sort of OT, CD names to iTunes

[Alex Tweedly]

Charles Hartman wrote:

> I'm doing a lot of LP -> CD transfers, a process with many steps some  
> of which are silly & tedious. One of them is that, after I've split  
> the digitized audio file into tracks, and named them (a little  
> tedious in itself since I'm using an ancient Toast Lite to burn the  
> CD), and go to import the tracks into iTunes, unless it's a recording  
> known to GraceNote I have to type all the track names (and composers)  
> *again* in the iTunes info panel. I was thinking a little Rev stack  
> to do this would be handy (and worth the time if I do *another*  
> couple of hundred), but I'm not sure where to look.
>
> Does anybody know of a way to get audio track names from CDs and load  
> them into iTunes? Am I missing something obvious?
>
I am 99.9% sure that the track names are not on an audio CD. If they 
were, iTunes, MusicMatch, etc. would surely retrieve them for us, 
wouldn't they ?

> On Feb 18, 2006, at 11:00 PM, Mark Smith wrote:
>
>> Not exactly what you had in mind, I know, but couldn't you just  
>> import the digitized files into iTunes as aifs or wavs, enter the  
>> info there, and then burn the CD?
>
>
> Yes. Of course that also entails converting all the AIFFs to AACs and  
> erasing the AIFFs from disk. The conversion takes long enough so  
> that, when I got started on this, I sensed that it would be a little  
> more obnoxious than this roundabout method. (The whole procedure  
> involves two long waiting steps -- recording the AIFF from LP in  
> Sound Studio and running it through ClickRepair -- and some busywork,  
> bookkeeping steps. The AIFF->AAC conversion is another long waiting  
> step, and that's what decided me, perhaps wrongly.) 

I guess maybe I'm not understanding the current work flow (versus what 
Mark suggested).

I think today you do:
1. LP -> AIFF
2. AIFF -> CD
3. CD -> iTunes

Mark is proposing
a. LP -> AIFF
b. AIFF -> iTunes
c. AIFF to AAC convert within iTunes
d. iTunes -> CD

Note that b and c can be combined into a single step using the scripting 
interface to iTunes, but I don't think they can be using the iTunes UI. 
If there is a way to do that in one step, please tell me how  :-)


Clearly 1 and a are the same

2 and d are equivalent (limited by speed of burning - maybe iTunes can 
do it faster than your old Toast Lite, but in general the same)

b is (for me) almost instantaneous - no file copy, no conversion, merely 
adds some entries in the iTunes database)

and, finally, c is faster than 3  -- the conversion (in my case WAV to 
AAC) happens faster than I ever achieve on CD import into iTunes. 
Importing a CD varies between 5x and 8x speed, while file conversion is 
reliably faster than 10x.



Converting AIFF rather CD into iTunes has the benefit of being entirely 
scriptable - no physical handling of CDs every 5 minutes. If you have 
enough disk space, you can spend all day importing your LPs to AIFF and 
naming tracks, then leave your script to do all the import and convert 
while you have dinner.

btw - yes, I do wish I had known all this six months ago when I did a 
few LPs and found it sufficiently painful that I haven't yet done all 
the rest of them.



-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net




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