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[skifastbadly]

Sorry, that's not a very clear subject line. Here's the situation:

Long before I started using my PC as a music server, I ripped all my music to MP3 so I could play it on my iPod.   I have two 160GB Classics which I use when flying or riding motorcycle.   Now I'm using MC to drive my stereo with FLAC files.  Yeah, it was a pain in the butt to re-rip all the CDs but it was well worth it.

So now I'm maintaining two separate libraries, the FLAC files for my server and the MP3 files for my iPods.   What I'd really like is some sort of automatic sync so when I ripped a new CD to FLAC, MC would make converted MP3 files in the MP3 library.  As it stands now, manually conversion is a somewhat time intensive and error prone method.

Has anybody tackled this?

Thanks

[JimH]

MC's Handheld Sync can do conversion automatically when you put the files on the device.  The device can even be a folder on your computer.  Conversion settings are in the options.  The files can be kept in a cache so they don't need to be converted the next time you need to sync.

[skifastbadly]

Thanks, Jim.  That's very useful.  Quick question before I proceed. My MP3 library isn't an exact copy of my FLAC library (I have some old downloaded MP3s and other assorted stuff).  When I set it up as a destination folder for the handheld sync, I got a warning message that files already existed.  Can I assume that if I proceed, the files that are not in the FLAC library will not be deleted?  In other words, does MC simply move new files in, or does it truly sync, which would remove files that do not exist in the source library?

Thanks

[ferday]

it's not a true sync, it's based on a duplicate detection (there have been several recent threads about this in fact)

so it shouldn't delete any files.

personally...i would copy the mp3 library somewhere (it can't take up that much space) and then do all the syncing and stuff and verify myself, but that's because i'm paranoid about that stuff. 

i've never had an issue with sync deleting anything for the record, but i still have backups at the ready

[blgentry]

Your situation is unusual because you have a split collection.  My advice would be to unify your collection.  In particular:

1.  Take your master library, which only has FLACs in it now and add in *only* the MP3s of the songs that you don't have as FLACs.  As you do this, you should either manually, or with MC's RM&C tool, move these MP3s to a new directory.  That way you know that these are your unique MP3s that you don't have FLAC copies of.
2.  Now your master library will contain *all* of your songs:  Some in FLAC and some in MP3.
3.  Since your master library contains all of your music, you can now do a handheld sync to a *new* directory.  This handheld sync should be set up to only allow MP3.  That way it will copy the MP3s and convert the FLACs to MP3s.

You'll end up with a directory full of MP3s of your entire collection.  You'll probably also have a redundant directory full of MP3s that are duplicates of your FLACs.  You'll probably keep that around for a while until you're super duper sure that you have all of your unique MP3s copied to the master library.

This approach keeps things complete and simple.  No split collection.  It's all one collection.  ...and it has a synced version that's been converted to MP3.

Further, your handheld definition(s) can specify playlist(s), etc to only copy what you want to the handhelds.  That way you don't need an MP3 copy of the entire library.  Only what you want to put on your ipod.  If you want different stuff on each ipod, you can just make two handheld definitions, and each one will get what it is supposed to.

Finally, you'll need to sync these directories to the ipods.  I'll leave that part to you, as it might involve itunes or a third party tool.  For the one ipod I started working with recently, my first step was to RockBox it, so it just appears as a normal hard drive and doesn't require any special software to sync to it.

Good luck,

Brian.

[MikeO]

Hi

Brian has it , if you merge the "libraries" to master library it will mean maintenance will be easier surely.

I have 2 iPods a 80 and a 160 my library is too big to fit on either. The way I manage it is to define 2 custom Tags , iPod1 & iPod2 data Type as Integer.

Then I set the whole library to iPod1 = 0 , iPod2 =0

Then I set them with the tracks I want to include to iPod1 = 1 etc and then create an active playlist with that as a condition.

If you now go into Options under Handhelds you can set which playlist syncs with which handheld,

Its a bit laborious on the first pass as the sync will have to convert each flac to mp3 , but as Jim mentions there is a Conversion Cache (you can define the location under Options>File Locations) and that caches the converted files so next time you sync it will only need to convert the difference.

It seems to work for me

Hope this helps

Mike