sKiZo
Hates received: 92644 43.20°N 85.50°W
Handy dandy utilities that make certain tasks a whole lot easier. Show us what you got!
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I'll get started with the following.
BULK AUDIO FILE FORMAT CONVERSION
My HTPC rolled craps on me, so was looking for an alternative to feed my audio junkie. Decided to use the USB input on my Oppo SACD as a player, but that can only handle up to a 16gb thumb drive. Another option might have been to start rolling physical media like in the bad old days, but I'm way too lazy for that. The Oppo's player is pretty basic, showing folders (albums) and titles with each folder.
Tried a couple USB hard drives loaded with the original FLAC files, but no go. I did query Oppo and they tell me the hard limit for that model is 16gb, and playback doesn't support FLAC anyway. The limited display is good enough for selecting an artist/album and playing it back, and being able to use the remote is convenient. And yes, there's other alternatives, but this one's good enough to get me by, and I'll still have incentive enough to get around to rebuilding the HTPC sooner rather than later.
Not gonna fit a lot of FLAC on a 16gb thumb drive, so did some digging and came up with a decent freeware utility called LameXP that could bulk convert those to MP3 VBR. Pretty simple point and shoot, and took about 6 hours to convert around 7K files that I figured was about all that would fit on two thumb drives and would be enough to keep me relatively happy for now.
However ...
Helps sometimes to read the book? I ended up with a real mess on filenames that could have been avoided if I'd set the software's tag editor correctly when converting the files.
BULK TAG EDITING
Rather than kill another six hours doing it again (alternative being manually editing the tags on 7K files?? Arghhh!) did some more digging and came up with a bulk tag editor called MP3 Tag Express. That automates the usual stripping of track numbers, artist names, and such from the various tags that don't need it, and really helps clean things up.
Easy to work with, and has all the features I needed, and some extras like a CD ripper as well. Took about an hour to install the software AND finish the renaming and cleanup. It's also good for removing or replacing all those weird dashes and hypens and crap oh my that some seem to enjoy cluttering up a CD interface, as well as un-necessary comments. Download the "free" version to install, but be aware it limits you to 10 files at a time, which is pretty useless, but at least gives you a chance to test drive the program.
* LameXP is a SourceForge freeware project. MP3 Tag Express is $19 lifetime, but well worth it, considering the alternatives. Both programs run rings around anything else I've tried. Highly recommended to anyone who has a similar situation.
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