Bulk conversion of FLAC to WAV

I've used dBpoweramp batch converter,  one of the selectable command paths will replace (overwrite) the original FLAC with WAV.  It was a while ago & memory fades,  but it was easy so much so it was not that memorable other than let it chug away at it.   No clue how you would do this from a U.Serve,  I guess copy to the memory stick & go from there.

Hi Mike, thanks for the input. Seconds after I posted, I found the 'delete originals' setting in XLD, so I've ticked it. I've already copied the files to a memory stick, so they are ready to be converted. The next hurdle is finding how to initiate a batch conversion, as I can't see any option to do this in XLD. It's been a while since I've used it, and despite others saying good things about it, I have always found it near-impossible to use.

I have another little free app called MediaHuman which I've used in the past, and seems much simpler, so I'll probably give that a try. Not now though, I'm off to bed!

ChrisSU posted:

A quick request to anyone who knows more about file conversion than I do, which is not much!

I need to convert a large number of FLAC albums to WAV, to put on a memory stick I use in the car. I have successfully used XLD for this in the past, but it seems to have the tedious habit of keeping the original (FLAC) file as well as the WAV. This means deleting the FLACs track by track, which, as I have a few hundred albums to do, would be very tedious indeed. Maybe there is a setting in XLD that I've missed, or there's a better bit of software out there that will do the conversion. Any suggestions welcome......

On a Linux machine, just enter the following command at the command line:

find . -name '*.flac' -exec bash -c 'flac -d "$1"; rm "$1"' -- {} \;

Be careful: it will convert all the .flac files in the local folder and in all its subfolders! 

You can pick a folder with all the albums you want to convert inside it and drag it onto the XLD icon. It will do a batch conversion to everything. And if you tick (delete original) it will do that too.

Hope this helps. I've been using XLD for years and love it.

DomTomLondon posted:

You can pick a folder with all the albums you want to convert inside it and drag it onto the XLD icon. It will do a batch conversion to everything. And if you tick (delete original) it will do that too.

Hope this helps. I've been using XLD for years and love it.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I've tried this with a single album in the past and there was no problem. Now I'm trying to do it with lots of them, it just doesn't respond. I've started to do it using MediaHuman instead, and this seems to be working. Looks like it might take 24 hours to do 400 albums, but hopefully it will get there in the end!

ChrisSU posted:

DomTomLondon posted:

You can pick a folder with all the albums you want to convert inside it and drag it onto the XLD icon. It will do a batch conversion to everything. And if you tick (delete original) it will do that too.

Hope this helps. I've been using XLD for years and love it.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I've tried this with a single album in the past and there was no problem. Now I'm trying to do it with lots of them, it just doesn't respond. I've started to do it using MediaHuman instead, and this seems to be working. Looks like it might take 24 hours to do 400 albums, but hopefully it will get there in the end!

Then there is something fishy. With the command from my previous post it takes about 8 seconds to convert a 16/44.1 album on a 5 years old laptop. It's more than 400 albums per hour. If you cannot use the command line, just use dBpoweramp.

After deleting and reinstalling XLD, it seemed to work more reliably, but was still not able to complete a batch conversion without freezing. In the end, I reverted to Media Human, and it did the job. No chance of 8 seconds per album, though, more like 8 minutes at best, on a 3 year old MacBook Pro. 

ChrisSU posted:

After deleting and reinstalling XLD, it seemed to work more reliably, but was still not able to complete a batch conversion without freezing. In the end, I reverted to Media Human, and it did the job. No chance of 8 seconds per album, though, more like 8 minutes at best, on a 3 year old MacBook Pro. 

Yeah sounds like something is not right. I have a late 2013 MacBook Pro. It takes less then a minute to convert a full album from FLAC to AIFF or from AIFF to WAV, using XLD. Are you using external storage per chance?. The only thing I can think of is if you're using an old USB 2.0 Hard drive. That would slow things down a lot. Also, if you're converting straight from a NAS that would also be quite slow.

ChrisSU posted:

After deleting and reinstalling XLD, it seemed to work more reliably, but was still not able to complete a batch conversion without freezing. In the end, I reverted to Media Human, and it did the job. No chance of 8 seconds per album, though, more like 8 minutes at best, on a 3 year old MacBook Pro. 

Well, than it sucks. The standard command for encoding/decoding .flac to .wav and vice versa on Unix machines is "flac". Just google "flac documentation xiph". The command converts an album in about 8 seconds, just enter "time find . -name '*.flac' -exec bash -c 'flac -d "$1"; rm "$1"' -- {} \;" at the command line to monitor the time it takes to execute. No need to fiddle around with slow graphical user interfaces to standard commands for something as simple as a batch conversion.

nbpf posted:

ChrisSU posted:

After deleting and reinstalling XLD, it seemed to work more reliably, but was still not able to complete a batch conversion without freezing. In the end, I reverted to Media Human, and it did the job. No chance of 8 seconds per album, though, more like 8 minutes at best, on a 3 year old MacBook Pro. 

Well, than it sucks. The standard command for encoding/decoding .flac to .wav and vice versa on Unix machines is "flac". Just google "flac documentation xiph". The command converts an album in about 8 seconds, just enter "time find . -name '*.flac' -exec bash -c 'flac -d "$1"; rm "$1"' -- {} \;" at the command line to monitor the time it takes to execute. No need to fiddle around with slow graphical user interfaces to standard commands for something as simple as a batch conversion.

Thanks for the suggestion, I might have a play with that next time. 

>time find . -name '*.flac' -exec bash -c 'flac -d "$1"; rm "$1"' -- {} \;

working with unix all my life. i didn't know u could convert music files like that.

can i know the command to convert a directory full of lossless/uncompressed FLAC (in sub-directories) to mp3 320 kbps.

appreciate the feedback.

vtpcnk posted:

>time find . -name '*.flac' -exec bash -c 'flac -d "$1"; rm "$1"' -- {} \;

working with unix all my life. i didn't know u could convert music files like that.

can i know the command to convert a directory full of lossless/uncompressed FLAC (in sub-directories) to mp3 320 kbps.

appreciate the feedback.

I am not allowed to post a direct link but if you google "Convert audio between MP3, FLAC, WAV - including hi-fi and lo-fi short clips" the first hit should be an O'Reilly page with a list of the essential commands. In the specific case, the command you are looking for is

find . -name '*.flac' -exec bash -c 'ffmpeg -i "$1" -ab 320k "${1%.flac}.mp3"; rm "$1"' -- {} \;

I usually put these commands in small script files, for instance the command to find .flac files and convert them to .wav is the single line of an executable file named "find_convert_flac_to_wav". Thus, whenever I want to do the job, I just type find_convert_flac_to_wav at the command line.