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Massive convert from MP3 to Atrac

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Smemo

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Hi all.

I'm searching a software to convert my entire collection of MP3 to ATRAC.

with SS (last version) is not possible to use the little program developed by Sony because there is a version incompatibility.

Do you have suggestions ?

Thanks a lot,

Smemo.

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Hi all.

I'm searching a software to convert my entire collection of MP3 to ATRAC.

with SS (last version) is not possible to use the little program developed by Sony because there is a version incompatibility.

Do you have suggestions ?

Thanks a lot,

Smemo.

I'm a little confused ? ;) What's wrong with using SonicStage 3.4 ? I've converted what few mp3's I have to ATRAC format without any problems. There should be a link to download SS v3.4 somewhere via this forum. I hope this helps you.

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I would convert in batch my files, without using SS3.4

There is a link to Sony product that I used with an older version of SS.

http://sonyelectronics.sonystyle.com/walkmanmc/mp3.html

I'm asking if someone still use this tool with SS3.4 and how or if exist some other tool to do this conversion.

Edited by Smemo
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Hi all.

I'm searching a software to convert my entire collection of MP3 to ATRAC.

with SS (last version) is not possible to use the little program developed by Sony because there is a version incompatibility.

Do you have suggestions ?

Thanks a lot,

Smemo.

Even if you find a way to batch convert outside of SS, you have the issue of importing the files into SS. If you drag all of the files in at once, you create one large album (probably not what you want to do). You will have to drag the files in an album at a time and with each drag, label the artist and album name.

When you drag mp3s in, the tag information is used automatically to create the sonic stage album and tag the ATRAC tracks. I'm not sure what will happen when you drag mp3s from multiple albums in at the same time - it may create the individual albums. Give it a try.

Having said all of the that, batch converting is easy. Once you have organized your tracks as you want in SS, change the view from album/playlist to tracks. Tell it to sort on date imported. Now, scroll down and select all of the tracks you've just imported. Then, right click - the menu will have an selection to convert. Select the bit rate you want and SS will convert each track.

Now SS will have both the mp3 and ATRAC files. If you want to delete the mp3 files, you have to right click on each file and select properties. On that tab, you will see both the mp3 and ATRAC file. If you want, you can delete the mp3 file from here.

If you just delete the mp3 file from the hard disc, you will encounter errors in SS when you try to access the track.

I hope this helps.

Rich

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Now SS will have both the mp3 and ATRAC files. If you want to delete the mp3 files, you have to right click on each file and select properties. On that tab, you will see both the mp3 and ATRAC file. If you want, you can delete the mp3 file from here.

If you just delete the mp3 file from the hard disc, you will encounter errors in SS when you try to access the track.

There's another workaround for this:

* convert all the files as per Rich's instructions

* when SS is done, select the entire same range of tracks, and hit 'delete'

* when it asks if you want to delete the files from your hard disc, UNCHECK the box so it doesn't do so; it will then clear the library of those tracks' info

* go to the folder where SS keeps its own [OMA] tracks, select the folders for the music you just converted [in the case of MP3 conversions they will likely all be in "optimized files"] and then drag&drop all of it onto the SS library

* the OMA tracks will import and you dont have to deal with the MP3s from SS at all any more

The process of re-importing the OMAs can be hairy. I'm not certain whether SS has the same bug with OMAs as it does with MP3s and M3U playlists [that importing the same track twice actually makes for two entries in the library despite their both being exactly the same thing and same file], so there's a chance you might get duplicate entries if you import the same tracks more than once.

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There's another workaround for this:

* go to the folder where SS keeps its own [OMA] tracks, select the folders for the music you just converted [in the case of MP3 conversions they will likely all be in "optimized files"] and then drag&drop all of it onto the SS library

* the OMA tracks will import and you dont have to deal with the MP3s from SS at all any more

The process of re-importing the OMAs can be hairy. I'm not certain whether SS has the same bug with OMAs as it does with MP3s and M3U playlists [that importing the same track twice actually makes for two entries in the library despite their both being exactly the same thing and same file], so there's a chance you might get duplicate entries if you import the same tracks more than once.

