Well, there's perhaps a better way to do what you're doing from a variety of perspectives, but I don't know that you want to get into all of that. That is, however, a version of what I figured you were up to, and that is generally not a very efficient way to use MC's Library system. The concept of the Library isn't really designed to be used to "separate the good from the bad" (via what is in or out of the Library). It is designed to know about everything that
exists on the system, and then you use Tags to separate the "good from the bad" (or whatever other categories you want to). In general, multiple Libraries are only useful when they do not cross purposes
at all. The Library
contains everything, but it doesn't have to
show you everything. MC's Library "contains" all sorts of things it doesn't show you by default anyway (like lookup data for every CD it has ever seen, for example).
The Views are filters. You can add filters to them, and you can flag files automatically at import time. There is rarely a good reason NOT to import any file you need to use (even transient ones) because you can
automatically hide them from everywhere you care about, and only show them where you need them, and importing them gives you much more power should you need (ever) to do more with them. People commonly imbue the process of Importing with more meaning than it has. All Importing means is: MC knows about the file. Period. It has no other special power.
But... As I said, you might not want to get into all of that. If you want to know more about how you can automatically not care about those kinds of details, while still presenting your family with a clean MP3-only, curated interface, then ask.
I would like to address this in detail though...
and sometimes indie artists will sell (via Bandcamp, etc.) albums in WAV or FLAC for the same price as the MP3 version. In those cases, I burn the WAV or FLAC to CD as the "backup", then rip the CD to mp3 to match the rest of the family library.
Okay, so to be clear, you're doing this:
- Buy an album in FLAC or WAV from Bandcamp and download it.
- Drag-drop these files into a CD burning application of some kind (you were hoping to use MC for this) and burning them to disc.
- Ripping this disc to MP3.
- Then importing those files and using them in your MC database.
Right?
If so, this is crazy-pants. Do this:
First, select your Audio Encoding and Conversion options. You only have to do this once, as the settings are persistent.
- Tools > Options > Encoding > Encoder: MP3. Then click Encoder Settings and set LAME to whatever mode you want used for MP3 creation.
- Select any file in your Library (just to get the options set) and right-click > Library Tools > Convert Format. Select MP3 Encoder and click Options in the Conversion Action Window.
- Audio Conversion Options > Convert to: Wherever you want, either the same as existing, or your actual long-term storage location (preventing a subsequent need to do Rename, Move, and Copy on the files.
- Audio Conversion Options > Mode: Replace original file on disk and in Library.
- Say OK to save the settings and then just cancel the conversion.
Then, once that is done, your workflow becomes:
- Buy an album in FLAC or WAV from Bandcamp and download it.
- Have MC watch the download folder so it Auto-Imports the files.
- Burn those FLAC files to disc to make your backup album.
- Select them, right-click > Library Tools >Convert Format. Choose MP3 Converter. Click Go. Done.
You do NOT need to use the physical disk as the intermediary, and doing so introduces propensity for error and takes longer. When you do the conversion, MC can automatically replace the originally imported FLAC/WAV versions with MP3s, once you've burned them off onto backup disc.
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Topic: How can I burn audio CD's without MC automatically importing to the library? (Read 1536 times)