Description

This is 1 utility scripts (in src/main) for transcoding flac files into mp3 files keeping covers, tags, and directory structure. It is multithreaded and creates as much thread as the number of cores on the host.

The flac tags will be added to the mp3 files ut8 encoded, and if a cover.jpg file is found in the flac files directory it will be added to the mp3.

The mp3 generated will be itunes compliant (accents, covers) and encoded with lame command : lame --silent -V2 --vbr-new -q0 --lowpass 19.7 --resample 44100

Why another flac2mp3 command ?

Because I didn't find one that included the cover and that did not break my accents on itunes. Cf http://www.barreverte.fr/ou-sont-mes-accents-dans-itunes (sorry, in french). Second because I wanted it to be robust (for example with comments on multiple lines, shell caracters in tags like !*$) and unit tested.

Compatibility and dependencies

It has been tested with linux (with python version >= 2.6.2), MacOS (>= Snow Leopard), Windows Vista (with python version >= 2.6.2).

Depends on lame (>=3.99 if you want your accents) and flac for the runtime.

Depends on eyeD3 for unit testing and developing.

Lame

Is a well known tool for encoding mp3 files. You can dowload and compile the code from the lame site : http://lame.sourceforge.net/

Binaries bundles can be found for mac and windows : http://rarewares.org/mp3-lame-bundle.php

Flac

Is a free and open lossless audio codec. There are links to dowload pages in the official site : http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html

Usage

flac2mp3 [origin directories] mp3/repository/destination

If one argument is given it is the destination : it will transcode flac files found under the current directory and put mp3 files in the destination directory with the same directory structure.
If more than one argument is given, it will transcode flac files from the given directories to the destination.

for example, if you have :

/path/to/flac/artist1/album1/song1.flac
             |              |song2.flac
             |              |song3.flac
             |              |cover.jpg
             |
             /artist2/album1/song1.flac
                            |song2.flac
                            |cover.jpg

if you do in flac directory : $ flac2mp3.py ../mp3

you'll have :

/path/to/flac/artist1/album1/song1.flac
        |    |              |song2.flac
        |    |              |song3.flac
        |    |              |cover.jpg
        |    |
        |    /artist2/album1/song1.flac
        |                   |song2.flac
        |                   |cover.jpg
        |
        /mp3/artist1/album1/song1.mp3
            |              |song2.mp3
            |              |song3.mp3
            |
            /artist2/album1/song1.mp3
                           |song2.mp3

if you do in flac directory : $ flac2mp3.py artist2 ../mp3

you'll have :

/path/to/flac/artist1/album1/song1.flac
        |    |              |song2.flac
        |    |              |song3.flac
        |    |
        |    /artist2/album1/song1.flac
        |                   |song2.flac
        |
        /mp3/artist2/album1/song1.mp3
                           |song2.mp3

This is a work in progress.

Development

To develop and test, use your favorite IDE (mine is pycharm).

With bash, to run the tests you can do :

$ virtualenv virt_env
$ source virt_env/bin/activate
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
$ nosetests

Known issues

[windows] weird errors when deleting temp cover images embedded in flac files on windows : "WindowsError: [Error 32] The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process". But the transcoding is ok anyway.
[all] the skip file function is not working after windows encoding stuffs
[windows] the log for each track start encoding is not displayed

flac2mp3

README.md