Media/HTPC Gurus - audio utility needed

mrzed · Post by **mrzed** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 10:23 am

I know there are a lot of media PC users here - so perhaps someone may know a utility that will work for me:

Just getting my HTPC up and running, and no surprise, I am finding that the audio aspect is more value to me than the video. I am ripping all my CD's to FLAC, and having one source for all the music is better than I even expected.

What I am looking for:

A utility to bulk transcode ALL of my FLAC files to MP3 for using on portable devices. Ideally, creating an exact mirror of the FLAC directory structure, and copying tags along with the files. Even better if it can use VBR mp3.

Too much to hope for?

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 11:06 am

I don't know of any such utility off the top of my head, but the requirement is simple enough...I'd think someone could write one in a few hours or so.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 11:19 am

I think Foobar2000 and dbPowerAmp can do this type of 1-step conversion but I don't know about carrying the tags over.

mrzed · Post by **mrzed** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 11:19 am

That's wat I was thinking too. My programming skills are probably almost up to the task, and it seems like it's mostly just basic file handling, but I am not familiar enough with the tools I would need to get started. Most of the programming I do is VB based and specific to GIS software.

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:05 pm

I don't know much about FLAC, but I did find a directshow filter one could use to decode FLAC:

http://www.losslessaudioblog.com/wmpmce-lossless-guide/

...so, using this, you could use DirectShow (which is a MSFT API for working with audio and video) to decode the FLAC samples to PCM audio, and then convert those samples to MP3 using other filters in the DirectShow graph:

http://www.codeproject.com/audio/dshowencoder.asp

...there are probably plenty of other APIs for working with FLAC and MP3, so this is by no means the only way of doing it. Although you could probably easily modify the above sample to work with FLAC files and the aforementioned FLAC decoder filter.

How's your C++?

Actually, I wouldn't mind messing around with this later today, if you don't mind...

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:07 pm

(although if I do it, I'm using C#...C++ is so....brutish

)

mrzed · Post by **mrzed** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 12:28 pm

Hey, knock yourself out. My C-based skills are fairly rudimentary at this point, but I can poke around enough to modify existing simple code. I'm more of a general purpose GIS geek than a programmer, but the task does seem simple enough.

If you come up with anything let me know.

I was also pointed to a commercial app http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm that may do the trick.

Not sure I want another media utility on my system though - pretty happy ripping with CDEX (beta supports FLAC natively now - and has been bug-free so far), and managing/listening with Winamp.

noee · Post by **noee** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:48 am

I think that jRiver's Media Center will do what you are asking, plus a whole lot more.

While FLAC support is not built-in, there is a great FLAC codec plug-in here that many of us have been using.

It's not free, but there's a 30-day trial and who knows, you may like it so much, you decide to keep it. It's a great tool, probably the best organizational tool out there right now. In addition, it has superb support for ASIO and bit perfect output.

Transcoding to your handheld/iPod or any other device is a breeze.