Script to batch transcode music

**insane_alien** · May 17th, 2008

okay, i have a rather large music collection on my harddrive(all ripped to flac) which is organized by artist. now, i lost the folder containing the .ogg versions(transcoded at time of ripping) and i want to write a script to transcode all of these tracks to .ogg while maintaining the folder structure(lack of structure would mean many would get overwritten).

how would i go about doing this? i've wrote scripts before but those never had to care about folder structure or converting one file to another. they were just ways to automate tasks that required a lot of commands

**vanadium** · May 17th, 2008

- You can mirror the directory structure first:

find <source>/ -type d ! -name . -exec mkdir "<destination>/{}" \;

- then convert the flac files also using the find command

find <source>/ -name "*.flac*" -exec flac "{}" -o "<destination>/{}.ogg" \;

[edit]1) added a quote after flac* 2) added -o which is needed to specify output file[/edit]
In a third step, you can, also using find, rename the .flac.ogg files to .ogg. I am sure there are other and probably better options.

**insane_alien** · May 17th, 2008

that first command doesn't make any directories, it just produces an error saying the directory doesn't exist

**vanadium** · May 18th, 2008

You have to create the <destination> directory first, obviously.

**insane_alien** · May 18th, 2008

i tried that. it was still giving errors
it also made the longest path ever. it was trying to make the folders in /media/disk/Music/ogged/media/disk/Music/FLAC/

i thought that they would just go into /media/disk/Music/ogged/

source was: /media/disk/Music/FLAC/
destination: /media/disk/Music/ogged/

**vanadium** · May 18th, 2008

I see what happened. "{}" substitutes what was found in the mkdir command. <source> should probably be just the current directory. That way, a relative path name will be appended to <destination>.

cd /media/disk/Music/FLAC/
find . -type d ! -name . -exec mkdir "/media/disk/Music/ogged/{}" \;

Now, a directory will be found as "./1973/Pink Floyd/Dark Side Of The Moon" and translate to
"/media/disk/Music/ogged/./1973/Pink Floyd/Dark Side Of The Moon" in the mkdir command, which is valid syntax. I am sorry for this unclarity in my previous instruction. An example is always best, though.

**insane_alien** · May 18th, 2008

okay, the directory structure is cloned(thanks for putting up withme on that, i'm not familiar with the find command) but the second command isn't doing anyhing.

the console just gives me a > and it sits there till i ctrl+c