Topic: Ripping my LIVE collection to iTunes...

[delikid]

Now that we've moved almost everything to our media server at home, it's time for the LIVE collection to do the same, with itunes being the primary music interface.

Now then... I have about 1400 or 1500 (maybe more) CDs of LIVE shows, and a couple of hard drives with lots of yummy shows, too.

I feel fairly certain that itunes music database does not have access to any database of LIVE shows. So, for all you wizards and sages out there, are there any tools (software) that can help my quest to catalog all these discs, without having the hand transcribe each disc? Or is that just my karma to have to do so?

Thanks for any wisdoms!

Cheers,

Ian

[stevetoney]

I'm not an expert, but if your live shows have written setlists, I think you can use foobar2000 with the live show tagger plugin to tag mp3.

I might be wrong, but I swear I read someone saying that tags get stripped out if you convert MP3 to AAC, though it seems like you can retain the MP3 format when you import them onto your ipod. 

[dnsacks]

I've been using foobar's live show tagger to tag both flac files and convert flac files to apple lossless files (with tags preserved) with great success (you'll need to find instructions on how to add apple lossless encoding to foobar).  Few pointers.  1) you may need to first use foobar's massager feature to add track number metadata to the files (easy to identify this issue if foobar's live show tagger tags all files with the name of the first track on the setlist).  2) you need to be sure that the text file for the show you're tagging has a track number for each song (e.g. "1. crowd/tuning" would work, simply "crowd/tuning" will not) 3) foobar live show tagger puts venue info into a custom field named "Venue"  -- this results in album info not being populated in iTunes.  I've taken to copying the date, venue info and recording info) in the album field to clarify (e.g. "1985-07-01 Merriweather Post Pavillion, Columbia, MD mk41>oade M118>pcm1").

While a bit labor intensive, this is still a LOT easier than manually entering in each track's info.  Also have had zero problems converting apple lossless and/or flac files to mp3/m4a with this metadata intact.

[page]

I highly recommend becoming familiar with XLD (or EAC) if you're coming off of CD-Rs.

[dnsacks]

oops -- didn't catch that you're ripping from CDs -- agree with xld (for mac) or EAC (for windows) as being a necessary first step.  It's important that the CDs be ripped to flac or apple lossless, as you can't "tag" a wav file.  You may also run into issues with the foobar live show tagger if the file names don't follow basic naming conventions (if you're looking to tag files named "gd1985-07-01d1t..." the live show tagger will look for a text file named gd1985-07-01.txt -- EAC can easily be set up to use naming conventions, suspect XLD can too (of course, since foobar2000 only runs on windows, you'd need a windows vm on a mac to use it)

At the end of the day, you might be best off trying to track down online flac copies of shows you have on disk, as that would give you the "shortest path" to tagged apple lossless files that will properly populate into iTunes

[delikid]

After reading your posts, I have found that foobar2000 is A-W-E-S-O-M-E! WOW!

While I do have all the CDs to process, I'm processing my SHN/ FLAC content first that I have from when I ran a free music server when etree was all the rage. ;-) Adding in the Live Show Tagger, Shorten Decoder, MusicBrainz Tagger, and a few extra components, and tweaking some of the source txt files, I am making great process!

I'll keep EAC on my list for when I get back to the CDs; been a few years since I've used it.

THANK YOU for you wisdoms and for sharing knowledge!

Cheers!!!

[dnsacks]

Great news -- did you find a link showing how to set up foobar2000 to encode to apple lossless?  Let me know if you'd like me to track down what I used. 

[delikid]

did you find a link showing how to set up foobar2000 to encode to apple lossless?

Sure did! Thanks!

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

My process for converting old CD-R's is to use EAC to rip the CD. I label the tracks to the Etree standards and then use Foobar to tag the files. You just need to make sure your TXT file will work with Foobar. Just as long as your track numbers in your TXT file match the track numbers on your files you should be okay.

It's a real PITA, especially if you're talking 1500 CDR's. I'd try to find whatever you can in download form (maybe from the LMA or still active on some BT trackers).

I have a ton of CDR's that I need to convert. Every once in a while I decide to convert them. I usually make it through about 5 shows and then give up.

When I win the lottery I'm hiring someone to do them all.