ape files

[beg1]

Hi,

I installed winamp 5.5.
I have lot's of ape files.

Now fileinfo is showing basic info about the file, but it is not played! When I try to start it, it just jumps to the next song..

what's wrong here?

cheers,
Bernhard

[DJ Egg]

Have you installed the MonkeysAudio package/plugin?
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

[beg1]

Hi DJ Egg,

thx for the fast reply!

I changed to Vista and installed only the ape-plugin for winamp but not that one from monkeyaudio..

it's working now! :-) infos are shown and song played.

Still not working are the special spanish characters.. :-( silly, because I have huge collection of tangos..

thx,
cheers,
Bernhard

[flocksoft]

the Monkey Audio is a really good format, but the project seems too static now

the FLAC format (it's lossless) is widely adopted and developed and Winamp supports it natively (and has Unicode support for the international titles)

you could convert the .ape files to .flac files

setting up correctly mp3Tag (http://www.mp3tag.de/en/) you could convert in only one step the codepage from spanish to Unicode for the .flac files

[beg1]

Hi flocksoft,

thx for the reply!

how would you suggest to convert the ape into flac?
I have about 25000 of them in hundreds of directories. So converter has to be able to scan subdirectories, understand the ape2 tags and save them correctly into same folder with option of deleting old one. Especially the correct transfer of tag infos is a problem with long and special character titels..
(I have edited the tags of my ape with mp3tag and I think it's ape2 - only mp3tag is showing the whole lenght and every special character correctly)

would be very happy to get rid of the ape files and convert them to flac or even high quality mp3s..

you know a good programm for converting these files? I have tested so many and one of the above problems were not solved. sudirectories, batch processing, or special characters of the tags..

Bernhard

[flocksoft]

transcoding 25000 files! it's a lot of work, for your CPU at least

if all works, no humans required ;)

if you interested, here you'll find some guidelines

a nice solution to transcode on the fly ape -> flac is the following one (totally freeware software):

Software required

- download & install dBpoweramp Music Converter (dMC, for short)
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm
- download & install flac module for dMC
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-flac.htm
- download & install monkey audio module for dMC
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-monkeys.htm


Steps

(I've marked the relevant settings different from the default ones)
- from Star menu, go in Illustrate -> dBpoweramp Music Converter -> Configuration -> dBpoweramp Configuration, in Codecs tabs and click Advanced options and use these settings, ok all

http://stashbox.org/43539/1/dBMC-settings.png (http://stashbox.org/43539/dBMC-settings.png)

- open Illustrate -> dBpoweramp Music Converter -> dBpoweramp Batch Converter; in the toolbar you can filter the type of files with Filter button (in your case, Exclude all and select Monkey Audio)
- select a folder (also with inner subfolders) and click Convert in the toolbar

http://stashbox.org/43542/1/dBMC-batch.png (http://stashbox.org/43542/dBMC-batch.png)

- select the settings for the flac encoder (the default are ok); in the same screen in upper right side there is the List / Rename button to show the list of files to be transcoded; for the output location you have 3 choices: Original folder (good for an hard disk, but unusable for a cd; this keeps the old structure and filename), Folder (keeps the filename, but not the structure), Dynamic (very good but requires the Power Pack, $$ or trial)
(in my opinion the first option is good)
- clicking the Convert >> the process start
- it's all

PS: of course start try these steps on few files to test,and remember to delete the ape files after the transcoding (no automatic)

[beg1]

Hi flocksoft,

thx for hints and "tutorial" ;-)

do you know if there will be a problem with the spanish characters using this software?

At the moment I do not have time, but I will try this as soon as possible!

cheers,
Bernhard

[flocksoft]

try with a "known problematic" file to test it...

if not working, maybe this post could be useful:
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?postid=2190271#post2190271

[beg1]

Hi,

converting with dbpoweramp works just perfect, as long as you don't use 48Khz for mp3! I destroyed 25000 files by doing so, so be warned!

Bernhard

[DJ Egg]

mp3?

I thought you were doing ape to flac,
ie. lossless to lossless, not lossless to lossy? :confused:

[beg1]

after trying dbpoweramp I decided to convert to mp3 in order to be able to use the music also with mp3 players and so on.

everything works well as long as you don't change the 44Khz to 48Khz..

Bernhard