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[Tiger1016]

I am trying to figure out the most efficient and least involving way to go through a migration from an old lossy library to an upgraded lossless and hi-res one. All of the music that I had previously was in mp3 and AAC format and I am now re-ripping all of my CDs to ALAC and downloading some DSD and other higher res FLAC versions where possible.

The most important thing that I am trying to figure out is the best way to sync the old ratings that I have meticulously managed to the new lossless versions of the songs as I add them (I use ratings to create auto playlists which makes it easier to create manual playlists. Also, I only sync starred music to my portable devices).

My second objective relates to some old lossy playlists that I would like to swap the lossless versions into wherever possible. Also, after doing this, it could be helpful to be able to identify which songs still only have a lossy versions so I can more easily identify additional CDs I might want to buy (Murfie is freaking awesome and addicting, if you are not aware of it yet, and the Pono music store is a good higher quality alternative to iTunes).

FYI I am new to the program but I have already started to learn about stacks. Conceptually a “reverse stack” where the lossy version sits in front of the lossless one might work on pushing down the rating and playlist inclusion. However, this might only work well for a one time deal. After the initial conversion, I would then want to switch the lossless on top to be the default version to play, and then I would expect to need to reverse and repeat every time before I add a new lossless album or else I will wipe out the old lossy ratings with the yet to be rated lossless addition. Also, it is not clear to me if stacks would have the ability to have both the mp3 AND the AAC sit on top of the ALAC and FLAC versions as it is my understanding that you can only give one single format priority and then the program defaults to the larger file size first.

Hopefully there is an option or additional tool that might make this more samples and easier to manage or at least a tweak to the process that could help me more easily accomplish these objectives. Thanks in advance for the help.

[Tiger1016]

Should I assume that the lack of responses implies that there is not really a good solution for what I am looking for?

[BryanC]

Library Tools->Rename, Move, and Copy Files: Update database to point to a new location

Find: .mp3
Replace: .flac

[blgentry]

I'm surprised someone else hasn't given you another answer on this one.   It's called Tag Pasting.  I'm not very experienced with it, but I just tested it and it seems to work just fine.

All you have to do, is highlight a group of your original lossy files.  Say all of the files in one album, sorted by track order.  Then select Edit > Copy.

Next go to a new group of lossless files of the exact same album, sorted the exact same way.  Highlight them, and select Edit > Paste Tags.  This will bring up a dialog box with a list of fields that you can paste.  You will probably want to select only Rating and perhaps Number of Plays.  Then just press the button and it will all transfer.

You could do this for entire artists as long as you were very careful to make sure that the source and destination have the exact same number of files, sorted in the exact same way.  It seems safest to do this an album at a time, but experiment and see what you come up with.  Undo is available, but I would make a Database Backup before I started any big project like this.

Good luck and let us know how it works for you.

Brian.

[Ferdi]

It's called Tag Pasting.  I'm not very experienced with it, but I just tested it and it seems to work just fine.

I have a project running for the last 18 months or so where I re-rip all my CDs, to replace MP3 with FLAC.
Tag Pasting has worked flawlessly for me, I am really impressed. Thanks to earlier replies in this forum

I mostly rip a bunch of CDs in one go. Then I 'copy tags' and delete mp3s: I do this step cd by cd since I take the opportunity to clean up some tags during the process (Musicbrainz Picard, additional tags for classical and Jazz and more) and to avoid any wrong doings in batch processing (human error, I do trust MC, not myself).
I have also set up a 'view with panel', where I show the 'file type' tag in the panel: that way I can easily filter or browse to see which album already exists in FLAC, where I forgot to delete the mp3s etc. (It would be great to have a view defined that pre selects all albums that exist in multiple file types, but that's beyond my skill level)

Takes time but I have rediscovered plenty of old favorites during this process!

[glynor]

There is a good solution.

See:
https://vimeo.com/85110224

And:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=76147.msg528833#msg528833

[Tiger1016]

Thanks all for the help. I have some interesting options to work with now, and I think I should be able to figure out a good solution with these tools (MCAutoQueue, MCFileIngester, Tag Pasting, and Stacks). Going to require some research, thinking, and playing around. Will be a fun project for the holiday weekend.