Subject:Bug in Extracting CD Audio by Track?

Posted by: Piano Peddler

Date:12/16/2008 11:40:05 AM

I have hundreds of audio CDs I'm converting to MP3. I want to use Extract CD by Track so that it will use the Gracenote online feature to pull in the track song / artist names and then name each CD track window with the "song - artist" text which it very nicely does. A SAVE ALL then automatically saves the MP3's with a song - artist filename.

I have 6 CD drives on my PC so I want to start the process on all 6 drives and do something else while it finishes extracting all 6 CDs. The problem is, while the first CD is still being extracted and I ask the second drive to queue up an extraction, I get a confirmation window that says something like, "There are xx operations (remaining track extractions) left in the queue. Do you want to continue?" I answer YES and it deletes all the previously extracted track windows. Is Sony aware of this bug? It would be best if the confirmer window didn't even come up. It would just queue up several CDs to extract like it properly does when you choose the option to extract the whole CD at once (i.e. not track-by-track).

Eugene

Subject:RE: Bug in Extracting CD Audio by Track?

Reply by: musicvid10

Date:12/16/2008 1:02:48 PM

If you are trying to ask one instance of SF to extract from multiple drives simultaneously, I don't believe it will do this. I wouldn't call it a bug, either.

You "might" try opening a second instance of SF and see if that will do the trick, but I am not sure because I haven't tried it.

I use the freeware CDex for extracting. because it will encode on-the-fly to high quality .mp3, is fast, highly configurable, and uses CDDB (similar to Gracenote) for track titles. Since you're doing a bunch, I expect you'll find it quite a bit faster.

You can also rip from multiple drives simultaneously by opening multiple instances of CDex and selecting different drives. That I have done before with two drives.

However, I suspect you would soon hit a bandwidth bottleneck, either the CPU or on the bus (esp. if the drives are USB), and by the time you got a third drive going it wouldn't be much faster in the long run than doing it one disc at a time.

Subject:RE: Bug in Extracting CD Audio by Track?

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:12/16/2008 2:04:55 PM

Sound Forge is a 'single instance' program, in that if you try to open multiple instances it merely brings the already-running instance to the foreground instead.

Vegas can open multiple instances, but i don't believe you can do bulk saves with it. Each track has to be exported manually one at a time.

As far as the bandwidth bottleneck, speed isn't so important as convenience. It doesn't really matter if it takes 2 hours to do 6 discs one at a time, or 2 hours to stack up 6 discs all at once. However, stacking up 6 at once means you can walk away for 2 hours. Doing them one at a time means coming back every 20 minutes to stick the next disc in. The savings is convenience, not in total time.

Subject:RE: Bug in Extracting CD Audio by Track?

Reply by: musicvid10

Date:12/16/2008 3:42:39 PM

**Sound Forge is a 'single instance' program,**
Right you are, I had forgotten since I use multiple instances of Vegas so much.

**The savings is convenience, not in total time.**
I like to leave a "little" bandwidth for responsive browser, email, and word apps while I'm waiting; however following your logic, the OP's best solution may be running multiple instances of CDex. There are plenty of other rippers, but I haven't found others as fast or configurable.

Subject:RE: Bug in Extracting CD Audio by Track?

Reply by: Piano Peddler

Date:12/16/2008 4:13:02 PM

I'm saying it works fine queuing up 6 CD's (takes 4 minutes) when reading the entire CD at once into one soundfile, but it behaves very differently when trying multiple CD's in track-by-track mode.

Thanks for the suggestion of CDex.

Eugene

Subject:RE: Bug in Extracting CD Audio by Track?

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:12/16/2008 5:46:29 PM

I run all the processor/bus hog programs in the background at 'below normal' priority. That way anything i'm actively doing on the PC still runs pretty snappy.CD ripping is certainly not a time-critical operation and it won't be bothered in the slightest if the ripping software pauses once in a while. Rendering is the same way. Start up Vegas rendering a dozen different files all at lower priority and the PC still seems very responsive.