The new MP3 option

[Les Stanley]

I'm confused. 

The new feature which allows me to make MP3 copies of FLAC files already on my device is primarily designed to work with Playlists. Is that a correct assumption?

This is useful as it means I can then copy the MP3 files and play them in my car or on my phone where I don't want the larger FLAC files.

So I've followed the instructions to do this, kindly provided by another forum contributor and left my B2 alone for about 24 hours. 

When I go into the playlist menu there's no way of knowing how many songs or albums have been converted so I take a punt and export the inventively named "Jukebox" which has 165 songs in it, from various albums.

When I look at the USB it doesn't have a file called "Jukebox" on it. It has 3 folders, with Artists names, which contain some of the tracks from my Playlist. Presumably taken from the albums the B2 has converted to MP3s.

Am I missing something, or do I need to wait until the entire contents of my B2 have been converted? In my case around 1800 albums.

Maybe I've misunderstood the point of this feature but, for me, it would be far more useful it just converted the tracks that were listed in the playlist. Or if I could at least select an album to convert.

Hopefully, at some stage, it will be possible to access this feature via the UI and maybe then it will be clearer.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Les,

I am working on the 'flac+mp3' option at the moment and have the following thoughts to share. I am still finding my way around this feature, so this is as far as I have got in terms of understanding the feature and the way in which it operates.

Your first assumption is correct.

Your collection of 1800 albums will require approximately 45 days of conversion time (without using the B2 for any other function, otherwise compression stops).

Compression runs at a rate of about 1 track every 3 minutes = 2 albums per hour for a typical album.

You are correct in saying that there is no easy way of knowing how many albums/ tracks have been compressed, but there are a couple of ways of finding this out.

1. Plug a USB stick into USB C port on the B2 (a small capacity stick is fine as the file is very small).

2. From the B2 front panel, select 'Settings' -- 'Maintenance' -- 'b2db to USB C'. (this is the B2 database file)

3. On your PC/ Mac, download and install an editor like 'Notepad++' (free download)

4. Plug the USB stick from step 2 into your PC/ Mac.

5. Using 'Notepad++' (or other editor) open the 'b2db' file that is on the USB stick.

You are now seeing a list of every Artist / Album / Track of your music collection on the B2 (except for the 'mirror' folders), and this list is the order in which the '.mp3 mirror' conversion is done.

If you have a NAS connection between your B2 and your PC/ Mac, you will be able to look into the first Artist / Album folder and you will find a subfolder called 'mirror' in each Album folder that has been converted.  The 'mirror' folder contains the '.mp3' tracks.

If you don't have NAS running, then you will get a rough idea of where the conversion is by albums estimating how many hours the process has been running and by using the 2 albums per hour estimate. Work your way down the 'b2db' file list on this basis and you will find out approximately where the process is.

Moving on to 'Export mp3s' option, this process works as follows (as far as I have tested it)

When you select an artist, album or track and place it a playlist, the B2 goes to the usual top level folder and places your selection in the playlist. At this stage, the B2 is only selecting from the top level folders and does not check on the presence of 'mirror' folders.

When you select 'Playlist Menu' -- 'Export mp3s' this is what happens

If the 'mirror' folder is present, then the '.mp3' files are selected from the 'mirror' folder.

If the 'mirror' folder is not present, and if the top level album files are in '.mp3' format, then these are selected.

If the 'mirror' folder is not preset and if the album files are not '.mp3 format' then the files are NOT selected.

When you 'Export mp3s' you will have your playlist selected 'mp3' track on the USB stick in the format of /Arttist/ Album/ Tracks.mp3.

You don't need to wait for your full collection to be compressed, but your playlist selection might not be complete.  Refer to the 'b2db' listing to keep an eye on progress.

The ‘mirror mp3’ has been really well thought out and once your full scan and compression is complete, it is a great way of quickly generating 'mp3' sets for whatever situation you require them.  It just will take some time for the full compression to complete!

At this time, you cannot make a selection of artists, albums or tracks for compression, the process is to work its way down the 'b2db' list until it gets to the end.

I hope that this goes some way to helping you. I'm still on a learning curve, so if you have any further queries just shout!

