Batch .flac -> .mp3 conversion question

[c_freid]

Hey all,

Long time listener first time caller here.

I'm doing a *MASSIVE* batch re-encode of a life-time follower's professional bootlegs of Grateful Dead and related bands/concerts/Woodstock. I have thousands of hours from across the decades (mostly .flac, some .wav, some .mp3). Cool right?

I have a loooooong ways to go.
I get that "overwrite/keep original" message and it completely stops the process. Is there a setting I can hit to default the answer one way or another?

This is going to take years if it keeps stopping, or I'm going to have to sit in front of my computer for 24 hours a day for several weeks haha.

Thanks!
-Your friendly neighborhood Dingo

[Alaric]

Hi,
First, I think you should keep a backup of your recordings and not ask VLC to overwrite them. You never know, something could go bad during transcode and you could loose one of your flac files...
The way to achieve this is probably to transcode all your files in a separate directory via a VLC command line instruction.
You can try the command line way on a single file to start-with and, when you feel good about it, you can apply it to all your files at once!

You can look at this documentation for some more help: https://docs.videolan.me/vlc-user/3.0/e ... it-locally

[c_freid]

While I would *love* to be able to inspect each file for proper transcoding, that would take years of work. I *do* have a backup just in case we stumble across a file that wasn't done right, but I need a way for everything to be transcoded without stopping.

[InTheWings]

If you have that prompt you're overwriting another file, or the original. Better know what you're doing before complaining of lost files...

[Alaric]

Now, if you really want to do it in a single batch, use a command-line script that run either ffmpeg or

Code: Select all

vlc --sout="transcode{...}:file{...}"

on every flac file of the directory tree.

[c_freid]

Not sure where this overwriting files idea came up, nor this idea that I am complaining of lost files, I'm not doing either. But thanks.

Alaric, thank you, let me try that and if I need more help I'll post here!

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

vlc --sout-file-overwrite ...

And don't you dare ever complain about data loss...