I plan to use MAREO to rip my collection of 200+ CDs simultaneously to FLAC and MP3. I have installed and tested EAC, LAME & FLAC encoders, and MAREO. My current mareo.ini settings are shown below. How can I get MAREO to detect CDs by various artists and adjust the directory structure for the files accordingly? At present, if I rip a CD that is a compilation of music by various artists, it creates a separate directory for each artist on the CD. For "various artists" CDs, I would like to create the directory structure - [MYMUSIC]\VA\[ALBUM] and use the same filename as it does currently, i.e., [TRACKPADDED]. [TITLE]. This is akin to iTunes which uses the directory "Compilations" instead of "VA."

I plan to use Slimserver to stream the FLAC music. And I plan to use an iPod to listen to MP3 music on the go. If anyone is using music files in this manner and has any words of advice before I start ripping the collection of CDs, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,
atulc

; ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; FLAC: most supported lossless encoder: http://flac.sourceforge.net/
; ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EXECUTEIF = TRUE
FINALPATH = [MYMUSIC]\[ARTIST]\[ALBUM]\
FINALNAME = [TRACKPADDED]. [TITLE]
EXTENSION = flac
ENCODEREXE = C:\Program Files\FLAC\flac.exe
PARAMETERS = -5 "[SOURCE]" -o "[DESTTMP]" -T artist="[ARTIST]" -T album="[ALBUM]" -T title="[TITLE]" -T tracknumber="[TRACK]" -T date="[YEAR]" -T genre="[GENRE]"
RENAME = TRUE

; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; MP3 LAME: best MP3 encoder: http://www.rarewares.org/mp3.html
; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EXECUTEIF = TRUE
FINALPATH = [MYMUSIC]\[ARTIST]\[ALBUM]\
FINALNAME = [TRACKPADDED]. [TITLE]
EXTENSION = mp3
ENCODEREXE = C:\Audio\Encoders\Lame\lame.exe
PARAMETERS = -V5 --vbr-new --ignore-tag-errors --ta "[ARTIST]" --tl "[ALBUM]" --tt "[TITLE]" --tn "[TRACK]" --ty "[YEAR]" --tg "[GENRE]" "[SOURCE]" "[DESTTMP]"
RENAME = TRUE

can EAC pass information to MAREO telling it that is a VA album?

Apparently MAREO cannot do this (at least that's what I've found). But REACT can.

If anyone knows different (re: MAREO) please tell how, because overall MAREO seems more stable than REACT, which seems to crash a lot for no obvious reason (again, at least that's what I've found).

- P

the issue here is, can EAC pass MAREO, as an argument a various artist flag?

kwanbis, you are the MAREO developer, right? So why are you replying with such a question when you obviously must know the answer?

The issue here, really, is can MAREO deal with VA albums in the way that REACT can (i.e. adjust the file structure for VA albums to eliminate the problem of getting a separate directory for each artist on the CD)?

From what I can tell, the answer is no. If I am wrong, please explain how.

Please do not be offended by the direct question. MAREO is a great tool for "regular" albums. I just wish I could use it for VA albums also.

- P

Kwanbis,
Thanks for the reply. I found the following sample configuration used by a REACT user. It can be found at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....35158&st=50. The config defines a destination directory that can be overridden by the "Various" destination directory for a various-artists album. Therefore, it appears that REACT, when invoked from EAC, can figure out when the CD is a various-artists CD.

destdir1=F:\Audio\CD Rips - WavPack 4.22 Lossless\$cdartist$\$album$
dest1=@destdir1@\@track@ $title$
Various-destdir1=F:\Audio\CD Rips - WavPack 4.22 Lossless\Various\$album$
Various-dest1=@destdir1@\@track@ $artist$ - $title$

I have requested access to the EAC mailing list. Once on that list, I will pose the question there to find out what flag, if any, can be passed by EAC to the external compression program to indicate a various-artists album.



Phaedra,
Thanks for pointing out that REACT can handle this whereas MAREO can't. I have provided additional information in response to kwanbis' post. Let's hope this can be resolved soon.

Atulc

one question, whats your intended normal path/file, and what is your va one?

actually, if it is the same, just pass VA as the artist, and MAREO should work.

If you want to have a diferent scheme, i would have to modify MAREO.

As illustrated in the configuration above, REACT offers complete flexibility for directory paths and file names for single-artist and various-artist albums. However, my needs are more modest. I want to follow the directory path paradigm that iTunes uses -- artist\album and VA\album. The trouble is that I don't know whether EAC allows you to pass a command line parameter to the external compression program (MAREO) indicating if it is working on a VA album. If I have to change the command line parameters manually every time I rip a VA album, it defeats the purpose; I might as well change the directory structure manually after EAC & MAREO are done ripping the album. Either way, manual intervention would be quite tedious for 200+ CDs that I plan to rip shortly.

