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[Mr Swordfish]

Now that I am no longer constrained by the amount of storage space I'd like to re-rip my current collection, currently m4a 256k, as FLAC files.

Ideally, this would just replace the audio portion of the data and all the non-audio data (album artwork, playlists, etc.) would remain the same. Is this possible in the current version of MC?

There's this thread about it from 2003 https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=16046.0 where someone at JRiver  said "I put in on the list of features to consider for the next version."

Was this ever added?

Thanks.

[JimH]

Yes.  https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=128388.0

[Mr Swordfish]

Thanks.

I tried this and it worked perfectly the first time.

the second time it didn't ask and just re-ripped leaving the old files intact.

The third time it didn't ask  and just re-ripped leaving the old files intact.

I've not tried a fourth time.

Is there some magic setting that tells JRiver to ask every time?  Or do I need to restart the program each time I re-rip?

[Mr Swordfish]

UPDATE: I've tried this with several other CDs and the behavior is fairly consistent: If I close and restart MC between discs it works like it's supposed to. If I don't, there's no dialog box  and it just adds the new files.

I haven't yet tested what it does with playlists or other data.

[blgentry]

There's a manual way of doing this, per album.  It's quite involved (a lot of steps), but it does work.

Hopefully someone can help you get this "new feature" working consistently to save you from the manual steps.

Best of luck,
Brian.

[Mr Swordfish]

Testing the playlist functionality, when re-ripping the tracks get deleted from the playlists, making the "feature" fairly useless.

Is it possible to fix this functionality?

[blgentry]

The manual version of this preserves everything including playlists.  But it's kind of a lot of work.

Brian.

[Mr Swordfish]

Is there a set of instructions for the manual method?

My immediate issue is the 80 or so albums that I recently ripped as .ogg that can't be played by my mobile player.  Fortunately, I hadn't done much with adding them to playlists so starting from scratch is not that big a deal.  And restarting MC each time is tedious, but not that big a deal either.

[blgentry]

The is the closest to a set of complete instructions:

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,55822.msg379257.html#msg379257

It's a bit tricky.   You'll want to read it a couple of times and try to understand why the procedure does what it does.

Best of luck,

Brian.

[MusicBringer]

fttb, I would simply convert .ogg to flac 🎵
😊

[Mr Swordfish]

fttb, I would simply convert .ogg to flac 🎵
😊

Yeah, that's probably what any sane person would do.  It just offends my sense of aesthetics to increase the file size without improving the quality.  So, simply deleting the old files and ripping the new ones is what I'll do for now since this feature doesn't seem to be working.

Hopefully, there will be some resolution so that I can replace the .m4a files

[MusicBringer]

...Ha, or get a mobile player that plays .ogg.
 

[blgentry]

fttb, I would simply convert .ogg to flac 🎵
😊

No offense intended but:  That's a very bad idea.  It creates confusion about the content of the file.  Converting from lossy to lossless just keeps the lossy information in a lossless format.  Which means you have (comparatively) bad quality files in disguise. They appear to be good, but are actually bad.

To the OP:  The manual process isn't *that* bad.  I've done it a couple of dozen times.  But if you have 80 albums to do, I would probably simply re-rip with your normal process and manually deal with the playlist implications, if any.  I don't really use playlists myself so this might be a bigger deal for you than I am anticipating.

Best of luck.
Brian.

[Mr Swordfish]

1) Deleting and re-ripping 80 or so albums is not that big a deal and I'm mostly done.  Since there's no playlist data for those, it's straightforward.

2) The real issue is moving forward with the conversion to FLAC of the 25,000 or so .m4a files  while leaving the 100s of playlists intact.  It appears that MC uses a "delete and insert" approach instead of issuing an update command to the database, which has been known source of data loss since SQL was invented back in the 70s.  But, it shouldn't be too hard to modify the code to preserve playlist data when the audio file changes format.   Could I get someones attention to add that as a feature request?

[blgentry]

If, at some point, you want to do the manual thing, I'll try to help you with doing your first one so you get it right.

Here's hoping you don't need to manual process at all.

Happy Friday.

Brian.

[dtc]

For playlists you could export them and use a text editor to make changes, like m4a to flac or a file path change and then re-import them. It should be pretty easy as long as you keep the same basic folder/naming structure.

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Export_Playlists

[MusicBringer]

No offense intended but:  That's a very bad idea.  Brian.

I was a bit tongue in cheek, but at the same time I didn't realise we would be going from lossy to lossless.
Thank you Brian for putting my hat on straight.
😏😊

[Mr Swordfish]

The is the closest to a set of complete instructions:

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,55822.msg379257.html#msg379257

It's a bit tricky.   You'll want to read it a couple of times and try to understand why the procedure does what it does.

Best of luck,

Brian.

In my long career as a software developer there were many instances where I had to explain to management that actually fixing the issue would not be that much harder than applying a kluggy work-around.  This looks like a situation where fixing it would be easier than using the manual method even once.

Unless the MC code is a complete mess, fixing this should be far far easier than the complicated instructions at the link above.  I assume  MC uses some lightweight SQL  database, and if so a simple update or insert command should do it.

[Mr Swordfish]

bump.

I was hoping someone from the JRiver development team would comment.

This isn't urgent, and if it gets fixed in the next release that's fine.  I would like to think I'm being heard here...

[Matt]

If you pick "Rip & Replace" from the rip, it should add new files and remove old files.  It does a permanent delete of the old tracks then.

[blgentry]

The manual process isn't *that* hard.  I've done it a half dozen times.

On the other hand, I also re-ripped my entire music collection from scratch when I started with JRiver MC.  At first I maintained a library of medium quality AAC files.  I then re-ripped each album in turn, deleting off the old AAC copies as I went.  For me this was a good way to get to know my musical tastes again. 

Ripping some albums led me to ripping others.  As I got full quality copies of my music, it kind of expanded my musical world again.  The process of ripping became a way of prioritizing things I wanted to hear again.  I did the first pass of this over a period of about a week.  This set me off on a journey to get back my love of music.  Ultimately it led to me tripling my music collection (CDs) and really appreciating music again.

For my collection of 60 or 80 albums in AAC, I didn't bother to preserve anything in MC.  I just deleted them and imported the new ones.  There was nothing meaningful for me to keep.  No playlists, etc.  Didn't care about play history or anything at that point.  This made it easier (no whacky replacement) and let me enjoy it.  You probably aren't in this same situation but I thought I'd type this up anyway.

Best of luck,
Brian.

[Mr Swordfish]

If you pick "Rip & Replace" from the rip, it should add new files and remove old files.  It does a permanent delete of the old tracks then.

Yes.

And it deletes all the playlist data associated with the old tracks.

[Mr Swordfish]

So, is clobbering the playlist data when re-ripping desired behavior? 

Or is this something that the development team is interested in addressing?

[Matt]

Next build:
Changed: When ripping and replacing, the old files are preserved until the end of the rip so that playlist data can be preserved.

Testing appreciated.  Thanks.

[Mr Swordfish]

Great news!  I'll be happy to test when it's available.

[Mr Swordfish]

Next build:
Changed: When ripping and replacing, the old files are preserved until the end of the rip so that playlist data can be preserved.

Testing appreciated.  Thanks.

Did this improvement get released in v 31 or do I have to upgrade to v 32 to use it?

[JimH]

That should be in the latest build of MC31.  You could read the release notes.