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Topic: Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B (Read 10482 times) previous topic - next topic
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Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Hey guys.  I've been searching around the forum for a solution to this problem, but most of what I've found is outdated information for older program versions.  Basically, I'd like to encode both FLAC and MP3 with a single EAC rip.  I've seen REACT mentioned, but it looks very arcane, and only works with much older versions of EAC (and requres user mods).  I'm currently using EAC 1.0 Beta3, and would like to avoid reverting backwards.

As a stopgap, I've tried keeping .WAVs after compression and quickly switching between saved EAC profiles, but this results in empty ID3 tags.  Does anyone have updated information about how I can pull off this dual-encoding with the latest version of EAC?  If no software exists, is there a way to re-inject the ID3 metadata into the WAV files before recompression?

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #1
doesn't answer your question about EAC, but dbpoweramp will encode to two formats (FLAC & mp3) with a single rip.

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #2
I prefer the approach of ripping and encoding only in FLAC, then transcoding the FLAC to MP3 'copies' at a later time. It makes the ripping process faster, since MP3 encoding is much slower than FLAC encoding, but there are other advantages, such as being easier to manage.

You can use something like dbpoweramp or foobar2000 to transcode the FLAC to MP3, but a simpler approach is to use one of the available command-line scripts that will maintain the 'mirror' MP3 library with little, if any, manual work. Here's Robin Bowes' flac2mp3 Perl script:

http://projects.robinbowes.com/flac2mp3/trac

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #3
You should find on a modern system, the CD Rom is slower (at 10 to 40x) than encoding to mp3, especially on dual core systems.

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #4
I prefer the approach of ripping and encoding only in FLAC, then transcoding the FLAC to MP3 'copies' at a later time. It makes the ripping process faster, since MP3 encoding is much slower than FLAC encoding, but there are other advantages, such as being easier to manage.

You can use something like dbpoweramp or foobar2000 to transcode the FLAC to MP3, but a simpler approach is to use one of the available command-line scripts that will maintain the 'mirror' MP3 library with little, if any, manual work. Here's Robin Bowes' flac2mp3 Perl script:

http://projects.robinbowes.com/flac2mp3/trac



Thanks for the link, I'll give that a solid look when I get a chance.  My main concern with transcoding is being able to encode with Lame 3.99.5 and specify the command-line string.  Many 3rd party programs give you no indication of what they're using to encode.

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #5
A bit of an update.  The best I've been able to come up with so far has been:

1.) Rip to FLAC with EAC
2.) Manually create a duplicate folder for Mp3s
3.) Transcode from FLAC to Mp3 using Foobar2000 + Lame 
4.) Open the newly created Mp3s in Foobar and manually add the album art (it doesn't carry over with the transcode)
5.) Manually move the Mp3 folder to it's correct location in my collection


The problem is this process gets maddeningly tedious, and I'm only able to do about a dozen albums in each sitting.  I'm looking for input and suggestions on my methods.  I'm also looking for any way I might be able to streamline the Foobar2000 portion of the process (for instance, batch transcoding, or automatic folder creation).

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #6
So EAC can only embed album art, it doesn't write e.g. front.jpg to the folder? (I don't know this, I am using (the paid Reference version of) dBpoweramp, which has a multi-encoder.)

There must be a way to batch extract embedded album art to picture files in the same folder. Then fb2k will copy it if you check the right box.

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #7
Have you looked at CueTools? You can batch transcode, you can recheck against AR database [for older rips that were not found originally], and in some cases, bad rips can be repaired. There is a threan on this site.
Glass half full!

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #8
Yes, EAC does create a front.jpg in the folder.  However, during transcoding with Foobar2000, the album art is lost.  I have to open the newly created Mp3s in Foobar, and then point them to the front.jpg back in the original FLAC source folder (which can be quite tedious).  Apparently it isn't currently possible for Foobar to embed album art in newly transcoded files.  I believe there may be a way to get the front.jpg copied over to the destination folder, but I haven't gotten to this yet.

Another update, I found this thread, which enables me to skip step #2 and #5 above, and should save a ton of time.


I have not seen anything about CueTools so far, but I'll take a look.  Does it encode with the latest version of Lame and allow you to specify your own command line options?

 

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #9
Out of curiosity, why do you need to maintain 2 separate copies of your library?

If you rip to FLAC you can then transcode to mp3 or another newer supported codec for use on portable devices at the time you transfer them to the device. I use an AMD quad core machine and it can transcode to mp3 or OGG Vorbis faster than the write speed most flash based players I've come across can handle. This means it's basically the same difference copying from a folder to the device as transcoding straight to the device.

You may have another need for the mp3 mirror, and if so I'd be interested it hearing about it.

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #10
You may have another need for the mp3 mirror, and if so I'd be interested it hearing about it.


So that you don't have to transcode your entire library again if the storage device on the player gets corrupted, or if you lose your player, if it gets stolen, etc…

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #11
I haven't updated it in a while, but last I checked, MAREO worked fine with EAC.

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #12
Yes, EAC does create a front.jpg in the folder.  However, during transcoding with Foobar2000, the album art is lost.  I have to open the newly created Mp3s in Foobar, and then point them to the front.jpg back in the original FLAC source folder (which can be quite tedious).  Apparently it isn't currently possible for Foobar to embed album art in newly transcoded files.  I believe there may be a way to get the front.jpg copied over to the destination folder, but I haven't gotten to this yet.

Another update, I found this thread, which enables me to skip step #2 and #5 above, and should save a ton of time.


