Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jmone]

I've got a bunch of my music ripped as WMA Lossless.  What is the "best" way to
- convert these to FLAC
- delete the WMA files
- update the library
- keep the Meta Data
- write the tags and coverart back to the new flac files

Thanks
Nathan

Edit - I presume that such a lossless to lossless conversion will be... well.. lossless!

[astromo]

Why not just use the FLAC encoder that comes with MC?

Keep the job within the software and it should carry the meta data with it.

And, according varied and wide reports, lossless does in fact mean lossless. That said, you might want to check the verify option. Will probably take a little bit longer but should be more secure.

[InflatableMouse]

Yeh you can simply convert them to Flac using MC convert feature. This will keep all the tags intact. Go over the options from the convert (action) window. You can choose to add the new files or replace the old ones and whether or not to add the new files to the database.

The conversion is lossless.

[jmone]

Thanks - just wanted to double double check - nothing like getting one thing wrong with a replace style conversion!  I have a habit of sometimes pressing the "Go" button to then realise I've got setting wrong    Tested the process on one album as was (of course) all fine. 

[DarkPenguin]

1. Cue up files to convert.
2. Start MC converting the files.
3. Drink, tip cows, hulu, whatever you want.
4. Repeat 3 until 2 is done.

[jmone]

That was the plan but I actually added a few steps
1. Cue up files to convert.
a. Check the settings for the conversion are right
b. Google up what the Flac Quality settings are about and find out it is nothing to do with "Quality" but how much time to take trying to compress it as much as possible
c. Decide to leave the settings as they are
d. Double check the settings
e. Check the settings one more time just in case
f.  Remind myself I have a full backup if it all goes pear shaped
2. Start MC converting the files.
3. Drink, tip cows, hulu, whatever Freak as the entire PC is now locked up hard.  Nothing is responsive not even Cntl-Alt-Del.  Got to go out for an hour so I decide to just leave it.... Come back and find everything is OK and the WMA's have all been replaced by FLAC with meta data intact (I think)

Feeling good I've now converted a couple of thousand of WMA Lossless I convert a few random MPA files to MP3 (so I have all my lossless rips as FLAC and lossy stuff in MP3).
- Follow above process
- PC locks up hard again but this time I manually power it off after 15mins as I notice that it is "failing" to convert any files.
- After a reboot it worked on 16 of 20 MPA --> MP3.  Run again on the failed 4 and it worked.

Like all such processes.... even though it ended up fine (I think), it is always good to make a backup first  

[DarkPenguin]

You might want to reduce the number of concurrent encodes going on.

[Matt]

tip cows

This is on my bucket list.

[jmone]

I had to look this one up.  You North Americans are... odd!  ...but I did like the bit how you have even studied this practicalities of this (down to the nearest 10 newtons even!):
Scientific study

A 2005 study led by Margo Lillie, a doctor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, concluded that tipping a cow would require an exertion of 2,910 newtons of force,[3] and is therefore impossible to perform by a single person. Her calculations found that it would take at least two people to apply enough force to push over a cow if the cow does not react and reorient its footing. If the cow does react, it would take at least four people to push it over. Dr. Lillie noted that cattle are well aware of their surroundings and are very difficult to surprise, due to excellent senses of both smell and hearing,[1][4][5][6] but that according to laws of static physics, "two people might be able to tip a cow" if the cow were "tipped quickly — the cow’s centre of mass would have to be pushed over its hoof before the cow could react."[7] Dr. Lillie's study has been replicated by other researchers, who confirmed that at least two to four people can, in fact, push over a cow.[8]

[jmone]

You might want to reduce the number of concurrent encodes going on.

No doubt!  Though I've never seen such behaviour when creating a MP3 HH Library / Stacks etc (though this was a long time ago).  I did see a similar issue when using the H264 encoder for DLNA streaming as well.  It would eat all CPU time so it could not even stream what it had encoded without stuttering.

[InflatableMouse]

I recently recreated my library as lossy. I have over 40,000 files of which almost 30,000 are lossless. I don't like how stacks work so I copied my library to my local pc (1TB), created a new library, imported the local files, hit CTRL-A (on the 30K lossless) and converted them to Mp3 high quality portable (-V5). It took a minute or two I think before MC showed signs of life, but after that it happily started converting. At no point did my PC appear to be stuck.

I'm not sure what would cause your pc to hang for 15 minutes or longer, it sounds wrong.

When I did my conversion I was a little bit curious if MC would actually manage to convert so many files in one go. It did. It took like 40 hours, but it managed .