Need to re-encode 50GB of MP3's all in their own folders

[MichaelD]

I want to re-encode my 50GB (all at 320KB/s) MP3 library down to 128KB/s so I can (try) to fit them all on my 8GB Sansa. While I'm running/working out, I can hear the difference b/t the low and high bit rate but it's not enough to bother me. Now on my home system that's another story.

Anyway...I want to squish them down to 128KB/s AND come out "on the other side" still in there own folders.

I have many programs (Nero7, etc) that will do encoding, but you have to input individual FILES, not folders. My collection is stored like this Black Sabbath\Album1\Album2\Album3 and in each "album folder" are the files for the songs.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks much!

 

[Ken g6]

First, I should point out that going from 320K to 128K will only reduce 50GB of songs to 20GB. Variable bitrate might help a little. I am not an audiophile, so I don't know what you would prefer.

Now, I tend to work from the command line, and a good command-line encoder is LAME. (That's a proper noun, not an adjective. )

You'll need to create the directory structure on the other side with something like:

for /d %i in (*) do mkdir "c:\newpath\%i" && for /d %j in ("%i\album*") do mkdir "c:\newpath\%j"

Then reencode them all with something like:
for /d %i in (*) do for /d %j in ("%i\album*") do for %k in ("%j\*.mp3") do lame -v -B128 "%k" "c:\newpath\%k"

Here I try to reencode variable-rate with a limit of 128K. You should research the LAME options yourself and find what's best for you.

 

[MichaelD]

Thank you, Ken g6 for the links and example CL statement.

I used to use LAME as the back-end for EAC way back when but I always used the GUI. I didn't even know it had a CL option.

I'll check that out.

 

[MichaelD]

Trying to use the CL for LAME isn't going to work for me...I'm lame.

There's gotta be a way to do this without manually digging thru 3000-someodd folders.

Bump.

*edit*

OK, how about this? Is it possible to write a script to extract MP3 files out of folders, no matter how many levels down in the folders they are?

Example: I have a folder "Classic Rock." Inside that folder are "ACDC" "Eagles" "Pink Floyd". Inside each one of those "band" folders are multiple "album folders."

I cannot write such a script...anyone care to give it a whack? :heart:

 

[Gooberlx2]

I suggest trying dbpoweramp with the power pack, or the reference version. I believe to there's a 30-day unrestricted trial period...otherwise, it's completely worth the $24 (or $36 for reference) anyway.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: Gooberlx2
I suggest trying dbpoweramp with the power pack, or the reference version. I believe to there's a 30-day unrestricted trial period...otherwise, it's completely worth the $24 (or $36 for reference) anyway.

Dude, you are SO THE MAN!

This program is so badass that I'm going to buy it. I'm just using the reference pack trial ATM. It can do EXACTLY what I'm looking for and then some.

It took a few minutes for me to figure out how to access the options for destination folder/bitrate/etc (it's not in the program itself, but in the Start Menu folder for the program).

But I'm currently recoding 5,181 files, 4 at a time; one file per CPU Core. It just doesn't get any better than this.

Thank you VERY much! :beer:

Check it out! Notice there are four different songs, one song per CPU core and the Task Manager showing a very busy CPU. This little proggy kicks ass.

If I wasn't going to bed now, I'd stop it in progress and load it up on my video editing box. It would make short work of the files. :evil:

 

[stars]

I used the razorlame frontend ages ago. This thread reminded me of it.

http://www.dors.de/razorlame/

 

[MadRat]

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/download.htm gets a person to dbpoweramp

Suggestions like this around here just make me all tingly inside. Talk about kick ass...

 

[MichaelD]

I don't know if I did something wrong. The files all successfully encoded but did not output into separate folders. This isn't too big of a deal since the ID3 tags will let my MP3 player sort by artist, album, etc. I will delve deeper into the settings of the program later.

Bottom line is that dbpoweramp let me just select a bunch of folders and it took care of the rest. It worked very well!

 

[MichaelD]

Just wanted to say that I DID do something wrong (and I'm happy I found out). You CAN indeed preserve folder settings/structure. There's an advanced renaming option where you enter exactly how you want the folder output. This proggy rocks the house, no two ways about it! :beer:

 

[theprodigalrebel]

foobar2000 also does this, supports a bunch of encoders (mp3, vorbis, flac, musepak, wavpak etc.) and you can specify how you want the output files/folders to be created. I have no idea if/how it supports multi-core systems though; not sure if it would run 4 encodes simultaneously to maximize your quad like dbpoweramp did.

Googling for info didn't quite yield the results I was looking for and I'm a little lazy right now. Someone tell me!

 

[Gooberlx2]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Just wanted to say that I DID do something wrong (and I'm happy I found out). You CAN indeed preserve folder settings/structure. There's an advanced renaming option where you enter exactly how you want the folder output. This proggy rocks the house, no two ways about it! :beer:

Glad to help. I found that I always have some need to use this program over the years (I'm thinking of transcoding all my file to a different lossless format), and finally bought it last year some time when I needed the mp3 and batch capabilities.

 

[vshah]

just an fyi, if your source and destination drives are the same, using 4 cores can actually slow it down since you are killing the hard drive in terms of reads/writes. i found using only 2 cores to be faster overall. of course if you are sending it to a different drive it doesn't matter.

 

[MadRat]

I too found it definitely more hard drive limited than cpu bound. Two drives is real good advice.

 

[MichaelD]

I was using two separate drives so it being HD-bound wasn't an issue for me. That's a lesson I learned from encoding video; having separate source and destination drives is the way to go.

I did find out that the program is limited to 4 cores. I loaded it on my video editing rig and saw it was only using one CPU (all four cores of that CPU though). I posted in their forums and got a reply from one of the writers of the program. He said it's limited to 4 cores since one your reach four cores, the process is HD-bound. Still, i recoded 50GB in about 4 hours which isn't bad, especially considering I was using the PC to surf and email at the same time I was encoding.