I am faced with a situation where I will be offline for a long time. And that's the only time I can rip cd's. I don't feel comfortable with a local FreeDB process. Is there any way to do a bunch of CD's, rip them to the HD either in WAV or with LAME to MP3, and then later on when I have a live internet connection, to use FreeDB to change the names/attributes/ID3's of the ripped files on the hard drive, as if I had done so before ripping?

Forgive me if this is an obviously silly question.

Thanks in advance.

Almost all mp3 taggers can read tags from freedb. You can use mp3tag, The Godfather and foobar2000 of course.
Just remember to rip each album to different folder

Sure, you simply need a tagger with online database(s) support, like Mp3tag.

Thanks. So as long as a "bunch" of ripped and encoded mp3's are sitting in their own directory, all coming from one CD, I can use mp3tag to access freedb, and then change them to look as if they had been renamed upon ripping originally?

How does FreeDB recognize them?

Also, does this work only if all are from one CD, or can one have individual mp3's?

Don't forget, FreeDB is full of incorrect information.

Only works on full CDs.

And the original track order must be reserved. FreeDB indetifies the cd's by their lenght and number and lenght of individual tracks.

But i recommend you to manually enter at least the artist and album names, it will be much easier to organize your collection. You can later get the individual tracknames from freeDB.

So far it seems to be matching what is on the CD. Where does it fail?

If you're going to be offline AND you do not what to use a local freedb proxy application, but you still want to be able to automatically lookup freedb entries for discs, then either:

1) Store the toc for later computation of the discid, using cdrdao.exe (a win32 compiled version comes with burnatonce, here: http://www.burnatonce.net/downloads/ ). You can also compute the discid immediately or later by using another program that is part of the cdrdao package, toc2cddb.exe (not included with burnatonce, though, but googleable).

2) If the ripping app supports logging it to a logfile or cuesheet, store the discid calculated by the app for freedb lookups. Not sure which apps will still compute them if you turn off the freedb lookups.

Not sure what the next step is for auto-tagging based on this.

-brendan

FreeDB data is populated by people using the FreeDB database (that means people like you and me). Since so many people add entries, what happens is that a certain amount of error creeps in over time (spelling mistakes, wrong identification of CDs, personal compilations being uploaded as music CD data, etc). So, you have to be careful when using the data from FreeDB. This is certainly what Empyrean would have meant in his post.

An entirely different method is to use the MusicBrainz database. Apparently, MusicBrainz can analyse your MP3 and if it finds a fingerprint, it will be able to tag the MP3. Theoretically, it means that tag data for even individual MP3s can be found. I am not sure about how effective this is. However, support among multipurpose taggers for MusicBrainz is very limited. They do have their own tagger called MusicBrainz Picard but it is not the most intuitive piece of software though it is usable.

Cheers
audiomars

edit: Stupid typo (as usual)!

An entirely different method is to use the MusicBrainz database. Apparently, MusicBrainz can analyse your MP3 and if it finds a fingerprint, it will be able to tag the MP3. Theoretically, it means that tag data for even individual MP3s can be found. I am not sure about how effective this is. However, support among multipurpose taggers for MusicBrainz is very limited. They do have their own tagger called MusicBrainz Picard but it is not the most intuitive piece of software though it is usable.

Cheers
audiomars

edit: Stupid typo (as usual)!
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Thank you. I have been looking, also, for something to use to create propr ID's for my random mp3 files. So far, I am looking and mp3tag, but that's a CD-based program.

For individual, scattered, mp3's, I have been reduced, frequently, to just typing the name of the song into Google (shudder) and then typing in any info for artist and year I can find.

Perhaps Musicbrainz will help. Are there any other resources, automatic, semi-automatic, or at least reliable manual, that would work in December 2006?