Regards,

Peter.

[Les Stanley]

Thanks Peter for that very detailed response. Good to know I at least understood the concept.

I followed your instructions to download the b2db file and had a look at it. At the top it says 1827 Albums 327 mirror. I'm guessing that's tracks not albums? Then I get a list of the albums it's converted to MP3. I read somewhere else that the conversion is done in the order that albums were loaded. I'm not so sure about this as it seems to have converted a number of quite recently loaded albums already but let's not get sidetracked.

Time to see what I've created. I remember loading my Springsteen collection first when I bought the B2 and I have a playlist called Best of Skinny Bruce - 20 or so tracks from his early albums. So, I exported the MP3s from that list to a USB stick. All good, 20 tracks exported and viewable in a folder called Bruce Springsteen. But in my opinion, that's where it falls over because under that folder I have 5 other folders with the album names containing the tracks. Surely what I want is a folder called Best of Skinny Bruce with 20 MP3 songs on it?

Right now I'm struggling to see the benefit of this new feature. I suppose for those who do not have a PC and do not have all their music already stored as MP3, or similar, files it serves a purpose.

Anyway, I'll let it cook. It will be interesting to see what the final outcome is and certainly, it's useful to have my music library stored on the B2 in MP3 format even if I do already have it on another device. The fact that the B2 gets back to work after a few minutes of idling time is useful as long as I remember to keep it switched on and I guess, in the grand scheme of things, 45 days is not so long. Maybe Covid - 19 will be over by the time it's finished?

Looking forward to more updates from you and others.

Regards

Les

[Daniel Taylor]

On Saturday, July 4, 2020 at 7:41:56 PM UTC-4, Les Stanley wrote:

Time to see what I've created. I remember loading my Springsteen collection first when I bought the B2 and I have a playlist called Best of Skinny Bruce - 20 or so tracks from his early albums. So, I exported the MP3s from that list to a USB stick. All good, 20 tracks exported and viewable in a folder called Bruce Springsteen. But in my opinion, that's where it falls over because under that folder I have 5 other folders with the album names containing the tracks. Surely what I want is a folder called Best of Skinny Bruce with 20 MP3 songs on it?

That was my reaction the first time I exported a playlist.  That was a long time before this new MP3 background ripping feature.  So, it seems that's the way the B2 does it.  It does make sense, in its own way, even though our intuition led us to expect something more compact in its organization.

After you have the tracks from a playlist exported onto a USB disk, there's nothing to stop you from grouping them all in their own folder.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Les,

I have just received a great suggestion from Edwyn Corteen (a regular contributor to this forum) as to how to find out which artist/ album/ track your B2 compression is currently at. 

While the compression is running, open up the WebUI to the B2.  The compression will stop. Click on the little 'cog' wheel and the 'Settings & Status' window will open.  Click on the 'spanner' symbol near the bottom of this window (between 'Close' and 'Bluetooth' icons and a 'debug' window will open.  If you go to the bottom of the debug information and go up about 13 lines, you will see the artist/ Album and track name of the current track being compressed.

Then close out of the debug window and close out of the WebUI.  Five minutes later, the B2 compression will start automatically again.

Much simpler, and thanks to Edwyn for coming up with this!

Regards,

Peter.

[Les Stanley]

I think I knew this already really as I had also exported a playlist of FLAC files before and noticed that all I ended up with was the relevant tracks in different folders. And it's true that I could reorganise them myself but I still feel this defeats the whole purpose.  

[PMB]

Hi Peter,

I opened the debug window on the web UI first and then selected 'Compress Now' using the B2's front panel control. That way the debug list updates and compression keeps running.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Paul,

Thanks very much for that.  I'm going to set that up now on my B2.  That will speed things up for me as far as debugging goes!

Regards,

Peter.

[Fred Hopper]

Hi all, I too am doing a FLAC+MP3 compression conversion to get MP3 versions. I had not appreciated how slow this will be but am happy to let it cook!

One point worries me however, while the red lite flashes continually (disk I/O?), the front display (while scrolling) seems to be permanently stuck telling me this:- It has been saying this for 48 hours now! 

I feel the display should update to show progress - have I got a problem?

