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Bulk file conversion (WMA Lossless to mp3 or WMA)

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Old 12-11-2009, 12:21 PM   #1
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Bulk file conversion (WMA Lossless to mp3 or WMA)

I have my music ripped to an external 1TB HDD (though it only takes up c.450gb).

On the HDD the music is kept in a folder called 'Lossless'.

In that folder each artist has a sub-folder (The Beatles, U2, etc).

In that folder there's a folder for each album (in The Beatles you'll find A Hard Day's Night, Revolver, etc).

The music is mainly ripped in WMA Lossless.

Okay, now I have a simple programme for converting WMA Lossless to mp3, but it involves opening each folder and sub-folder individually, highlighting all the tracks, then converting them. I also have to manually create a new artist and album folder and direct the music there (I want to keep the lossless versions, not replace them).

Is there a programme that will allow me to simply convert the lot with one click, or not much more, effectively creating a mirror for the lossless folders and files, only in a lossy format? With over a thousand albums it'd be a complete pain in the backside to covert one folder at once.

Cheers.

Steve W
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Old 12-11-2009, 1:49 PM   #2
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Re: Bulk file conversion (WMA Lossless to mp3 or WMA)

dbPowerAmp is your friend - can do bulk conversion between pretty much any format.

dBpoweramp: CD Ripper & Audio Converter. Secure ripping to mp3, FLAC, m4a, Apple Lossless & WMA
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Old 14-11-2009, 1:39 PM   #3
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Re: Bulk file conversion (WMA Lossless to mp3 or WMA)

Okay, I downloaded this and tried to use it, but there's a problem.

As well as 99% of my music being in a folder called 'Lossless', for reasons lost to the mists of time I have 4 albums in a second folder called 'Lossless2'.

I thought it might be a good idea to try this out on the smaller 'Lossless2' folder first (which I'd saved a copy of elsewhere) just in case.

The 4 albums include 2 completely in WMA Lossless, 1 completely in mp3 and a 4th mainly in WMA Lossless, but with 1 track in mp3.

When I tried to batch convert it, the destination folder contained only 2 albums. It had converted the one in mp3 (to mp3), and the one track from the other album which was in mp3, and ignored everything in WMA Lossless.

The implication is that it won't convert WMA Lossles, or (more likely) I've not set something up correctly.

HELP!

Steve W
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Old 14-11-2009, 2:26 PM   #4
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Re: Bulk file conversion (WMA Lossless to mp3 or WMA)

Did you install the WMA codec for dbPowerAmp? It isn't installed by default.

Download it from dBpoweramp Codec Central
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Old 14-11-2009, 3:58 PM   #5
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Re: Bulk file conversion (WMA Lossless to mp3 or WMA)

Great stuff, I have it working now.

Converting WMA Lossless to WMA at 128kbps.

The downside?

18,144 filmes - estimated conversion time is fluctuating at about 3 days and 3 hours.



Steve W
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Old 14-11-2009, 4:13 PM   #6
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Re: Bulk file conversion (WMA Lossless to mp3 or WMA)

I can sympathise - on a dual-core machine, converting 12,000 Apple Lossless files to AAC using dbPA took 3 days or so. One hint - unplug your machine from the net while you're doing it - half-way through my conversion, MS pushed a patch to my machine that had a compulsory restart, which of course happened in the middle of the night and stopped the conversion. Lost me a good 5 or 6 hours of conversion time!
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Old 17-11-2009, 1:21 PM   #7
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Re: Bulk file conversion (WMA Lossless to mp3 or WMA)

It took 2 days 17 hours. PHEW!

Steve W
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Old 19-12-2009, 11:21 AM   #8
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audio converter

I use Audio Converter Studio, it allows to process as many files as you wish at a heat
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