I really like MAREO. It is simple and does its job reliably. But it appears that it doesn't quite meet my needs.

but if i understand you right, you want to have,

artist\album

and

va\album

if the name of the artist is "VA", MAREO would replace [artist] with VA, and it would end like you want.

Or i'm wrong?

Unfortunately, for a compilation or a various-artists album, EAC invokes MAREO (which, in turn, invokes FLAC, LAME, etc.) with artist set to the artist for the track. Artist is not set to VA. That is why, with my mareo.ini file listed above, I get many artist directories for one such album using the directory structure artist\album. I would like to keep all tracks from an album together in one directory. This is the way iTunes works. This is the most intuitive way of organizing music for anyone used to the world of physical CDs. This is what I want to achieve.

As an example, on the album "Pure Moods IV," the first track has the title "November" by the artist "Mythos." The second track has the title "Purify" by the artist "Balligomingo." ... These tracks are saved in the directories "[MYMUSIC]\Mythos\Pure Moods IV" and "[MYMUSIC]\Balligomingo\Pure Moods IV." I would like all tracks for this album to be stored in the directory "[MYMUSIC]\VA\Pure Moods IV." The artist\album paradigm works fine for regular albums.

For your "modest" needs, you can try using %D, instead of %A, as the cd artist on calling MAREO.

Use: %s %d "%d" "%g" "%t" "%n" %y "%m"

Instead of: %s %d "%a" "%g" "%t" "%n" %y "%m"

%T - Track title
%N - Track number
%L - Track length
%A - CD or track artist
%Y - Release year
%C - CD title
%I - ID3 music type
%B - freedb music type
%D - CD artist
%F - freedb ID
%Z - Tabulator character

If there is more need for VA handling, i think i can make MAREO compare %D against %A, and if it does not matches, i can assume a VA album. But i don't think is what you need.

Tried that. For the "Pure Moods IV" album (various artists), %d, the EAC command line argument to the external compression program, appears to be set to the directory path, not the disk artist. I believe that the argument description you listed applies for filenaming for the WAV files ripped by EAC, not the command line options. But I could be wrong.

Result of further research:
Quoted from a REACT discussion at
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=327260




Note here that %d as a command line argument is the destination filename, not the CD artist. This confirms my suspicion as stated on the previous message.

NB: I believe REACT detirmines whether a CD is VA or not simply by looking at the file name. If it begins "Various - " then it is deemed to be a VA album.

[quote name='atulc' date='Oct 6 2006, 21:44' post='438658']
[quote name='kwanbis' post='438652' date='Oct 6 2006, 23:53']
but if i understand you right, you want to have,

artist\album
and
va\album

if the name of the artist is "VA", MAREO would replace [artist] with VA, and it would end like you want.

Or i'm wrong?
[/quote]

Unfortunately, for a compilation or a various-artists album, EAC invokes MAREO (which, in turn, invokes FLAC, LAME, etc.) with artist set to the artist for the track. Artist is not set to VA.
[/quote]
I get the same result ... [artist] does not get replaced with "VA"

[/quote]
If there is more need for VA handling, i think i can make MAREO compare %D against %A, and if it does not matches, i can assume a VA album
[/quote]

Yes, please, can you try it?

- P

Below is a copy of my posting on the EAC mailing list and the response from a member of the list basically corroborating the message from Synthetic Soul on this discussion thread.



%d, as listed in my earlier posting, is the filename. EAC sets %D (meaning CD Artist) to Various for various-artist CDs. REACT configures EAC to set the WAV filename for various-artist CDs to be %D - %C - %N - %T (%A) where %D is set to Various. The external compressor (REACT) is then invoked with the commandline argument %d set to this filename. REACT parses %d to look for Various and accordingly creates the directory structure

various\album-title for various-artist albums and
artist\album-title for single-artist albums.

It would be nice to have MAREO replicate this functionality.

That said, I have found a problem with the approach followed by REACT. I ripped the following three CDs.

1. Words came back to me - by Sonya Kitchell
2. Pure moods IV - by various artists
3. Artist's choice - Sheryl Crow - by various artists

REACT saved the FLAC files for the first two albums in the following directories.

1. Sonya Kitchell\Words came back to me
2. Various\Pure moods IV

However, the ripping of the third CD was messed up on two counts.