Cheers 

Fred

[Fred Hopper]

Sorry the display is not visible in the image here it is bigger

[PMB]

Hi Fred,

There is a known bug with the display updating that will be fixed in the next release. So for now you will see 'Compressing: MP3 10% 1 of 3,1514' (for example) for every track. Don't worry the B2 is compressing tracks - you can open the debug window in the web UI (click on COG > click on Spanner), start Compression again (Compress Now on the B2 unit) and the debug window shows the progress.

The process is rather slow as the B2 has to convert the FLAC back to WAV and then from WAV to MP3.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Fred Hopper]

Thanks Paul,

That is a relief to know. I will let it go till it stops.

Fred

[PMB]

Hi All,

It appears that tagging information for the mirrored MP3 tracks is lost during the FLAC to MP3 conversion which Martin will fix in the next release.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Fred Hopper]

Hi Paul,

Will that require a reconversion or can it be added to the work done already - ie should I stop my conversion and wait or let it continue?

Fred.

[Fred Hopper]

Just a suggestion, but if Martin is doing a fix, given the amount of time this MP3 conversion takes, could he please insert an automatic "turn off the front display screen" until the conversion is finished. This may then make the progress on the front screen a moot issue :)

[Peter Lowham]

Fred,

You can do this already, by selecting 'Settings' -- 'Maintenance' -- 'Screensaver' and set the value to '16'.  The screen will blank out after 5 minutes of no activity, including the WebUI (so make sure the WebUI is closed down.

I am using this as I'm doing a 'flac+mp3' currently (I'm in day 8 of an estimated 14 day run).

Regards,

Peter.

[Les Stanley]

I've decided to deactivate the FLAC+MP3 option for now. I'd already set the display to go blank after a few minutes but that little red light flashing away was driving me to distraction! 42 days of that would surely wear something out.

As already stated I understand that for people who do not already have their music saved elsewhere in MP3 format, being able to do this on the B2 is useful. But for me, the feature needs some fine-tuning before it would be of any great benefit. For example an option to only convert music in playlists or to select which albums are converted. Maybe in a future release. 

I also didn't realise, until I loaded some new music, that the MP3 conversion has to finish before any WAV files are converted to FLAC.

So, for now, I'll continue managing my MP3s through my PC and wait for further developments.

[Daniel Taylor]

On Wednesday, July 8, 2020 at 6:34:11 PM UTC-4, Les Stanley wrote:

I also didn't realise, until I loaded some new music, that the MP3 conversion has to finish before any WAV files are converted to FLAC.

Hmmm... I thought it was the other way around:  It would not do background conversion to MP3 until after the WAV to FLAC conversion was finished.

[PMB]

Hi Fred,

Martin says you will have to delete the 'Mirrored MP3' folder (new 'Delete Mirror' - Maintenance folder) and start the process again, after doing a Web Upgrade to 8th July 2020 software. This is only required if you need the MP3 files to have tag information so the titles are displayed on systems such as Sonos.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Fred Hopper]

Hi Paul

I see from the web question that the 8th July update says

"

This version for B2 and B2B fixes the ID3 tags in the MP3 mirror files. ID3 tags vary a lot and the tags in our MP3 files are aimed at getting the best results with Sonos.
There is a new function in Settings->Maintenance to delete the MP3 mirror files. Tags are added during compression so you will have to delete the previously compressed MP3s if you want the new tags.
In future I will add a retag function to update tags with latest name and cover art.

"

As I have done quite a few days conversion, can you confirm that this "retag" function will be provided in the near future or ..... as you suggest should I delete the the "mirror" and start again.

Fred

[PMB]

Hi Fred,

Martin says he will add a 'retag' function in a later release but hasn't given a time scale for this. If you want tags now you will need to delete the mirror file and start again.

Thinking about it you may be able to export the mirror file to a USB stick, load this onto your computer and run something like Mp3Tag software. Haven't tried it myself but should work. In this case let the mirror copy complete on the B2 so the MP3 export is all the same format.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Fred Hopper]

Thanks Paul,

I have decided to start again. :)

Fred

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Guys,

I have NAS access set up to my B2 and can access the B2 'music' folder through my 'Y:' drive.  I can then use 'mp3Tag' directly on the 'mirror' folders.

