bootlegs

[John Wardyga]

I have hundreds of legal (Grateful Dead) bootlegs that I would want to load onto the B2.  Will I have trouble loading many of the same songs as long as each folder/cd is differently named?  Can I load my own cover artwork?

[Ray Dion]

The only time you will have an issue is if it is the same album and exactly the same filename/title. 

The B2 uses a folder structure of Artist >> Album >> tracks##. You might call all of them Grateful Dead for Artist. Then I suspect each album is a live concert with a date. That separates the entire CD from any other CD. Then all of the tracks are in the album name directory. Like any operating system it would not like two files with the same name, the second one added will overwrite the first one.

The B2 does not care about tags in the music file so you can do whatever you want with that.

Inside each album directory there can be a file called coverart.jpg. That will allow you to provide your cover art as seen from the B2 web page or app.  Adding cover art to each music file with tags can be done with no impact on the B2. You can use the web UI or NAS to add your art.

Ray

[John Wardyga]

thanks, Ray.

[John Wardyga]

I doubt most of the cd's have band, title or song names built into them.  Will it say unknown, unknown, etc. and I correct it bluetooth/wifi on my imac computer after each import?

[Ray Dion]

Yes. This is a bit off the top of my head. Recommend whatever you chose to do, try it in small batch first keeping the originals safe.

As bootlegs they would not be in any database (freedb, MusicBrains, Discogs...). Each time the B2 rips the CD it will use the artist UNKNOWN. It will however name each album as album### where the ### is a one up number of total disks ripped. So that meets the rules for a unique album under each artist. All of the tracks will be called "XX trackXX" where the XX is the track number. So you don't have to correct it immediately but it will need correcting at some point. The B2 does one job at a time so if it is ripping, the WebUI will not allow changes to artists or albums.

Note, the title and tracks are not built into CDs. If the CD has added features not part of the audio CD standard like CD Text, you will need a program that reads and interprets that text. Same thing is true if a video is included on the CD.

You will then have to manually change all that data. Choice of a tagging tool will be important to you. I have seen tagging tools with script and file naming tools so may be able to automate the file names after you update the tags (saves some typing). You may also look at other ways to use the scripting power when CDs have the same song list but different locals. Probably more circumstances but it takes you learning the tool as much as doing the work.

Opinion with more detail 

Your process might look like below. The point is to keep busy while CDs are being ripped. Also you can only change the tags on your computer, the B2 does not have this ability.

1. Rip 10 CDs
2. Transfer newly ripped CDs to backup storage
3. Rip 10 more CDs while editing the first group on the computer from the backup made in step 2.
4. Return to step 2

At some point you take the modified tracks from the computer and replace the unlabeled items on the B2.

Note that is a significant issue with my process and that is when the B2 rips a CD it will probably be in WAV format. When the B2 is idle (no web connection!!) it will convert WAV to FLAC assuming your compression is set to FLAC only. 

Ways you might work around this:

• Your computer might be more efficient as the B2 conversion takes a while. dBpoweramp can do conversions/compressions as well as other programs
• Set the B2 to "none" for compression. Add tags to the WAV file, then convert to FLAC using the computer or the B2. I have not tested if the B2 will transfer all of the tag work. A strong candidate for a test if you chose to do it this way.
• Set the B2 to FLAC and be sure to allow it to do conversion overnight. You can extract only flack files (step 2) the next day to edit on the computer while adding more ripped CDs to the B2. Sort of a daily loop on my process above where steps 2 and 3 occur once per day for however long you have the patience to type.

Recommend you work with FLAC only in this process. Fewer files and less confusion. When you are done you add MP3 using the computer or B2 (test if the tags transfer). You can add back to the B2 if you follow the correct file structure for 'mp3 mirror'. Do not add them to the same directory as the FLAC files or you will have two copies of every track. The mirror hides the mp3 copy on the B2. I was able to get dBpoweramp to actually setup the mirror so that all had to do was copy it to the B2. Must be done very precisely because of all the folder names.

Ray

[John Wardyga]

thanks again!

[JFBUK]

Hi,

a lot of bootlegs are actually listed in Discogs and if you use the dBpoweramp manual metadata search you can name the tracks using the appropriate Discogs URL (just the part up to and  including the Discogs database number)
 

e.g. for 

https://www.discogs.com/release/4066343-The-Grateful-Dead-Daybreak-On-The-Land

you need

https://www.discogs.com/release/4066343

John

[Daniel Taylor]

Thanks, John.  I was just trying to do that the other day, and I didn't know how to get it to work.  Now it should.