Topic: Using Secure Ripping with LAME (Read 7123 times)

pfeffermj · « **on:** July 01, 2003, 01:39:46 pm »

I have been using EAC(Secure) + LAME (APS) for months to rip all my mp3s, but it would be really nice if I could just use MC for everything.

If I use "Digital Secure" mode and set up lame.exe as an 'external encoder', am I able to use the -aps settings on LAME through MC? I'm pretty sure I can, and I'm also pretty sure there's got to be some people out there doing this.

If I do switch to this method, do I just put lame.exe in the Media Center directory? or does it even matter?

Any feedback from anyone who's using this method would be appreciated. Thanks.

--Matt

Wobbley · « **Reply #1 on:** July 01, 2003, 01:46:13 pm »

Matt,

I use lame.exe as encoder, and it doesn't matter where the lame.exe file is physically located on your hd. But I'm not familiar with -aps setting. Can you briefly explain? Is it used in conjunction with other settings, or is it used in place of something like --alt-preset standard?

Wobbley

pfeffermj · « **Reply #2 on:** July 01, 2003, 01:48:56 pm »

Oh, i was just using -aps as an abbreviation for --alt-preset standard

Also, one more question, the Help file doesn't seem to address it cleary, or I just can't find it, but how do you set up filenames for the mp3s that are ripped using an external encoder.

I see the %IN and %OUT, but I don't see a place or way to configure something along the lines of

01 - Trackname.mp3

or

01 - Artist - Album - Track.mp3

--Matt

Wobbley · « **Reply #3 on:** July 01, 2003, 02:08:55 pm »

Matt,

I use --alt-preset standard (well, OK, I use extreme, but it's the same thing), and I use it with Digital Secure and I always get good, clean rips (can't tell a difference between them and ones done (in the past, before MC) with EAC. You configure the file naming conventions in the "File Naming & Location" section of "Tools", "Options..." There's a predefined list, or you can build your own. I use, just for example:

Directory Rule - [Album Artist (auto)]\[Album]
Filename Rule - [Artist] - [Album] - [Track #] - [Name]

In case you don't know, Album Artist (auto) will be the same as Artist for albums that have a single artist for all tracks. But if you have a compilation album, and you want the Album Artist to be "Various Artists" or something like that, and then you want to fill in the Artist value with the individual track artists, the Album Artist (auto) value will be the same as the Album Artist value, as long as the Album Artist value is the same for all tracks (i.e. regardless of the fact that the Artist value for each track is different). So, the naming conventions I listed above cover both Albums by a single artist, and albums by Various (Multiple) Artists with individual track artists because all tracks will go into the same directory, but the track names will contain the individual artist names for compilation CDs.

Hope that helps...

Oh, and by the way, the lame parameter line for -aps would look exactly like this (must have the %IN %OUT; don't change that):

%IN %OUT --alt-preset standard

Wobbley

MachineHead · « **Reply #4 on:** July 01, 2003, 03:30:42 pm »

Just out of curiosity, why would you use Lame externally when you could do the same thing internally with MC? Seems like a wasted step.

Just use 'Custom' for aps settings.

rocketsauce · « **Reply #5 on:** July 01, 2003, 04:25:22 pm »

The MC plug-in is using LAME 3.93.1. So, the only reason to use External Encoder is if you wanted to use one of the HA recommended versions.

Rob

pfeffermj · « **Reply #6 on:** July 01, 2003, 04:43:19 pm »

Thanks for the tips. Actually, I knew the MC mp3 plug in was 'based on LAME', but I'm a pretty anal dude, and I like knowing exactly what encoder I'm using, I know it's probably dumb.

I must have just missed the "File Name" stuff in the options menu, thanks for pointing it out.

--Matt

MachineHead · « **Reply #7 on:** July 01, 2003, 05:38:09 pm »

Quote

Thanks for the tips. Actually, I knew the MC mp3 plug in was 'based on LAME', but I'm a pretty anal dude, and I like knowing exactly what encoder I'm using

Wanna know more? Check out 'Format' in File Properties. (Poke around, it's in there) It should tell you which version of Lame you're using by reading the tags.

kiwi · « **Reply #8 on:** July 02, 2003, 03:36:05 am »

Just a note. I have switched from using "-" to "~" for my separators. I've had a few albums with tracks that have had "-"s in their names, which causes havok. Very few have tilde.

kiwi

park · « **Reply #9 on:** July 02, 2003, 07:11:26 am »

I was also using lame as an external encoder, not realising that it was the same as the one that MC uses. So I tried ripping a cd using the MC lame plugin with the following written in the command line:

%IN %OUT -b 192 -m s -h -V 5 -B 320

but whenever it got to the encoding stage it just hung. But this same command works fine when i use it with lame as an external encoder. hmmm?