1. This CD contains four songs by Sheryl Crow and thirteen tracks from other artists that are among the personal favorites of Sheryl Crow. REACT saved Sheryl Crow's four songs in "Various\Artist's choice - Sheryl Crow". However, each of the songs from other artists was stored in the directory "ARTIST\Artist's choice - Sheryl Crow". Examples of ARTIST include Bob Dylan, Carol King, and Aretha Franklin. This violates my basic requirement that files from a physical CD should be stored in the same directory. iTunes handles this gracefully. It stores all songs from this CD in "Compilation\Artist's Choice - Sheryl Crow". I would really like this to be addressed jointly by the authors of EAC, MAREO, and REACT. This should be easy to fix and would make all these tools that much better. I am amazed that no one has pushed hard for this requirement earlier.
2. After copying the WAV files generated by EAC to the desination FLAC folders described above, REACT is unable to process WAV to FLAC conversion command. It terminates leaving the WAV files in the destination folders. This is a flaw in the core functionality of REACT. If any REACT developers are following this thread, please address this issue.

Thanks,
atulc

You should post your findings, with your react.ini contents and config file contents, to the main REACT thread.

Personally I think your config needs changing, not REACT, or possibly the freedb entry for the third album was not correct, but until we see the details we can't help.

Edit: Ah, I see you have posted to that thread. You really need to post details though, or your concerns will, quite rightly, be ignored.

so, if %D (not %d) is CD artist, why not use it?

%D is available within EAC only as an element to form the name of the WAV file that EAC generates. %D is not available to pass as a command line argument to the external compression programs like MAREO. If you read one of my previous posts, you will see the listing of all the arguments that can be passed to an external compression program.




Here are my config files for REACT. Except for the Config=FLAC_MP3 in react.ini, everything is just as it was after a fresh installation of REACT.

REACT.ini



FLAC_MP3-tracks.txt

what i find weird, is that i don't remember seeing any place in EAC to input the track artist, so i wonder, where does EAC gets it from.

With a proper VA setup the artist can be taken from the track info, as the format is entered as "<artist> / <title>".

The REACT thread is the best place for this, you're currently posting in two threads. You also need to confirm that the track titles are properly formatted for a VA album, and that the VA checkbox is checked.

How does it works? If EAC finds a "/" it assumes the first part is the artist, the next the title?

Yes, presumably only if the VA checkbox is checked as well.

Take a look at the freedb FAQ 2.2 pt.6.

Also, I posted this, taken from the previous freedb site, a while back:

So am I but with 2 of HA's best involved (Synthetic Soul, kwanbis) I bet this gets resolved!

so, should i be strict, and support " / " as the delimiter?

The trick is not to use the "VA" or "Various Arstist" name on the CD artist, if you do, EAC assumes a VA CD, even if the check box is unchecked. Use instead "V.A.". And make sure the checkbox is unchecked also.

here is a test

Log 2 File (%1) = True
Log 2 Screen (%2) = True
INIFILE (%3) = C:\Encoders\mareo.ini
[SOURCE] (%4) = C:\EAC\vtmp1!542.wav
[DESTTMP] (%5) = C:\EAC\vtmp1!542.eac
[ARTIST] (%6) = v.a.
[ALBUM] (%7) = CD_Title
[TITLE] (%8) = artista1 / tema1
[TRACK] (%9) = 1
[TRACKPADDED] = 01
[YEAR] (%10) = Anime
[GENRE] (%11) = Unknown

Kwanbis,
What are your EAC settings on the EAC Menu->EAC Options->Filename tab? Also, please confirm that your EAC command line options for MAREO are as follows.

mareo.ini %s %d "%a" "%g" "%t" "%n" %y "%m"

Once I get these settings from you, I will try to replicate your test at my end. Thanks

Synthetic Soul,
I have posted the REACT details on the REACT discussion thread. I will limit my input on this thread to MAREO only.

Phaedra,
I think we are making progress. We have the best people involved. Thanks for supporting my requirement.

actually, it shouldn't matter, cause i let MAREO do the renaming


the command line is ok, i didn't have to do any modification to MAREO/Setup. Only trick EAC into thinking is anormal album.

Well, no. EAC will parse the track names and split them into their component parts before you get to them.

It seems to me that your only option would be to do as REACT is doing, or similar. You need to use the original filename (%o) to make your decision. In order for that to happen you need to insist that users set their EAC naming scheme to begin with %D (CD Artist). You need to analyse the original filename (%o), and if the first seven characters of %o are "Various" then you do the VA stuff.

I have created a test config for REACT, that will output all available information to a log file but encode nothing. I would suggest that you do the same for MAREO, so no encoding takes place, but all params for each track are output to a text file, so that you can see exactly what information is being received, and what you have to play with.

Edit: In actual fact, looking at the REACT source, it will actually raise a warning if the naming scheme (or VA naming scheme if one exists) does not begin with %D or contains a "\".


$c is the relevant naming scheme, taken from the registry value.

I'm not suggesting that MAREO needs to do this, but it raises the issue, if your users want VA recognition then they need to adhere to some guidlines.

