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[boadle]

Hey MC-ers,

here's a good question for you.

I have about 35 GB of music that I would like to synch with my 30 GB iPod. The tracks have been converted using VBR Lame.

Is there a formula I can apply to work out at what conversion rate the files should be synched, to enable them all to fit?

Secondly, when I synch several smartlists, am I right in thinking that this will not cause multiple duplicates to be created on the iPod? For example, if I have smartlistscalled 'Sixties', and one called 'Brit Bands', and they both include The Beatles, and I synch both smartlists with the Pod, will all Beatles tracks only be synched once, or twice, causing dupes?

Thanks in advance,

Lewis

[SteveG]

Lewis,

As you select and deselect files to sync to iPod, MC will estimate the size availlable and show you that information.  If you enable conversion, it takes that into account, but with VBR, those numbers are guesses. If you use a set bitrate for conversion, the numbers should be accurate.

In regards to your second question, the files will only be synched once and then are accessible from both playlists.

Steve

[boadle]

Thankyou Steve.

I have become a big fan of Media Centre. Only this lunchtime I was extolling the virtues of it to some of my WMP-person colleagues

Lewis

[Alex B]

I would leave some less important tracks out. Audio quality gets worse every time when a compressed file is recompressed (when a lossy method is used).

If you must have them all, the amount of extra compression needed depends on the average bitrate of your VBR files. I guess that CBR 128 kbps could do the trick and probably that leaves some room for new files. You could first try with few files and check if the audio quality is good enough for you.

10 minutes of 128 kbps MP3 file takes about 9.2 MB (about 9400 kilobytes). Remember that 1 gigabyte = 1 024 megabytes = 1 048 576 kilobytes = 1 073 741 824 bytes.

Hard drive manufacturers are using somewhat different maths: 1 GB = 1 000 000 000 bytes. So they can advertise bigger hard drives. That is the reason why Windows sees only about 186 GB on a "200 GB" hard drive.

[Alex B]

On a second thought,

You could also try this custom setting with MP3 encoder in MC:

--alt-preset 128

It is a 128 kbps ABR setting (a variable bitrate setting, which avarages to 128 kbps). The bitrate can be adjusted from 320 kbps down to 8 kbps.

So you can use for example: --alt-preset 140

ABR settings should give you somewhat better quality than CBR settings at the same bitrate.