Hello,

I have all my CDs ripped as FLAC. I just got an iPod and would like to transcode my music to some form that will work with iTunes (MP3 or m4a). I'd like to keep parallel directories:

D:\Music\Library <-- All my FLAC files
D:\Music\iTunes <-- Mirror of FLAC files transcoded

Whenever I rip a new album to FLAC, I'd like to run a tool that transcodes the files and places them into the iTunes directory. Ideally, this would only operate on the new files.

Has anyone written a tool that will do this?

Thanks,
BoB

Look into using REACT and EAC along with the Itunes transcoder. Me I usually just rip to FLAC and us dbpoweramp to transcode them to 192k AAC files.

Scottder, doesn't DBpoweramp use FAAC? I'd stick with the iTunes option as that in my opinion is a better encoder

I've set up EAC, MAREO (ver3) and itunesencode to do just what you want. I can just open EAC, put a CD in & click one button & it rips it to my FLAC directory and into my iTunes at the same time.

I had never messed with any of this stuff before, but I've been working on this for about 3 weeks now and I've got it working. I'm just about ready to start ripping my collection.

If you don't want it to actually go into your itunes folders yet, you can just have it go to any folder you want ... or you can even have it do both at the same time if you want.

If you want to use these options, I'll give you a copy of my MAREO.ini file and what command line I used in EAC. It may not be perfect ... but it's working!

The problem is that I've already ripped my whole collection as FLAC. Is there a way to bulk convert to MP3/AAC/M4A and preserve the directory structure?

Thanks,
BoB

use foobar's diskwriter with itunesencode (search HA). you can set up foobar so that it will write the resulting files according to your preferred directory structure.

Are you still using it? I have just downloaded MAREO to do the same thing but after a few days, no luck. EAC works fine without MAREO thought. I wouldn't mind seeing how you did it.

Jim

Another way to do this does not involve iTunes or transcoding all your flac files.

I use MediaMonkey to manage my flac/mp3 library and to sync my iPod. Whenever I want to sync a flac tune, MediaMonkey can automatically transcode the flac file to mp3 (via Lame) during the sync process. It makes the sync time longer of course, but I can progressively replace my mp3 tracks with flac versions as I re-rip my CD collection. MediaMonkey Gold supports directory monitoring, so I just delete the mp3 files and copy the flac files into the same directory. Couldn't be easier.

Preserving the directory structure doesn't matter much as iTunes/iPod are only going to look at the tags anyway. Unfortunately the best way to do this involve owning a Macintosh and using a program called Max (sbooth.org) which will transcode from FLAC to AAC using Apple's AAC encoder.

The second best option which can be done on a PC involves using Foobar2000 to do the bulk cross coding configured to drive either the iTunes encoder using iTunesEncode or the Nero Digital AAC encoder via the command line.

use foobar + lame

dbpoweramp can encode AAC files sing FAAC, it can also encode using Nero's AAC encoder as well as a reverse engineered Apple lossless encoder. dbpoweramp is a fine route to take or you can go the foobar2000 with Lame mp3 or Nero AAC as well. Either route will produce acceptable results. Just make sure that, if you decide to use the AAC format, that you use filenames of *.m4a and you use iTunes/iPod compatible AAC tags. Nero's AAC encoder supports compatible tags by default now, just make sure you set foobar2000 to output to *.m4a (dbpoweramp does this by default) instead of *.mp4.

My suggestions:

- Nero AAC encoder using an appropriate front-end (I recommend foobar, but dbPowerAmp should work as well) to convert FLACs to .m4a files to the iTunes directory
- Use mp3tag against the iTunes to "rename" the files based on the tags. Assuming your folder structure is all based on tag values, the rename functions can create the folders on-the-fly and move the .m4a files into them.