Print

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

[enigman]

Hi -

I'm new to Media center, and currently debating on how to start ripping my collection.  I'd really like to rip to a lossless format (like APE), the idea being that I'll never have to re-rip.  However, I need MP3 versions of my audio files to transfer to my PDA and to burn onto CD-R/W for my car stereo.  I'm wondering about how (if at all) I can do this:

1.  Ideally, it'd be great to be able to store multiple versions of an audio file as part of a single library entry, so that I could have an APE and an MP3 file for a particular song.  When I play the file on the comp, it will play the APE file, but when I want to burn a CD-R of MP3s or transfer it to my PDA (or any other MP3 player) or do anything where file space is a premium, then it will use the smaller MP3 file.  It doesn't seem like there is a way to do this right now, but it'd be a great feature to add in the future.

2.  If this isn't possible, is there a way to convert APEs to MP3s on the fly when I transfer to my PDA or when I want to burn a CD-R.  I haven't seen a way to do this, but perhaps I'm missing something.  Of course, the obvious drawback of this option, is that it requires re-encoding files every time I want to transfer them, but there may not be a way around this.

Thoughts or suggestions?

--Tim

[bspachman]

Hi -

I'm new to Media center, and currently debating on how to start ripping my collection.  I'd really like to rip to a lossless format (like APE), the idea being that I'll never have to re-rip.  However, I need MP3 versions of my audio files to transfer to my PDA and to burn onto CD-R/W for my car stereo.  I'm wondering about how (if at all) I can do this:

1.  Ideally, it'd be great to be able to store multiple versions of an audio file as part of a single library entry, so that I could have an APE and an MP3 file for a particular song.  When I play the file on the comp, it will play the APE file, but when I want to burn a CD-R of MP3s or transfer it to my PDA (or any other MP3 player) or do anything where file space is a premium, then it will use the smaller MP3 file.  It doesn't seem like there is a way to do this right now, but it'd be a great feature to add in the future.

You can do this. My library is primarily APE/APL files, but I have a few unique MP3s as well. I used the "Convert Format..." tool to convert all of my APE/APLs to MP3s and transfer the resulting MP3s to a seperate directory structure. I then imported the new MP3 directory structure into MC.

Finally, you can use a "search term" in your various view schemes to only show APEs, MP3s, etc. For me, I created a new database field called "duplicate" and labeled all my duplicate MP3s with this field. I then put a rule in my Media Library that says "don't show me duplicates".

For transfering to my handheld (iPod), I use a smartlist with the qualifier "type==mp3" and it will only show my MP3s.

2.  If this isn't possible, is there a way to convert APEs to MP3s on the fly when I transfer to my PDA or when I want to burn a CD-R.  I haven't seen a way to do this, but perhaps I'm missing something.  Of course, the obvious drawback of this option, is that it requires re-encoding files every time I want to transfer them, but there may not be a way around this.

I don't know about burning. I believe the only transcoding allowed is to WAV/CDDA. However, handhelds are a different story. I know you can transcode on the fly to the iPod. I'm not certain about other handhelds.

Good luck!
Brad