Regards,

Peter.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Peter

Could you supply a bit more information as to how you use "mp3Tag", I have it installed but it is not obvious how you simply add tags to a local copy of the B2's "music" folder contents . Also can you write the output to a new folder (so I dont mess up my copy)

ALSO could you recommend a good FLAC to mp3 converter, I feel the Brennan version is too slow.

Fred

[Daniel Taylor]

dBpoweramp does great at converting music files from one format to another, including FLAC to MP3.

[Mark Fishman]

I'd start by reading the Frequently Asked Questions page at the mp3tag website:

https://community.mp3tag.de/c/howto/faq-frequently-asked-questions/9

Then I have a couple of questions for you:

 - when you say 'a local copy of the B2's "music" folder '  do you mean that you have already copied it to your computer and you won't be working with the files on the B2 itself?

 - what kind of information would you like to be in these tags? Keep in mind that if you want to automate it, you'll find that most sources of tags expect to work on a per-album collection of tracks, so it's not QUITE as easy as pointing a magic wand at your hard drive and saying "TAG!" (even if you say it in fake Latin like Harry Potter).

On Tuesday, November 24, 2020 at 1:35:54 PM UTC-5 fred.w.... wrote:

Peter

Could you supply a bit more information as to how you use "mp3Tag", I have it installed but it is not obvious how you simply add tags to a local copy of the B2's "music" folder contents . Also can you write the output to a new folder (so I dont mess up my copy)

ALSO could you recommend a good FLAC to mp3 converter, I feel the Brennan version is too slow.

Fred

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Thank you Daniel, I will look at " dBpoweramp "

Should I address the tagging problem first ? 

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Mark

Thanks for your reply,  and in answer to your questions
First) Yes I have a local to my PC copy of the content of my B2 (and I have backups of that), I was not planning to work with the B2 itself incase I muck things up! 

Second) "what kind of information would you like to be in these tags?" That's just it! I have very little knowledge about what tags are - let me explain where I am coming from.

I have tried the B2's "Tag" utility (experimental I believe) - it runs for ages (and I think fails) and I can not see what it does or understand what it is trying to do.

I tried copying some of my music (FLAC) into a new folder and compress these to mp3 for use in my car system. The car system did not seem to understand what I had put on the SD card for it. Stuff was there but the menu system was haywire.

I was told that the mp3 stuff needed "tags" to understand what was there.

Then along came the new Brennan B2 "FLAC+mp3" compression option. So I ran that only to find that no tags were added - so I aborted that compression (after quite a time) and deleted the hidden directory it had created.

I am very confused as to where "tags" should come from, are they derived form the folder structure? the online DB of CD titles (that the B2 uses to name CDs) or is there a search made based on the music in the files to add tags from the web? Am I being totally naive? 

I WAS indeed hoping it would be a Harry Potter operation :)

-------------------------------

I also noted that my Sonos system (which I have linked to the PC copy of the B2's music rather than NAS because it works better that way) seems to be wanting TAGs to work properly but these would have to be applied to the FLAC content rather than the mp3 content for the car.

-----------------------------------------

Ok there is my brain dump - I am ready to take advice on how to proceed.... be gentle!

Fred

[Daniel Taylor]

Hi Fred,

Tags are text fields embedded in the file data for each song.  There are fields for Artist Name, Album Title, Song Title, Year, Disc#, Track#, etc.  Those that I've named, and some few others, are more or less standard, but you can add others up to a point.  When you rip on a computer, most ripping programs (that I've used) will populate the tagging fields for you when you rip to FLAC or MP3 (but not WAV).  On a Windows computer, if you right click on a song filename, one of the choices you get in the pop-up menu is Edit ID Tags.  That will show you the fields that are already there for the song (they may be blank) and allow you to edit that info.  The program mp3tag gives you a much more convenient way to add tagging information to the tracks of an album.  I believe it can be made to do some of the work in an automated way - I have very limited experience with it. 

[Mark Fishman]

>  On a Windows computer, if you right click on a song filename, one of the choices you get in the pop-up menu is Edit ID Tags. 

