I am also attempting to get an iPod up and running from my existing flac/mp3 library that works perfectly with my SB3. (Thanks to these forums where I could always find answers to questions / problems I had) I expected this to be a breeze, given the number of people out there who do this, but I am very surprised how difficult this has been. I will attempt to outline my process, along with lessons learned and would appreciate any ideas on ways to improve, as this is far from ideal.
My Setup: 1. Mixed Flac / MP3 master library on Linux server (Redhat 4) with Slimserver (I always update to latest release). File format is; \Artist\Album... (for flac) \Artist\MP3\Album\... I use mp3tag to tag, and have everything, clean and setup perfectly for SB3. 2. I back all this up regularly to an external HD on my Windows XP (use package called BestSync) which I keep at the office. No problems here. 3. I then run Robin's excellent flac2mp3.pl script on my XP box and transcode flac to mp3 to create a new mp3 only library (I use bestsync again to copy any mp3's in my master library to new mp3 only library. (Working on replacing all mp3's in master library with Flac, but difficult to find some of my older vinyls!) 4. I then use MP3tag to import the album art into the MP3 files so I can get album art in iTunes. (I keep cover.jpg in each album directory) 4. This is where the problems now start. I have choosen to use iTunes to sync to the iPod, although this is not my first choice. After playing with vPod and anapod I rejected them both. vPod - Does not sync embedded album art or iTunes COMPILATION tag. anapod - Does not allow you to control iTunes COMPILATION tag and I have emailed them several time asking questions, and Never receive a response (Others have had similar issues I gather from my browing of forums). Not a company I'm going to give my money to. (free version is a waste of time as it offers no practical functionality) iTunes - Of course I have to put up with iTunes doing what it wants and not what I want, but have learned to manually work around, here's what i Do. I. Tags....Aaaauuggghhhh. a.First of all, I don't want to see compiltation/various artists in my Album view on iTunes, which ends up causing me much pain as I must use Apple's COMPILATION flag. This of course moves all your Various Artist/Compilations out of the Artist view altogether but I prefer this over cluttering up the view. II. My ideal is to only edit tags on the master library (MP3tag), and then transcode and sync as needed. I thus set the COMPILATION tag on my master library flac tags and this is where the problems start. I have found when I do this it messes up my SB3 as any artist who is also on a compilation, now doesn't appear alphabetically, but instead after the compilation album(Various Artists)they are part of. I haven't resolved this yet, so may need to remove COMPILATION from flac fils and manually tag COMPILATION in iTunes. III. I have found that when I update any flac tags and want to use flac2Mp3.pl to redo the mp3 tags, it crashes if I have imported album art using mp3tag into the destination library. Robin, if you read this can you not modify your pearl script to embed album art?) IV. Even after I manually get around issue above, and I then want to import tag changes into iTunes, this is a pain as well. I don't let iTunes manage the library, but instead I direct it to my MP3 only library (file - add folder to Library). The problem here is that iTunes does not scan this folder and sense any updates in the files. As such if I have updated the mp3 library tags, I need to delete that album off iTunes, and then re-add the folder to get iTunes to reread. Very manual, painful and error prone. V. A number of times I've launched iTunes and had it start syncing when I didn't want it to. I've quickly learned to only launch iTunes when I want to sync and not before. (or keep iPod disconnected). Event still it's to easy to have iTunes sync when you don't want it to. Well I think that's it. Appreciate any insights, help or advice on how to do this better and make this more streamlined. Regards.....Rob (My fist post so don't be to hard on me!) -- rmduk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ rmduk's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=12608 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36189 _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/ripping
