Re: [linux-minidisc] Questions about converting MD library to> Mac Audio

[Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de>]

Hi William,

I'm sorry for the late response but the time you wrote your answer I
was in Norway and somewhat busy ;).

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 03:10:21PM -0400, William Boorstein wrote:
> Hi Adrian,
> 
> Thank you for your answers to my questions.  I have found the files in the
> packages folder, and the ffmpeg instructions make sense (though I haven't
> gotten that far yet).  YES - I recorded w/ a standard MD recorder - so I'm
> happy to go w/ your suggestion of using AAC.  Alas, I'm not sure I follow
> the overall suggested workflow.
> 
> 
> 1. Do I still use sonic stage to transfer from the NetMD player (without the
> WAV option) - so I am creating OpenMG / ATRAC3plus files?

The direct way would be to use our Python scripts which involve the
usage of the MacOS terminal. Please read through the instruction in
[1].

> 2. I'm not sure how you are suggesting I use ffmpeg.  Are you suggesting
> that I convert the files from the Packages folder from ATRAC into AAC w/
> fmpeg?  Or????

No, the best and suggested way is to transfer the tracks to your Mac
using the scripts as described before. This will directly upload all
your tracks from the MD in the native ATRAC-SP format in the current
folder (when working with a terminal). You can then use ffmpeg to
convert the tracks from ATRAC-SP into AAC.

> 3.  If I want to clean up some of the recordings and do some minor editing,
> as well as divide and relabel tracks, (e.g. W/ Audacity), when in the
> workflow should I do that?  Each time I go into Audacity to edit, and then
> save the files, will I be loosing much in terms of quality?

You should do the editing after having converted the tracks with
ffmpeg since I'm not sure whether Audacity can handle ATRAC-SP
files. In this case, it would probably best to convert the tracks into
WAV first, then edit them and finally convert into AAC. If you do not
know how to use the aforementioned scripts, then I suggest going this
way:

1. import with SonicStage directly to WAV
2. edit the tracks in WAV format using Audacity
3. convert the tracks into AAC

> 4. is ffmpeg better to use than Max (the latter seems easier)

I do not know Max, do you have a link for a website? It might be that
the software you are mentioning is based on ffmpeg since the latter
does not provide a GUI itself. There are a lot of 3rd party open
source projects which make use of the capabilities of ffmpeg. Most
famous being VLC.

Regards,

Adrian

[1] https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-minidisc/doku.php?id=netmdpython