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

[William Boorstein <sn1@mindspring.com>]

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/
>