So I've gone back to using the external encoder again. My big gripe is that the old style ms dos command window pops up whenever a file needs encoding. A real pain if I'm typing or watching a movie. Anyone know how to stop it popping up?

Cheers,

Bri

Wobbley · « **Reply #10 on:** July 02, 2003, 09:31:40 am »

The LAME encoder used by MC IS NOT the same as the external encoder. The LAME developers spend more time tweaking, and in this case, making better, the command line version of the encoder than they do the dll version of the encoder, which is the one that MC uses. This is why I use the external encoder and not the one that ships with MC. Hence, someone passing parameters to MC's (the dll version) LAME version will get an error, but they will not get the error when passing those same parameters to the LAME.exe external encoder. Additionally, the external encoder versions are released much more quickly than the dll versions. Right now, I am using LAME external version 4.0, which is about 20 times faster than the 3.93 external encoder I was using before.

If you don't believe me, search the net and do some reading. You'll find others who have tested/verified this.

Wobbley

Wobbley · « **Reply #11 on:** July 02, 2003, 09:33:22 am »

Bri,

I shouldn't matter that the external dos window pops up while you're encoding as you should not be doing anything else while encoding files. Encode the files and walk away...put the movie on hold until the encoding's done.

Wobbley

Wobbley · « **Reply #12 on:** July 02, 2003, 09:34:08 am »

Kiwi,

Thanks for the note. Not a bad idea... Have you had any problems with any program not liking the "~" versus the usual "-"?

Wobbley

kiwi · « **Reply #13 on:** July 02, 2003, 05:51:36 pm »

No problems with ~ v. - so far.

WM7,8,9 handle it fine. So did a version of MMJB and WinAMP on another computer, and I could sync it to my iPod. I imagine that since it isn't a special char as far as file names are concerned, and it is a regular keyboard character that it shouldn't be a problem.

It works like a charm.

I also add genre and year to the directory information after the album. This way I always have that information if something goes wrong and I have to rebuild from file names. Adding it to the song titles worked, however, with some classical music, it got cut off because the track name was too long.

kiwi

nameless · « **Reply #14 on:** July 02, 2003, 11:50:03 pm »

Quote

Just a note. I have switched from using "-" to "~" for my separators. I've had a few albums with tracks that have had "-"s in their names, which causes havok. Very few have tilde.

I like this idea. Plus, ~ is cuter. But it's harder to pronouce. (Til-duh? Til-dee?)

JohnT · « **Reply #15 on:** July 03, 2003, 10:20:32 am »

Quote

The LAME encoder used by MC IS NOT the same as the external encoder. The LAME developers spend more time tweaking, and in this case, making better, the command line version of the encoder than they do the dll version of the encoder, which is the one that MC uses. This is why I use the external encoder and not the one that ships with MC. Hence, someone passing parameters to MC's (the dll version) LAME version will get an error, but they will not get the error when passing those same parameters to the LAME.exe external encoder. Additionally, the external encoder versions are released much more quickly than the dll versions. Right now, I am using LAME external version 4.0, which is about 20 times faster than the 3.93 external encoder I was using before.

If you don't believe me, search the net and do some reading. You'll find others who have tested/verified this.

Wobbley

Actually, MC does use the lame.exe file, not the DLL version. We used to use the DLL version but discovered the same things as you mentioned, that it was always behind the "exe" version in features and quite a bit slower.

Omni · « **Reply #16 on:** July 03, 2003, 11:43:35 am »

Quote

Actually, MC does use the lame.exe file, not the DLL version. We used to use the DLL version but discovered the same things as you mentioned, that it was always behind the "exe" version in features and quite a bit slower.

Not that I don't believe you (I do, of course; it's your product so you should know), but why then is there an enc_mp3.dll in my plugin directory and no sign of lame.exe anywhere?