Really? I've never seen that. I do have an item called "mp3tag", but that's because I have installed the mp3tag program and it added itself to the context menu. Maybe your "Edit ID Tags" item came from a different program? 

[Mark Fishman]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 8:47 PM fred.w.... wrote:

> Thanks for your reply,  and in answer to your questions
> First) Yes I have a local to my PC copy of the content of my B2 (and I have backups of that),

> I was not planning to work with the B2 itself incase I muck things up! 

Good! By the way, it's not that easy to muck things up when adding tags, except by getting the wrong tags or by renaming the file itself. The tagging programs add extra info ("metadata" -- data about the audio data) to the inside of the files, leaving the audio data -- the bits that make the sound -- alone.

 

> Second) "what kind of information would you like to be in these tags?"

> That's just it! I have very little knowledge about what tags are - let me explain where I am coming from.

OK, I see below that you have a Sonos system. As you say, it describes the files by the tags inside them, not by the filenames and directories that you have them arranged in.

 

> I tried copying some of my music (FLAC) into a new folder and compress these to mp3 for use in my car system.

> The car system did not seem to understand what I had put on the SD card for it. Stuff was there but the menu system was haywire.

My car audio system is a bit "brain-dead". It will show some of the information that is in tags, but it plays the files in the order they are stored on the USB flash drive I use for the car. So I have to add them to the USB drive in the sequence I want them to play. A weird mix of behaviors.

 

> I was told that the mp3 stuff needed "tags" to understand what was there.

Maybe. Depends on the car system. But having the tags won't hurt anything.

 

> I am very confused as to where "tags" should come from, are they derived form the folder structure?

> the online DB of CD titles (that the B2 uses to name CDs) or is there a search made based on the

> music in the files to add tags from the web? Am I being totally naive? 

There are many ways to create the information that you can put in the tags. Keep in mind that the names of the tags to which Daniel refers -- album, artist, track name, composer, and so on -- are just names: you can actually put any text you want to have in those tags. (Numeric tags, like track number or disc number) must have numbers, but text tags can have any text.) Just as some B2 users will put the composer of a piece of classical music where the B2 expects to find "artist", you can play Humpty-Dumpty and make the words mean anything you like. I recommend sticking to the usual purposes for most of them.

As to where they "come from", the simplest way -- and the most work for most of us -- is to type them in yourself. If you've already named the files and folders exactly as you want them, mp3tag and other tagging programs can populate the basic tags -- artist, album, track number, track name -- from the file and folder names. mp3tag works on one album at a time to do that, or else it gets confused, so if you have thousands of albums that will take some pointing and clicking, but copying the information into the tags is very quick. If you prefer to get the tags (or filenames, etc.) from various sources on the web, mp3tag and other programs can do that, too -- again, usually the lookup process expects to find all the tracks from one CD (album) at a time, just as the B2 has been doing for its web-based lookups.

 

> I WAS indeed hoping it would be a Harry Potter operation :)

So are we all. If you are particularly nit-picky about making your tags consistent, it can be a very time-consuming process. The databases on the web were created by many thousands of users uploading their information, and are not perfectly consistent in how names are spelled, or what information people thought was most important.

 

> I also noted that my Sonos system (which I have linked to the PC copy of the B2's music

> rather than NAS because it works better that way) seems to be wanting TAGs to work properly

> but these would have to be applied to the FLAC content rather than the mp3 content for the car.

mp3tag and other programs will tag both kinds of files with the appropriate forms of tags; the tag contents can be the same no matter what format you've saved the files in. In fact, if you tag the FLAC files, and then do the conversions to mp3, foobar2000 or dBpoweramp will copy the tags from the source file to the destination file when it converts them. You probably don't want to have to do the tagging twice...

 

> Ok there is my brain dump - I am ready to take advice on how to proceed.... be gentle!

Suggestion: pick ONE album (directory). Open it in mp3tag and just look at it. Select a file in the mp3tag window and see if any of the fields (on the left) are already populated. Highlight all the tracks and click on the "tag sources" item in one of the menus, see what it offers. You can always change the tags or remove them entirely if you don't like them and you'll be no worse off than you are now.

