist (DB-friendly)
* keeping the TITLE-tag title-specific allows sorting and searching of V.A.-albums by title (DB-friendly)
* allows meaningful determination and display of V.A.-Albums with a minimum amount of code
* avoids resource-hungry and unsafe "guessing" of V.A.-albums via the filepath
* easy to remember and type in manually
* does not disrupt existing systems when the ARTIST- and TITLE-tag are already track specific (easy transition)
* can coexist with additional directory-based sorting and marking
* can be used for split-EPs and split-singles as well
* supported by Field Remappings in foobar2000 0.9

Code snippets:

// check if an album is V.A.
$if($meta_test(album artist),$puts(album_is_va,1))

// For sorting by artist in an album-context replace %artist% - %album% with:
%album artist% - %album%

// singlemode display without %album artist%-support
[%artist% - ][%album% - ][%title%]

// singlemode display with %album artist%-support
// note: if your display supports both, albummode and singlemode, then you
// may want to use the above version instead in singlemode - depends on taste
[%album artist% - ][%album% - ][%track artist% - ][%title%]

// How to easily integrate %album artist% into an albummode-display:
// in the albummode-column, replace %artist% with:
[%album artist%]
// in the title-column, replace %title% with:
[%track artist% - ][%title%]

-brendan

This post has been edited by bhoar: Dec 23 2006, 19:23

[Jebus]

I'm already using random tempfile names, so unicode file names isn't really a problem. Actually, as far as I can see, writing unicode tags shouldn't be a problem either. But using a console app to read unicode tags doesn't work.

As it is, i'm having to guess codepages just for reading extended-ascii characters (accents and whatnot). If you tag something with iTunes and read it with the Nero codec, for example, some characters will look funny right now.

I want to move away from using the console apps anyhow in favor of library functions, and I could probably just write the tag parsing code from scratch. But that'll take some time.

[Egor]

Ah, here they are. Don't remember who the original author(s) were...greynol? synthetic soul?

The author is me, but originally there was no misleading
REM "remove --no-seektable if you need faster seeking
as --no-seektable explicitly says there will be no seektable 'cause flac.exe cannot write seekpoints when it encodes to stdout.

[bhoar]

The author is me

Thanks for the correction.

-brendan

[gordo]

I'm playing around with flac -> alac conversion and not having much luck. After a couple of files itunes hangs causing omni encoder to die. I'm running Vista which could be a source of my troubles (?).

Also a question, if I do a mass conversion does omni first decode all the files and then encode - requiring free disk space equal to the uncompressed size of the batch of files?

This post has been edited by gordo: Dec 26 2006, 19:11

[Jebus]

I'm playing around with flac -> alac conversion and not having much luck. After a couple of files itunes hangs causing omni encoder to die. I'm running Vista which could be a source of my troubles (?).

Also a question, if I do a mass conversion does omni first decode all the files and then encode - requiring free disk space equal to the uncompressed size of the batch of files?

I've seen iTunes hang on mine as well occasionally. Seems a little better with 1.1 though - are you running the latest version? Beyond that, i think it is attributed to iTunes being flakey and not Omni itself.

It decodes one album at a time, in order to minimize disk usage.

This post has been edited by Jebus: Dec 26 2006, 20:13

[gordo]

I'm playing around with flac -> alac conversion and not having much luck. After a couple of files itunes hangs causing omni encoder to die. I'm running Vista which could be a source of my troubles (?).

Also a question, if I do a mass conversion does omni first decode all the files and then encode - requiring free disk space equal to the uncompressed size of the batch of files?

I've seen iTunes hang on mine as well occasionally. Seems a little better with 1.1 though - are you running the latest version? Beyond that, i think it is attributed to iTunes being flakey and not Omni itself.

It decodes one album at a time, in order to minimize disk usage.

I'm running latest (1.1) version. It was highly flakey running with files on networked hard drive - seems better (but still somewhat prone to hanging) on local hard drive

[Jebus]

I'm running latest (1.1) version. It was highly flakey running with files on networked hard drive - seems better (but still somewhat prone to hanging) on local hard drive

Does it do it with the iTunes AAC encoder as well?

[music_man_mpc]

I just started testing and I noticed that anything encoded with nero is being encoded at ~10kbit/s regardless of selected quality level . . . except if highest quality which yields the expected ~440kbit/s. I'm not sure if all of the other settings produce the same ~10kbit files, but I know for sure that 0.5, 0.75 and 0.9 (tried 0.95 but it kept snapping back to 0.9) all produce this quality level. As well there is a box pops up stating the command line used with only an ok button before each track is encoded; you have to click ok for each track or the process is paused.

A quick test showed that vorbis seems to be functioning perfectly (and it is an absolute pleasure to use), only nero seems to be affected by these bugs.

Another issue is every time I click on Download Modules I get the following message:

CODE

Unhandled exception has occurred in your application.  If you click
Countinue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If
you click Quit, the application will close immediately.

Application not found.

It continues to work fine if I click continue, but obviously the feature is not accessible.

Thanks for your efforts, cool app

-Tyler

[Jebus]

I just started testing and I noticed that anything encoded with nero is being encoded at ~10kbit/s regardless of selected quality level . . . except if highest quality which yields the expected ~440kbit/s. I'm not sure if all of the other settings produce the same ~10kbit files, but I know for sure that 0.5, 0.75 and 0.9 (tried 0.95 but it kept snapping back to 0.9) all produce this quality level. As well there is a box pops up stating the command line used with only an ok button before each track is encoded; you have to click ok for each track or the process is paused.

A quick test showed that vorbis seems to be functioning perfectly (and it is an absolute pleasure to use), only nero seems to be affected by these bugs.

Another issue is every time I click on Download Modules I get the following message:

CODE

Unhandled exception has occurred in your application.  If you click
Countinue, the application will ignore this error and attempt to continue. If
you click Quit, the application will close immediately.

Application not found.

It continues to work fine if I click continue, but obviously the feature is not accessible.

Thanks for your efforts, cool app

-Tyler

Okay, I fixed the drifting settings problem (so 0.95 stays as such when you choose it) and got rid of that debugging message box that I thought i'd removed (doh!), but i can't reproduce your more serious bug. Since you have that helpful debugging message anyhow that gives the command line, could you perhaps tell me what it says when you're for instance encoding with quality 0.9?

This post has been edited by Jebus: Dec 27 2006, 00:39

[gordo]

I tried itunes aac encoder and have similar problems to apple lossless, it runs through several files OK and then dies with "An error occured while writing the track: G:\\\Various\O Brother, Where Art Thou\01 - Po Lazarus", this is just and example it is not specific to that file. The \\\ is verbatum from the error message?