Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Audio CD burning, transcoding and replaygain questions.

["James \"Doc\" Livingston" <doclivingston gmail com>]

On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 12:22 +0000, Derek Cramer wrote:
> I had never used the facility to burn an audio CD from Rhythmbox
> before, so I thought I'd give it a whirl today, but it seems that I
> can only burn a CD from a playlist and not from the library. What I'd
> like to be able to do is to right-click on an album in the browser and
> have a burn to CD option there. Is this possible/practical? 

It's certainly possible, and shouldn't actually be that hard. There is a
bug filed about it, but it never quite reaches the top of anyone's
priority list :-\


> Also, my library is a mixture of flac, ogg and mp3 files. I use
> replaygain tags on all the oggs and flacs, and mp3gain on all the
> mp3s. The problem is that the mp3s play much quieter than the other
> formats. I know mp3gain works differently than replaygain in that it
> modifies the actual file as well as optionally adding undo tags to the
> file. How does Rhythmbox handle replaygain for mp3 files? Is there any
> particular way I should be processing mp3 files to make them match the
> other files when played via Rhythmbox? 

Replaygain in MP3 isn't the same as replaygain in pretty much any other
format. MP3s have a a header called (something like) "global volume
adjust", which controls how loud the file is played back. mp3gain
changes this since it should work with any player, as they don't need to
do anything special.

Most other formats have special replaygain tags, which require players
to look for. Rhythmbox should use these to adjust the volume, although
it will use the "album gain" in preference to the "track gain".

I'm not perfectly sure, but I though that vorbisgain and mp3gain
adjusted them to the same volume.


> Finally, one other thing. I might be getting an iPod soon, and I am
> wondering how it will work with Rhythmbox. I know (and have tried with
> a friend's iPod) that copying/playing from the iPod works fine, and I
> can copy files direct to the iPod with drag and drop. What I'm
> wondering about is automatic transcoding to mp3 for ogg/flac files
> when added to the iPod. I have seen this discussed here before, but am
> unsure as to how to get it going. 

Rhythmbox contains code to do this, but it isn't currently used for the
iPod. Aside from the caveat of currently supporting only one mime-type,
so it would transcode AAC files to MP3s even though an iPod can play
them, I'm can't remember why it isn't enabled.

There is a patch sitting in bugzilla to add support for proper
synchronisation and playlist editing on iPods, but it needed a bit of
rework (and now updating for cvs changes). This is hampered by a lack of
Rhythmbox developers with iPods to work on it.


Cheers,

James "Doc" Livingston
-- 
Died. Woke up in Hell. Punched in PIN, logged on. Just another day."
    -- David Gerard