Batch-converting w/foobar.

[Chri5peed]

I get the infamous 404 error trying to get on HydrogenAudio, so I'll ask here:

Want to fill up a 16GB SDHC card with V0 mp3s, for my D2 player.

My library is 95% FLAC & well-tagged.


ATM I have a playlist of over 1000 songs, which would be ideal to convert...roughly 1600 is 16GB. I'd love to turn them into mp3s, maintaining their folder structure/tagging & cover.jpg...so after I'd be left with a new top folder full of mp3s within and my FLAC library untouched.

I know foobar would probably do this, but never tried.


So, how would I go about doing this?

 

[chongy5]

I couldn't think of a really easy way, so here goes.

Duplicate your FLAC library.

Import this into foobar in a temporary playlist.

Right click all this duplicate library (not original library!) and right click, convert, convert to same folder.

Then select V0, ensure the file name options are how you would like them (More settings in the encoding settings window I think).

I'm sure there is probably something better though.

 

[Chri5peed]

I know of a 'hard' way too.


Select my playlist and choose 'Convert>Same directory' which I assume then would create & put mp3s along with my FLACS...similar to your way.

I could easily do a folder search to single out the mp3s to move, but how would I automatically put them in new folders?

 

[r@mside]

From memory (I don't have Foobar on this pc) I think you can create sub directories using /

Go to Preferences>Tools>Convertor

There should be an option for Output files, with some presets available.
If there is no preset to match your own, just edit the string.

e.g.
%album artist%/%album%/%tracknumber%.%title%

This should create a folder for album artists and sub folder for each album by that artist.

Try it for one album, if I'm wrong forgive me. I've only done something similar once - over a year ago.

 

[Punnisher]

I do this whenever I need to convert.

1. Download lame 3.97 (lame.exe) from somewhere.

2. Select LAME as your encoder and set it to V0.

3. Go to file>prefs and click on converter. Change the "single tracks" field to this.........%artist%\%album%\ $num(%tracknumber%,2) %title%

Note that this will make the directory look like this...Artist/Album/Songs

Where there is one folder for each artist, and it contains all folders for each album. Each song has the number in front of it. Example: Rush/Fly By Night/01 Anthem

4. When you are ready to convert, add all the media to the player, select all, right click one of them and click convert.

 

[malldian]

Do the duplicate folder and search flac in the new folder and delete those keeping the remaining mp3s?

 

[Chri5peed]

^ Yeah, could do that but I've not got room to duplicate 4 days of FLAC.

r@mside's idea sounds good, I'll give that a go. Punnisher too, thats how my library is arranged, well songs are '10 - Pazuzu.'


edit - Quote:

Originally Posted by Punnisher /img/forum/go_quote.gif I do this whenever I need to convert. 1. Download lame 3.97 (lame.exe) from somewhere. 2. Select LAME as your encoder and set it to V0. 3. Go to file>prefs and click on converter. Change the "single tracks" field to this.........%artist%\%album%\ $num(%tracknumber%,2) %title% Note that this will make the directory look like this...Artist/Album/Songs Where there is one folder for each artist, and it contains all folders for each album. Each song has the number in front of it. Example: Rush/Fly By Night/01 Anthem 4. When you are ready to convert, add all the media to the player, select all, right click one of them and click convert.

Did this...perfect, but no cover.jpg, but I can find them with 'Albumart Aggregator'.

 

[r@mside]

That string I suggested should have had a space between %tracknumber% and %title%, hope the error didn't waste too much of your time.

 

[Punnisher]

Yeah, I've never had any album art. I'll have to try that program out.

 

[Chri5peed]

Only ever used AlbumArt Aggregator, works great. My music is pretty un-mainstream too.

Fairly easy to follow.

 

[cooperpwc]

I am just upgrading my entire MP3 catalogue from Lame V2 to V0. It turns out that when I am using my amplifier from the line out of my 3GS, I can hear the difference.

Or to be more precise on the comparison: I can hear the difference between the 3GS headphone out and line out amped with V0. Not so much with V2. There is just that much more air between the instruments. V0 is worth the extra space.

This thread is a godsend. I can convert entire genres all at once from my FLAC and ALAC files by having Foobar create the folders. About 50 blues albums are churning out as I type this.

Thanks Punnisher - your string works perfectly.

 

[MadMan007]

I like that workaround Punnisher, one thing that I think is stupid about Foobar's converter setup is that the 'specify folder' option doesn't allow variables so you can't auto-create or -replicate a folder tree.

Anyhow what I've done for a while is just convert to the same folder then use the Robocopy commandline command to easily create and copy to a separate mp3 folder. For anyone interested in that here's a page listing commands: Robocopy You can mess around with it and get the hang of things, the only tricky thing I had to figure out was that for paths with spaces you have to surround the path with quotes. This command is useful for lots of stuff and is worth playing around with.

 

[cooperpwc]

Ah! I just discovered the limitation (maybe what you referring to MadMan?). When you have a compilation album it divides it into multiple folders according to artists. No Problem. I am just going to convert those ones separately with the original song title string. (Glad I started with Blues where it only messed up the Cream of Clapton and not Rock where I have many compilations, some of which could have been strewn over twenty different artist folders.)

This is still a spectacular time saver for 95%+ of my albums. Great find!

 

[Punnisher]

I'm glad you found it useful. It's not so much a workaround, but a necessary (though not obvious) setting for conversion.

Strangely, my tutorial here doesn't seem valid for the new version of foobar. Clicking the converter field under preferences doesn't bring up all the options. Instead, I can access all the options by highlighting the files I want for conversion, right click them and select convert , ... Then all the directory settings are displayed. Strange....

Oh, and about various artists... I never have the "various artists" checkbox selected in EAC, even if there are indeed various artists in the album. Using various artists will split the album up in media browsers that use ID tags, in my experience. Not cool.

 

[Chri5peed]

Personally I turned all my FLAC-albums into single file V0-mp3s...mainly so they're gapless.