Anyone out there have a complete Windows solution for ripping encoding using the --nogap option of LAME? I have a Windows compiled version of LAME that adds the VBR headers so that they just need to be fixed with mp3tool or similar program. See this post by peter for details

I use EAC for ripping now but it doesn't support the ability to encode all on one command line. If I rip and name files according to real data like tag info, the filenames are too long to pass to LAME on one command line. Even then I'd need a funky batch file to read all the files in a directory. If I rip them as Track01.wav etc then I have to enter tag data by hand which is a real nuisance given CDDB is available.

I just bought quite a few new CDs back from OS of which a number are continous mix type CDs that benefit from the -nogap option.

Anyone? Bueller?

It occurs to me that a modification of my really old and mostly useless "Jack" program might be able to do this. It's essentially a front-end that creates a batch file to encode a collection of track01 track02 etc wav files. Since it assumes the WAV files are already there, I could in theory rewrite it to do a single LAME line for all WAV files instead of one for each.

The odds of me getting around to it are rather slim, though.

Yes that would be quite easy - I could do it with a sledgehammer approach in a DOS batch file right now - obviously this example would only work for upto five tracks but you get the idea. Saves reading/parsing a directory listing.

if exist Track05.wav goto 5TRACKS:

if exist Track04.wav goto 4TRACKS:

if exist Track03.wav goto 3TRACKS:

if exist Track02.wav goto 2TRACKS:

if exist Track01.wav goto 1TRACK:





:5TRACKS

lame --alt-preset standard --nogap Track01.wav Track02.wav Track03.wav Track04.wav Track05.wav

goto end



:4TRACKS

lame --alt-preset standard --nogap Track01.wav Track02.wav Track03.wav Track04.wav

goto end



:3TRACKS

lame --alt-preset standard --nogap Track01.wav Track02.wav Track03.wav

goto end



:2TRACKS

lame --alt-preset standard --nogap Track01.wav Track02.wav

goto end



:1TRACK

lame --alt-preset standard Track01.wav

goto end



:end

Yuck - very very ugly (I only have limited DOS scripting knowledge) but it would work.

It still doesn't get around the issue of tagging everything by hand though which is my major gripe. I am considering modding CDex since it's open source but I'd much rather use EAC to rip.

Basically the script/program would need to read the directory listing, rename everything to small temp file names, encode using LAME and then rename the files back to their full names. I'd still need to generate the tags from the filenames but it would be better than typing them in by hand.

I had given up on a one-step solution to do the job using EAC and LAME. My problems with gapless encoding were extra "temp" tracks, and, of course, lack of ID3 tags. But if you guys are able to come up with something that will do it in one shot, I'd be amazed and grateful, even if I do only have a few CDs left to rip.

Yeah, that's essentially what Jack already does, but it has a VB3 front-end that creates V1 tag files which the batch files append to the MP3s as part of the process. It also renames the tracks in whatever format you like and optionally creates an M3U file. Oh, and displays the start and end time of the encoding process. And does multiple albums in a group if they're in different subdirectories. But yeah, it's a sledgehammer approach.

But where do you get the data to create the tags and final filenames from? The original filename? This is probably the biggest boundary for me at the moment. Other than that creating the TAGs should be quite simple.

I was thinking of making EAC create a real funky filename with all the data required for a TAG in it. This wouldn't work with non DOS allowed filename characters though.

But where do you get the data to create the tags and final filenames from?

User types it in.

At the time I wrote the software, the CDDB sucked considerably more than it does today, and I didn't like using any of the CDDB-enabled software. Mainly because the user-interface for correcting and editing the tags (in the available software at that time) was always terrible. You couldn't ever just type in an entire album's worth of information without having to do grunt work. For instance, having to use the mouse to switch between tracks or certain fields (keyboard shortcut support was poor), or having to dance on ctrl-c and ctrl-v to get the artist/album copied to every tune.

So the whole reason I wrote Jack was so that I could tag and encode an entire group of albums, by hand, without the CDDB, very VERY quickly. Once the albums were ripped into WAV format, I could tag a dozen albums and start the overnight encoding process in about a minute's worth of typing. I made sure that each field was selected and highlighted in the proper order, and that the Enter key always went to the next logical field. And since I was the one typing it in from scratch, it would be correct every time, without typos or capitalization errors.

Virtually all my music seems to be continuous mixes and after much messing & heartache I finally arrived on a combination that works 100% for me.

Rip in EAC using CDDB to name the files (as per your desire).

Drag 'n' Drop files into WinLAME http://winLAME.sourceforge.net (which as far as I know is the only LAME frontend to offer --nogap support) & encode (personally I use CBR 256, so I can't vouch for the validity of this with VBR although WinLAME supports it).

Because of the --nogap issue alone, I am now a WinLAME convert (nice tweakable presets & free too, yum).

Sim