FLAC to MP3

Carlman · « **on:** 16 Jul 2006, 06:44 pm »

I'm trying to make a backup of all my .flac files to .mp3 for portable player use.

If you have folders of .flac files in a data structure you like. In my case, it's
Music Folder\Artist-Album\Songs (E.g. C:\10,000 Maniacs - Blind Man's Zoo\02-Please Forgive Us.flac)
And, you want to maintain that same structure for a copy of MP3's...
How do you do it?

I've scratched my head for hours and spent days searching... and installed various software programs and cannot figure it out. I'm out of patience now. Foobar has a neat 'convert' tool if you use the latest version but I can't get it to maintain my folder structure, it's just a bunch of songs. I can find loads of information about how to convert files with previous versions of Foobar but those downloads are all gone.

I'd really like it if I could keep all the 'folder.jpg' files that have the cover art associated with the album.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Carl

kfr01 · « **Reply #1 on:** 16 Jul 2006, 06:50 pm »

If and when I buy a portable again, I plan on writing a little script to do just that. You work in IT consulting, no? You can probably find someone to write a little script for you (or do it yourself).

When I want to do something very specific, I've found that my time is usually better spent just writing the damn thing.

Too bad there aren't more straight-up FLAC players.

Carlman · « **Reply #2 on:** 16 Jul 2006, 07:01 pm »

Care to share your script?
I know what the steps are, just not how to write it...
Copy the folder and *.jpg
Convert all .flac to .mp3

Seems easy enough...

Wayne1 · « **Reply #3 on:** 16 Jul 2006, 07:19 pm »

Carl,

You might want to take a look at this tool

I believe it is designed to do just what you want

Carlman · « **Reply #4 on:** 16 Jul 2006, 07:37 pm »

Thanks Wayne but I don't know PERL (very well) nor do I have access to a Unix OS....
The only thing that's got me hung up is the file structure. There must be a way to maintain it in Foobar's Converter settings.... I just can't figure it out.
I can definitely convert a batch of .flac to .mp3, though... that's easy.... the results are a lot of files in 1 folder, though....

I must need something other than %artist% - %album%\%_filename%... Unfortunately everything I find on the web about it is a year old and the new Foobar doesn't work anything like the old one.

-C

EDIT... IT WORKED!!! "%artist% - %album%\%_filename%" Works! Just put that in the path settings of the converter and it outputs in the same structure as it is in FLAC!!! woohoo!

Thanks for the replies... and/or thoughts...

Papajin · « **Reply #5 on:** 16 Jul 2006, 09:03 pm »

Quote from: Carlman on 16 Jul 2006, 06:44 pm

I'm trying to make a backup of all my .flac files to .mp3 for portable player use.

If you have folders of .flac files in a data structure you like. In my case, it's
Music Folder\Artist-Album\Songs (E.g. C:\10,000 Maniacs - Blind Man's Zoo\02-Please Forgive Us.flac)
And, you want to maintain that same structure for a copy of MP3's...
How do you do it?

I just use Foobar 2000 to do it here. When I rip new CD's, I have a "new" directory where all the new stuff goes, and before I move everything over to my main SB directory, I run foobar's conversion functions against everything and it duplicates the entire structure under my mp3 directory. It's also fairly nice for mass fixing tags as well as fixing filenames that may not be exactly the way you wanted them.

The only thing I wish I could find is software that would scan my flac directory tree, and automatically convert anything that's not already present in my mp3 directory tree. That way I wouldn't have to keep track by hand. I may write either a script or software to handle it someday if it starts to bother me enough.