The on-line help is pretty good. The mp3tag website is pretty good. There's lots of stuff on the web from other users, including sample templates for making tags from filenames and vice-versa.

Since you already have backups, the worst that can happen is you have to copy a directory back to the PC from a backup.

Cheers -- m.

On Tuesday, November 24, 2020 at 8:47:41 PM UTC-5 fred.w....@gmail.com wrote:

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Thanks Mark,

Ill have a go as you suggest.

Fred.

[Daniel Taylor]

On Wednesday, November 25, 2020 at 6:39:14 AM UTC-5 Mark Fishman wrote:

>  On a Windows computer, if you right click on a song filename, one of the choices you get in the pop-up menu is Edit ID Tags. 

Really? I've never seen that. I do have an item called "mp3tag", but that's because I have installed the mp3tag program and it added itself to the context menu. Maybe your "Edit ID Tags" item came from a different program?

I think you're probably right.  That item has been in my right-click menu for so many years that I don't remember a time before.  I do reacall that the way that worked changed when I updated my version of dBpoweramp.  So my apologies to those who may not have that item in their menu because they haven't installed a program that put it there.

[Brian R]

Hi All 

This is all very interesting. I had a problem recently which led me to believe that the B2 can read tags (or maybe certain tags ) from flac files. 

It would be nice if Martin B  or Paul could tell us where the information the Brennan 'Re Tag Album' and 'Tag Music' functions use is sourced. Is it created from the existing file structure (Album, Artist, Track, jpeg) or an online source? and if so which?

I found that an Album which was causing me problems had two different versions of Album Art  in it. One type (the original art ,which was located as the only jpg in the tracks folder) displayed in the Album pane as normal, the other displayed intermittently in the now playing pane. I know that I have never knowingly loaded this wrong art (it may be the correct art for this album in another part of the world) so the only way I can think that it got there is when I Tagged my files using the Brennan function.

Brian

[Rik]

You might have read my post some weeks ago, though I don’t think it is anything to do with your findings and I’ve never tagged but I found via Musicbrainz or Amazon, probably the latter, the correct art work for an album, FLAC, and it displayed bottom right. Up popped artwork,  top left, for another album performed by one of the two artists on my disc - in fact another's incorrect one appeared first. The wrong one is still there. The album folder, viewed on my PC, has just the correct artwork.

[Brian R]

Hi Rik

I have never used the automated Album Art loader. I originally loaded my B2 in 2015 (long before the auto loading for Album art ) using drag and drop from desktop . I have continued using the same system for the relatively few albums I have input since.
Brian

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for this suggestion "Suggestion: pick ONE album (directory). Open it in mp3tag and just look at it. Select a file in the mp3tag window and see if any of the fields (on the left) are already populated. Highlight all the tracks and click on the "tag sources" item in one of the menus, see what it offers."

This was the result (original is the inset).

Seems to have done something useful with very little input ( Expelliarmus  !!!).

I will probably continue just using this option because it seems to be adding something sensible and I do not think I am competent to improve on it.

Thanks for the advice,

Fred 

On Wednesday, 25 November 2020 at 13:20:20 UTC Mark Fishman wrote:

[Mark Fishman]

Neat! (I assume you looked at the Windows Explorer display again afterwards and it had the new tags? If not, there's a "save" button in the upper left of the mp3tag window.)

You shoud get sensible results for many, maybe even most, of your albums. Just keep in mind that at some point you'll notice that, for example, one album spells a composer "Tchaikovsky" and another spells "Tchaikowsky", or the same conductor and orchestra has the orchestra listed before the conductor, or someone simply had a typo. And maybe you'll decide that you want to put the composer in his or her own tag instead of in the track title tag (in your screen shot you could use the filename->tag feature to parse the filename into "%track% %composer% %title%" without changing the actual filename!).

So you're off to a good start. Don't sell yourself short: you'll feel more competent as you experiment to learn three things: (a) how the program works; (b) how the tags help your car system; (c) how the tags help your Sonos system. It took me a long time to decide just how I want my tags to work for me, and I'm a fairly nit-picky person.

Cheers -- m.