Omni

JohnT · « **Reply #17 on:** July 03, 2003, 12:13:39 pm »

There's got to be a lame.exe in there somewhere, or the plugin wouldn't work. The enc_mp3.dll is our plugin DLL which pipes data to the lame.exe program.

nameless · « **Reply #18 on:** July 03, 2003, 12:35:12 pm »

Lame.exe is in Media Center\Plugins.

kiwi · « **Reply #19 on:** July 03, 2003, 03:51:24 pm »

Can one switch the version of lame.exe just by putting a new version in its place if we wanted to test out different versions?

kiwi

Wobbley · « **Reply #20 on:** July 03, 2003, 04:05:27 pm »

Yes, kiwi, you can.

Try the version 4.06 if you can find it. It's really, really fast, and I haven't noticed a difference in sound quality between it an .93 using the --alt-preset extreme -Z settings...

Wobbley

MachineHead · « **Reply #21 on:** July 03, 2003, 04:23:32 pm »

It's also Alpha and not to be considered stable. However that said, I have a copy if you want me to email it to you. PM me your email if you do not prefer it listed here. I won't sell it for under $25.00. (J/K)

Omni · « **Reply #22 on:** July 03, 2003, 08:44:17 pm »

Quote

There's got to be a lame.exe in there somewhere, or the plugin wouldn't work. The enc_mp3.dll is our plugin DLL which pipes data to the lame.exe program.

Quote

Lame.exe is in Media Center\Plugins.

No, I did a recursive file search on my MC directory, and nothing with lame in it showed up.

I guess I'll try reinstalling the plugin sometime. It's not really an issue because I only rip/convert to APE, not MP3, but I was just wondering why I didn't have lame.exe anywhere in my MC directory tree.

Omni

Marko · « **Reply #23 on:** July 03, 2003, 10:25:26 pm »

Omni, that's because it's not installed by default.
If you go into options > encoding and set, say, file conversion, to use .mp3, you'll get hit by a dialogue asking if you want to go get the plugin. Say no to this if you don't want MC to crash, instead, nip off to the plugins area on this site and d'load from there, MC won't crash, and you'll have your lame.exe.

There are 2 versions for some reason, one here, listed as a "featured" plugin....
http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/mcplugins.pl

and one here, that appears to be a little newer....
http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/mcplugins.pl?type=7&start=0&end=10&page=1

kiwi · « **Reply #24 on:** July 03, 2003, 11:43:02 pm »

Quote

Try the version 4.06 if you can find it. It's really, really fast, and I haven't noticed a difference in sound quality between it an .93 using the --alt-preset extreme -Z settings...

Awesome, I'll give it a try. I just use my MP3s for iPod and listening on my laptop... so quality is not really that big an issue for me. (i.e. when I want quality, I have the APEs.) If this really speeds things up, that would be awesome!

Thanks,
Adam

zevele10 · « **Reply #25 on:** July 04, 2003, 08:57:19 am »

If Lame is going to be fast ,What A Wonderfull Word !

I am now converting 585 songs from WMA9 lossless to Mp3 Lame All Preset Standart Fast.

176 songs converted in 2:32 hours.
Not that slow

Omni · « **Reply #26 on:** July 04, 2003, 12:32:18 pm »

Quote

There are 2 versions for some reason, one here, listed as a "featured" plugin....
http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/mcplugins.pl

Listed as v.2.0.53

Quote

and one here, that appears to be a little newer....
http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/mcplugins.pl?type=7&start=0&end=10&page=1

Listed as v.2.0.55

This is interesting.

I know for a fact that I downloaded the "lame" MP3 encoder a while back when it was first introduced. I even tested it out at the time, and everything worked fine. Just now, when I go to my plugin manager, the version for both the MP3 and MP3 VBR encoders are being listed as v.2.0.57! How odd.

Anyway, thanks for the links. I probably would have downloaded the wrong one again.

Omni

UPDATE: When I go and try to select either of the MP3 encoders, I am told it is not installed. Interesting. I guess somewhere between 9.0 beta, 9.0 final, and 9.1 beta, it got inadvertently uninstalled. I guess that clears up everything.

MachineHead · « **Reply #27 on:** July 04, 2003, 12:49:00 pm »

Quote

UPDATE: When I go and try to select either of the MP3 encoders, I am told it is not installed. Interesting. I guess somewhere between 9.0 beta, 9.0 final, and 9.1 beta, it got inadvertently uninstalled. I guess that clears up everything.

It usually gets wiped out when you install a new build over another.

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Author Topic: Using Secure Ripping with LAME (Read 7123 times)

MachineHead

MachineHead

nameless

nameless

MachineHead

Marko

zevele10

MachineHead