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? 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???? 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? 4. is ffmpeg better to use than Max (the latter seems easier) Thank you!!! - Will on 5/8/10 6:00 AM, linux-minidisc-request@lists.fu-berlin.de at linux-minidisc-request@lists.fu-berlin.de wrote: > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 17:53:21 +0200 > From: Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> > Subject: Re: [linux-minidisc] Questions about converting MD library to > Mac Audio > To: William Boorstein <sn1@mindspring.com> > Cc: Linux-minidisc mail list <linux-minidisc@lists.fu-berlin.de> > Message-ID: <20100507155321.GA20335@physik.fu-berlin.de> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 > > Hi Will, > > On Wed, May 05, 2010 at 02:20:11PM -0400, William Boorstein wrote: >> I have some questions regarding how to convert MD audio to a Mac. >> >> Problem: I have about 60 minidisks of important recorded talks that I would >> like to convert to files on my mac for 1) archival purposes and 2) easy >> access via portable digital player. Some of the MDs have labeled tracks >> names and I want to preserve this information. >> >> What I have done: I have imported the audio from a Sony MZ-M200 to sonic >> stage (running under Parallels on my mac) ... This created a series of wav >> files, plus imported all the MDs/tracks into SonicStage (OpenMG Audio). The >> WAV files for the tracks are all mixed together (not grouped by MD/album). >> >> Questions: >> 1. What it the best way to get these files into a format that I can use on >> my mac while preserving maximum audio info, preserving track name >> information, and keeping the tracks together as ?albums? (Going into iTunes >> would be fine ? or???) > > You can use ffmpeg which is a free software collection to encode, > decode and playback a vast majority of audio and video files. It can > be installed on MacOS with the help of Macports. You'll find a very > thorough installation guide in [1]. Directly after installing > Macports, you should issue the following command in a terminal: > > echo "PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/bin" >> ~/.bashrc > > Just copy and paste that line. It will make sure that all the software > installed by Macports can be invoked from any directory and not just > /opt/local/bin where it gets installed. > >> 2. Is it best to use the WAV files (rather than the smaller OpenMG Audio >> files that are in the sonic stage library)? > > That depends upon what format you originally used to record the > talks. If you recorded with a standard MiniDisc recorder, the format > will be ATRAC1 which is a lossy compressed format. This means that you > already made some quality loss during recording and you won't have any > advantages when using the lossless WAV format. If you, however, > recorded in PCM (which is lossless but only HiMD Walkman support > that), then you can stick to WAV to keep the quality. Since WAV takes > alot of disk storage, I either recommend to use a lossless audio > compression like ALAC (which will keep the full quality in any case) > or better use some lossy but high quality codec like AAC. Both are > supported for encoding by ffmpeg. > > To cut a long story short: > > If you used ATRAC1 during recording, encode the files into AAC. If you > used PCM (on a HiMD), just use ALAC. > >> 3. I can tediously pull together the WAV files that comprise tracks of each >> MD, but then how do I get these into iTunes as ?albums? w/ title and track >> names? (All the files are very nicely arranged by ?artist? and ?album? >> within SonicStage ? I wish I could export all that information! > > Well, SonicStage stores all the files in a directory called "Packages" > which is somewhere located in the Windows directory C:\Documents and > Settings\.... Just open Spotlight search and search for the folder > "Packages". You will find that it contains all audio tracks in > separate folders for each album which you can easily import in iTunes. > >> 4. Unfortunately, I annotated each MD after I imported it ? writing in the >> ?liner notes? section in SonicStage for each MD ? Is there anyway to >> preserve this info when I convert to mac readable files? > > I'm not very sure. I have never used that feature. But it sounds like > that it is some ID field special to SonicStage and it seems likely > that this information gets lost when importing the tracks into iTunes. > > > Regards, > > Adrian > > [1] > http://www.haykranen.nl/2007/11/21/howto-install-and-use-ffmpeg-on-mac-os-x-le > opard/ >