But when you delete the tracks from SS, wouldn't the album information be lost as well? When you re-import the OMA tracks, will the albums be reconstructed? If not, then this could be painful since the names of the OMA files won't reflect the album info. The granularity of the "massive import" would have to be at an album level then.

I would love it if SS will reconstruct the albums when re-importing. It would make my life MUCH easier!! :-).

Rich

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But when you delete the tracks from SS, wouldn't the album information be lost as well? When you re-import the OMA tracks, will the albums be reconstructed? If not, then this could be painful since the names of the OMA files won't reflect the album info. The granularity of the "massive import" would have to be at an album level then.

I would love it if SS will reconstruct the albums when re-importing. It would make my life MUCH easier!! :-).

Rich

I just confirmed for myself that the album information is not lost when you delete the albums but chose not to delete the files. I did not realize (though it makes a lot of sense) that .oma files are tagged - much like mp3 files. So, when you drag the oma files back into sonic stage, the albums are reconstructed.

This little trick will save me a lot of typeing - thanks for the tip dex Otaku!!

The entire procedure may seem a bit kludgy (well...because it is), but it works...which is the important part.

Cheers!

Rich

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  • 2 weeks later...

There's another workaround for this:

* convert all the files as per Rich's instructions

* when SS is done, select the entire same range of tracks, and hit 'delete'

* when it asks if you want to delete the files from your hard disc, UNCHECK the box so it doesn't do so; it will then clear the library of those tracks' info

* go to the folder where SS keeps its own [OMA] tracks, select the folders for the music you just converted [in the case of MP3 conversions they will likely all be in "optimized files"] and then drag&drop all of it onto the SS library

* the OMA tracks will import and you dont have to deal with the MP3s from SS at all any more

The process of re-importing the OMAs can be hairy. I'm not certain whether SS has the same bug with OMAs as it does with MP3s and M3U playlists [that importing the same track twice actually makes for two entries in the library despite their both being exactly the same thing and same file], so there's a chance you might get duplicate entries if you import the same tracks more than once.

I've had this problem too where it's time-consuming to open each individual track's properties and delete the source file -- so this seems like a reasonable work-around. But I'm wondering whether the Optimize Database function in SonicStage 3.4 (and earlier) also cleans up the properties of each track when the file it references doesn't exist anymore. (For that matter, SonicStage's Help does a horrible job of explaining what it is specifically that the Optimize Database function does in the first place.)

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I've had this problem too where it's time-consuming to open each individual track's properties and delete the source file -- so this seems like a reasonable work-around. But I'm wondering whether the Optimize Database function in SonicStage 3.4 (and earlier) also cleans up the properties of each track when the file it references doesn't exist anymore. (For that matter, SonicStage's Help does a horrible job of explaining what it is specifically that the Optimize Database function does in the first place.)

I can't speak as to exactly what SS does, but what I expect from a cleanup function of basically any database is that it removes duplicate and dead entries.

Any track info that is in the database without a corresponding file on disc should be removed. My observations thus far are that this does work. Subsequent re-adding of the same files to the library means re-reading tags from the files themselves, or in the case of WAV files, having to re-enter them manually.

SS has a ways to come yet on file handling in general, but I find that most of the database's functionality is okay for straightforward uses like keeping a library of only a3/a3+ tracks. There are definite problems with duplicate handling, and there needs to be an easier way of removing dead entries, among other things.

I was startled while using treesize a while back to see that my SS Db folder was 600MB in size .. from successively importing, transcoding, and removing MP3s and WAV files, the Db had bloated to 350+MB .. and SS keeps 3 copies [current and two previous versions] on your drive at all times. Once I ran the Db cleanup tool it shrunk down to around 1MB.

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