See post #14, step 7, in that very thread for details of how to copy across all non-embedded art files:

7) Other Settings - Type the following in "Copy other files to the destination folder" to copy all artwork across:

*.jpg;*.gif;*.png

Bluto

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #13
So that you don't have to transcode your entire library again if the storage device on the player gets corrupted, or if you lose your player, if it gets stolen, etc…


I still don't understand.

Transcoding an entire FLAC library is a pretty simple thing to do. With the speed of modern processors and the typically slow write speeds of portable flash storage the time to direct copy from disk or transcoding direct to the device is roughly the same, or at least close enough to not really matter. Also, the frequency of the events you describe is terribly low, to the point that it just seems a waste of disk space to store an entire copy of the archive in mp3 just to address issues that have typically low rates of occurrence. I've yet to lose music on a flash device due to corruption, to lose a player, and yet to have one stolen. I know these things happen but the rate is low enough to make a dedicated mp3 copy of the archive a tremendous amount of overkill for little to no gain over transcoding directly as needed.

Plus, if you're running Linux, there are things like mp3fs which another forumite here pointed out to me which allows you to mount a virtual filesystem of your FLAC library as mp3, and transcodes the files in the background when you access them. Something like this makes even the act of opening an app to transcode the files obsolete since it takes no extra space on your drive to have a permanently mounted mirror of your library accessible and transcoded on the fly. It's literally drag and drop the files from the virtual filesystem to your device. I'm not sure if something like this is available for Windows (or even possible, though I'd bet it is) since I don't use it anywhere other than work.

I can only think of one instance where maintaining a transcoded mirror of the library makes sense to me, and that is if you are duplicating the transcoded copy to a large number of devices on an ongoing, long-term basis.

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #14
Thanks Bluto.  I'm planning to try that when I get home this evening.  If anything, it'll at least get the album art into the destination folder, so I won't have to navigate backward to the FLAC source for each one.  The reason I want album art is I have a car stereo which interfaces directly with the Ipod, and also displays album art.  I believe the art has to actually be embedded in the Mp3 file in order to be displayed, but I'm not certain.  I'll have to do some experimenting.

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #15
So that you don't have to transcode your entire library again if the storage device on the player gets corrupted, or if you lose your player, if it gets stolen, etc…


I still don't understand.

Transcoding an entire FLAC library is a pretty simple thing to do. With the speed of modern processors and the typically slow write speeds of portable flash storage the time to direct copy from disk or transcoding direct to the device is roughly the same, or at least close enough to not really matter. Also, the frequency of the events you describe is terribly low, to the point that it just seems a waste of disk space to store an entire copy of the archive in mp3 just to address issues that have typically low rates of occurrence. I've yet to lose music on a flash device due to corruption, to lose a player, and yet to have one stolen. I know these things happen but the rate is low enough to make a dedicated mp3 copy of the archive a tremendous amount of overkill for little to no gain over transcoding directly as needed.

Plus, if you're running Linux, there are things like mp3fs which another forumite here pointed out to me which allows you to mount a virtual filesystem of your FLAC library as mp3, and transcodes the files in the background when you access them. Something like this makes even the act of opening an app to transcode the files obsolete since it takes no extra space on your drive to have a permanently mounted mirror of your library accessible and transcoded on the fly. It's literally drag and drop the files from the virtual filesystem to your device. I'm not sure if something like this is available for Windows (or even possible, though I'd bet it is) since I don't use it anywhere other than work.

I can only think of one instance where maintaining a transcoded mirror of the library makes sense to me, and that is if you are duplicating the transcoded copy to a large number of devices on an ongoing, long-term basis.

FLAC for archiving, and for listening on the home stereo and high-end headphone setup.  Mp3 for the 160GB Ipod, which I will completely fill and thensome.  As I mentioned in the post above, the Ipod mainly gets used with my car stereo, so I want all the correct tags along with album art. 

It simply isn't feasible to sit there and transcode FLACs on-the-fly (and jack around with album art, etc) whenever I want to change something on the portable player.  It's also pointless when 2TB drives are cheap and plentiful.  I'm going to rip everything to FLAC and Mp3 once and be done with it.

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #16
With the speed of modern processors and the typically slow write speeds of portable flash storage the time to direct copy from disk or transcoding direct to the device is roughly the same, or at least close enough to not really matter.


I guess that makes sense if your transcoder is fast enough, and if you have software or a script that mirrors you new additions transparently without a lot of clicking around.

Plus, if you're running Linux, there are things like mp3fs which another forumite here pointed out to me which allows you to mount a virtual filesystem of your FLAC library as mp3, and transcodes the files in the background when you access them.


It's not the first time I see mp3fs recommended so I decided to give it a shot. Is it supposed to be this slow? It took 220 seconds to transcode a double album with "--quality=3 -b 320" (so as to match "lame --preset insane"), when caudec took only 56 seconds (almost 4 times less time). While mp3fs was doing its thing, I saw a single thread using 100% of one CPU core. I didn't use the "-s" switch ("disable multi-threaded operation"). Am I missing something? It's way slower than the write speed of my iPod. Also, apparently it only supports CBR :-/

Want To Encode Two Formats (FLAC & MP3) With Single Rip. EAC1.0 B

Reply #17
BTW, I measured my iPod Classic's write performance at roughly 23 MB/s. With the numbers I gave in my previous post, mp3fs would write at 1.6 MB/s (!) and caudec at 6.3 MB/s, with a mobile quad-core Core i7 at 2.2 GHz. So your argument doesn't really hold, at least in my case.