I'm ready to start using iTunes AAC as the codec of choice on my iPod. I have a rather large collection of FLAC, and need to be able to encode it all to iTunes AAC. I've been searching all evening for an effective solution, and I came very close with iTunesEncode.exe by Otto42. It's a great program, but, as I've read, it's been broken since iTunes 7.7. Indeed, I tried to batch encode some of the FLACs with it in foobar2000, and more than half of them threw terribly fatal errors. Needless to say, that's completely unacceptable.

Anyway, I was wondering, is there another script out there that does what iTunesEncode.exe did? I need it to either be command line (so I can batch encode with foobar2000) or have it able to batch encode by itself.

Also, if there's a standalone hack or something of the iTunes AAC codec, that would work.

iTunes 8.0.2: works allright.

Maybe you have to set Thread count to 1.
(File -> Properties -> Advanced -> Tools -> Converter -> Thread count)

I had already tried that... and I even raised the value of the -s switch (which is how long it waits in between encoding files, to minimize errors) to 10000ms. That had no effect. It seems random as to whether a file will encode correctly or completely fail, and it's different every time. I am at a loss.

On a side note, I read that Snow Leopard got HE-AAC encoding. If that's true, then hopefully it'll be coming to iTunes soon, in which case I'd really like to get this working. iTunes seems to make use of some of the best codecs available, and hopefully it'll be the same story for HE-AAC.

Also, can someone tell me whether Quicktime Pro can handle large batch encodings of flac, or whether it can be used with a command line? I hear its AAC codec is the same codec used in iTunes, and if I could use that, it would be just as good.

Whoa. Statements like that will get you shot around here.

One way to do this within iTunes is convert your FLACs to ALAC (using dBpoweramp) and then let iTunes transcode to AAC for you. Not a bad idea if you want to use iTunes exclusively.

FLAC to ALAC post

And iTunes does use Quicktime to transcode. You just can't get to all the encoder settings from within iTunes.

iTunes Plus preset reverse engineered

Eh... surely there must be a far less space-consuming method of doing this than converting everything to ALAC first. Is there some kind of dBpoweramp plugin that can make use of the iTunes encoding API, like iTunesEncode (sometimes) does? Also, is it possible, by any stretch of the imagination, to mount flac files as a CD, and then rip it from within iTunes? That would be incredibly interesting.

Don't know if there is any app on windows which does batch conversion to aac (using quicktime engine), but if you have access to a mac then you can batch transcode almost any audio file formats using Max. http://sbooth.org/Max/

There aren't very many solutions for iTunes AAC encoding on Windows. Your best option would be to convert your FLAC files to ALAC and then to iTunes AAC. This would be better in the long run if you plan on using iTunes for your lossy/lossless needs anyway. Mac OS X offers scripts and even software such as XLD and MAX that allow for FLAC to iTunes AAC encoding. However, Windows is pretty much limited to iTunes for iTunes AAC encoding.

Why convert to ALAC? Doesn't iTunes support encoding of wav files? (I refuse to install iTunes )

Edit: Thx kornchild2002, I forgot about the tags, it's late

Yes, iTunes can decode/encode WAV files just fine. However, when going from a FLAC collection to WAV files, the track tags will be lost. Converting to ALAC will preserve the track tags during the process. Additionally, ALAC files can be further converted using dBpowerAMP and even foobar2000 to other lossless/lossy formats. There really is no need to use WAV unless the OP is working with 24-bit content. Even then, dBpowerAMP is working on supporting 24-bit ALAC files in the near future.

Also coverting to WMA Lossless (i cannot belive i mentioned that) might work better, which has slightly better compat then ALAC . Since WMAL works on WMP, foobar2000 and can be transcoded into AAC through the iTunes first time use wizzard.

Unless you are absolutely 100% dead set on having iTunes AAC you will probably have an easier time converting to Nero AAC since you can very easily convert your FLAC files using dBPoweramp or Foobar without going around your nose to get to your elbow. Try a few of your faves in Nero. I'll wager you'll be quite happy with the sound.

I found a way to mount entire albums of flac as CDs. The solution is a program called WinMount. It's not free, but it mounts CUE files as audio CDs, and has a 15 day trial. iTunes is then able to rip from that, which is excellent.