Hydrogenaudio Forums > Linux: Demand for an all-in-one audio-format converter?

Full Version: Linux: Demand for an all-in-one audio-format converter?

Hydrogenaudio Forums > CD-R and Audio Hardware > CD Hardware/Software

smthmlk

Aug 20 2006, 21:25

Over the years I've built up a program (long bash script, really) that acts as a front-end for converting really any sort of audio format to another painlessly. For example, if you have a directory of flacs (an album) that you want to convert to mp3 and put the mp3s in /var/tmp/blah, you do: giveme -fmp3s -o /var/tmp/blah ..and it takes care of it. Works with single files (-i option) and the following formats: mp3, ogg, aac, flac, ape (mac), and wavpack, as well as just decoding anything to or from wave. Has a conf file where you can set all your settings and prefered executable for each audio-format. One drawback is that it does not handle tagging of any kind (though there are hooks in the script to deal with it in the future). It's also easy to add in new formats as they come about.

So my question is: is there demand for such a tool? I'm not sure if something like this exists already in the GNU/Linux world, so if it does, post it

gkmeyer

Aug 20 2006, 22:23

QUOTE(smthmlk @ Aug 20 2006, 19:25)

So my question is: is there demand for such a tool? I'm not sure if something like this exists already in the GNU/Linux world, so if it does, post it

Personally, i usually only convert ogg to mp3 or re-encode ogg to a lower quality level for compatibility reasons, although if this were easy, I might be more willing to store my collection as flac and transcode as necessary.

For what it's worth, the killer feature that would interest me in using it is the ability to keep the tags. It's not a timesaver if I have to re-tag everything, although for your application, you might not need tags. It should be pretty trivial to export the tags to a text file and then chop them up and retag the files with the script, I do it with my ogg2ogg script. Something like this:

CODE

# Extract tag information to a temporary file
ogginfo "${filename}" > "${filename}".temp

# grep temporary file and set variables for various tag fields
ARTIST=`cat "${filename}.temp" | grep -i "artist=" | cut -d "=" -f2`
ALBUM=`cat "${filename}.temp" | grep -i "album=" | cut -d "=" -f2`
TITLE=`cat "${filename}.temp" | grep -i "title=" | cut -d "=" -f2`
TRACKNUMBER=`cat "${filename}.temp" | grep -i "tracknumber=" | cut -d "=" -f2`
DATE=`cat "${filename}.temp" | grep -i "date=" | cut -d "=" -f2`
GENRE=`cat "${filename}.temp" | grep -i "genre=" | cut -d "=" -f2`

smthmlk

Aug 20 2006, 23:06

QUOTE(gkmeyer @ Aug 20 2006, 23:23)

For what it's worth, the killer feature that would interest me in using it is the ability to keep the tags. It's not a timesaver if I have to re-tag everything, although for your application, you might not need tags. It should be pretty trivial to export the tags to a text file and then chop them up and retag the files with the script, I do it with my ogg2ogg script.

So tagging is going to be a real show stopper, eh? I stopped caring about tagging my audio files about 5 years ago, but i understand it's a big deal to a lot of other people.

I guess I'll get that working for all supported formats and then come back

Patsoe

Aug 21 2006, 00:14

QUOTE(smthmlk @ Aug 21 2006, 06:06)

You might want to have a look at the tagging library that was designed for Ex Falso - which is the tagging component of the player Quod Libet. It's no use doing all that work over again, plus it will take ages

www.sacredchao.net/quodlibet

cabbagerat

Aug 21 2006, 02:03

QUOTE(Patsoe @ Aug 20 2006, 22:14)

I would suggest the same thing. I played with this library a while ago and it's really cool. You can download just the library and documentation from the Quod Libet site.

frodoontop

Aug 21 2006, 02:36

Such tool already exists, for example: Perl Audio Converter

QUOTE

Perl Audio Converter is a tool for converting multiple audio types from one format to another. It supports MP2, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Shorten, Monkey Audio, FAAC (AAC/M4A/MP4), Musepack (MPC), Wavpack (WV), OptimFrog (OFR/OFS), TTA, LPAC, Kexis (KXS), AIFF, AC3, Lossless Audio (LA), BONK, AU, SND, RAW, VOC, SMP, RealAudio (RA/RAM), WAV, and WMA. It can also convert audio from the following video formats/extensions: RM, RV, ASF, DivX, MPG, MKV, MPEG, AVI, MOV, OGM, QT, VCD, VOB, and WMV. A CD ripping function with CDDB support, batch and playlist conversion, tag preservation for most supported formats, independent tag reading/writing, and extensions for Konqueror and Amarok are also provided.

seanyseansean

Aug 21 2006, 05:36

Do any of these support embedded cue files? I rip all my cds to 1 flac file and jpeg scans in a serperate zip. An all in one converter that (for example) takes flac files dropped in a directory and spits them out as musepack with properly named directories would be fantastic for me.

smthmlk

Aug 21 2006, 17:28

QUOTE(frodoontop @ Aug 21 2006, 03:36)

Such tool already exists, for example: Perl Audio Converter

Ah, so such a thing does exist... but it's in perl

I'll check it out. thanks for the find!

tgoose

Aug 23 2006, 04:15

I would love something similar to Multi Frontend (http://members.home.nl/w.speek/multi.htm) for Windows (yes, with GUI!) Unfortunately it's not open source, so it'd need writing from scratch. Failing that, I wouldn't find a CLI one completely useless but it's a bit nicer being able to drag and drop.

Jebb

Aug 25 2006, 13:01

Well I for one am interested, smthmlk. For the educational value of it, and also to fill my rockbox-powered nano from my lossless archives. And frankly, I could care less about tags when I'm on the road.

So yes, please post.

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