Also, I've just taken a look at the MAREO website and I see that you don't actually pass %o at the moment.

Yeah, i realized by doing some testing.


Actually, it is easier, at least for the current req. The only need is to trick EAC into thinking is a normal album, by using "V.A.", instead of the various recognized "various" strings. I posted instructions some post above.

True. Given that they have no interest in the track artist ( ) then that would work.

I can't help but think that they should be interested in it! They may be when it comes to tagging...

yes, i would probably would implement something on MAREO to handle this, if there is interest.

Kwanbis,
This works fine for the directory structure. For the various-artists album "Pure Moods IV," on EAC I unchecked "various artists" and set the CD artist to "V.A." This saved the FLAC files in "V.A.\Pure Moods IV". So far so good. But there is a downside to this approach. I do care about the artist tag being set correctly on the resulting FLAC/MP3 files. Currently, the artist tag for all the music on this album gets set to V.A. I had the same results for the album "Artist's Choice - Sheryl Crow."

Thanks for pointing this out. I don't care about having the track artist on the filename for the track. But I do care about having the correct track artist on the ID3 tag. Therefore, the approach suggested by Synthetic soul is really a must. I would appreciate it if you could give this request a high priority.

Thanks,
atulc

i would take a look ASAP.

So is this a dead issue now? Atulc, have you decided to go with REACT instead?

I solved all this with 2 EAC-presets leading to different ini-files for MAREO. And because there is no field in EAC to specify a CD Artist for VA Albums i chose to write this name as last parameter for MAREO manually and also as manually edit the folder naming scheme in EAC.

As i don't have that many VA Albums that was not much of a problem. Most times i just have to leave it on "sampler" or "OST".

It's so easy to just switch between different EAC presets...

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean here ...

Not quite. Kwanbis has offered to address this issue. If you are following the REACT discussion forum, you will notice that I am experiencing an intermittent issue with various-artist albums using REACT. I have a large collection of various-artist CDs and I can't afford to manually clean up after every mistake made by a ripping program. At this point, REACT doesn't appear to be a viable solution either.

Kwanbis, can you provide a sense of how long it might take you to address this probelm on MAREO? Thanks

Yes, I am following, as I think lots of others are too. I'm in a similar situation with lots of CDs to rip. I've been dabbling with both MAREO and REACT (as mentioned earlier) and have found strangely intermittent issues with REACT so have been using MAREO for regular albums and just waiting for a better VA solution. Thank you atulc for pushing the issue and thank you Synthetic Soul, kwanbis, tycho, and others for putting your brains and experience together to iron this one out.

- p

I mean that i add the CD Artist to the parameter line that is passed from EAC to MAREO.

Additional command line options for most CDs (profile: mareo):

And for VA CDs (profile: sampler):


The same with the naming scheme:
Usualy:

Sampler:


So everytime i want to rip a non-OST VA Album i have to edit both fields in the EAC Options.

The difference between mareo.ini and sampler.ini is that a second individual parameter (%x is passed in both as individual parameter) is included and is added as a tag field and also replaces the "Artist" in the folder naming scheme.

Gotcha, thanks for the explanation!

Phaedra, the VA problem is now resolved for EAC+REACT. See my recent post on the REACT discussion thread - http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=441921. For now, I will use REACT to rip my CD collection. When kwanbis is ready with a fix for MAREO, I will consider using MAREO again.

I would like to direct kwanbis to the same thread, particularly posts 455 to 472, in which atulc and I investigate REACT and EAC's handling of VA albums, and malformed VA freedb entries. I hope that the results and conclusions we have made should be useful to you also.

i'm actually on vacations on mendoza, argentina. I would try to take a look this weekend.

Resurrecting this old thread. From perusing various MAREO threads, it's unclear whether this "Various Artists" issue was ever resolved. I have a good number of VA disks to rip (to FLAC and MP3) and I don't want to switch away from MAREO if I can avoid it. Thanks!

sorry, been a little busy lately. Would try to implement it ASAP.

I like the capabilities of both MAREO and REACT. However, I wasn't able to overcome the "Various Artists" issue with MAREO. The REACT developer community addressed the issue within days. With over 200 music CD's ripped successfully, about 50 of which were "Various Artists" CD's, I am now a happy REACT user. See http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=442265

Kwanbis, I hope you will find time to address this issue soon.

Thanks Kwanbis ... I'm waiting for a solution to this issue too. Really appreciate all you work ... Mareo is a "must have" program for me.

I used to feel that way too. I got tired of waiting though and switched to REACT. With all due respect to Kwanbis for developing MAREO, I think REACT is now the way to go. The latest version developed just recently is simple and effective right out of the box. And if you need advice on tweaking things a bit to suit your needs, there is a very active user community there to help.