See this thread. Sorry, I kind of pulled it off-topic.

Discussion can continue here.

/me wonders if he's considered a bigger gun...

anyways yea lame supports encoding from stdin right? and mppdec can decode to stdout so why not just write a batch file or some drag and drop program that can facilitate the piping of mpc->mppdec->stdout->stdin->lame->mp3?

seems like a simple enough idea...

Anyone want to take a shot at this batch file? This would be very very handy. Even a front end would be cool.


-Grant

I'll take a look later tonight and see what I can come up with.

Nick

Great to hear! There are times that I wish I was a programmer...this is one of them.

James

OK, I'm pretty much done with the MPC->MP3 front-end. It works right now but I'm going to make some changes before I put it up here. Just so you know, transcoding directly from MPC to MP3 takes a lot of processing power, so once I release this you should just queue up all of your files and sleep on it . I'll probably get this out sometime tomorrow evening (Pacific Standard Time).

Nick

Thanks Nick! I don't see speed as a problem with my XP 1800+. I really appreciate the effort, and I hope this helps the audio compression community (at least as much as it will help me ).

I may be away for a few days, but I'll be looking for it when I get back.

James

Awesome! This will make transferring music to mp3 players and PDAs much easier!

Now we just need that MPC Pocket PC player!


-Grant

No problem, I'm glad I can help some people out.

If you have an XP 1800+ you'll be fine. I have a 1600+ and it transcodes at about 5X (IIRC). Still slow compared to what I'm used to, but bearable.

Nick

hum, it'll be slow on my 400 mhz but who cares - it is a wonderful idea. in fact I thought 'bout it, but I didn't imagine it whould be possible! Hope it works fine... It has, btw another real advantage: you cant say anymore that mpc isnt compatible with mp3 - you can include this in a frontend, to let it automatically transform mpc into mp3 for your portable player! Can be a nice tool to increase the use of mpc... and that's fine with me too

Jos

I was pondering the same question myself only recently! But rather than having a seperate proggy that does the job for me, I'd much prefer to just know the commandline since I can then use it (like all the other coding stuff) in my little file commander.

Why does it take so long? I mean mppdec is very fast!

A basic commandline would be the following:

mppdec file.mpc - | lame --alt-preset 128 - file.mp3

(this is off the top of my head but I think that's right)
The program I wrote basically allows you to drag files onto it and it will execute a commandline similar to the above for each file in the list...



I think the reason that it takes long is because you are decoding and encoding at the same time. Obviously LAME is more of a bottleneck than mppdec, and there is probably some overhead from everything going through stdout and back through stdin... I suspect it'd be faster if it just decoded to WAV first and then encoded from the WAV, but I'm not sure if that's what people want...

Hi all,


As promised, here is a link to my MPC -> MP3 front-end. It should be easy to figure out but post here if you have any questions or problems. It is pretty crude at this point because I didn't have much time to work on it, but it works Hopefully I'll have some time over the next week or two to add a few things.

You can get it from Roberto's site.

Enjoy!

Nick

Great work Nick! Thanks a bundle!

he man! tanx a lot, nick... this is a usefull thing!!

What are the chances of being able to set an output directory?

I can do that. I'm not sure if I'll have time tonight but I'll get a new version out as soon as I can. Right now it will just put the mp3s in the same dir as the source mpc.

How's it working for you otherwise?

Nick

You have no idea the effort it's gonna save me, and I'm sure many others. Have you considered submitting this to Dibrom to become part of the Hydrogen Audio tools?

James

I wasn't aware that there were Hydrogen Audio tools, but if he wants to add it to the collection, that's perfectly OK. There are some changes I'd like to make to the software first, though. I plan on adding "Browse" buttons to locate mppdec.exe and lame.exe so you don't have to type them in manually, adding an optional output directory, and if I have enough time, integrating the decoding/encoding into the program so that it is more elegant and (possibly) faster.

Nick

As always, I'm open to host this frontend in my page.

I just need the author's agreement, and I'd gladly upload it.

Regards;

Roberto.

Hey everyone,

I just added support for an output directory, as requested. You can get the new version at Roberto's site.

Nick

Top...

for anyone who may be interested.

Very nice (and btw, the command line works)

My portable and I are thanking you

I'll join in the "thank you"-saying ==> you're great!


J