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Batch improvement

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2009 1:17 pm
by rfcomm2k
An enhancement is needed in the batch processing feature.
When selecting folders to be processed, you must either select individually or select *.* and include subfolders. The problem there is that a limitation is placed somewhere that causes the batch job to fail after x number of files processed (I do not know what x=, but I am guessing around 200)
Then the job must be restarted, and if you use the wildcard again, Gwave will look at each of the previously processed files before it finally comes to one that has not been processed yet.
When the *.* with subfolders list is created, you can go in and delete the previously processed folders from the list, but only one at a time.
Here is my request:
Allow a control click or shift click in the select folders windowto add multiple folders, or allow the same to REMOVE multiple folders after the list is created.

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 11:16 am
by rfcomm2k
What, NOBODY has ANYTHING to say about this?

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 11:24 am
by DewDude420
Well, I don't know about most people, I rarely comment on a feature request unless I'm throwing my support behind it. Since I rarely, if ever, use batch feature, I have nothing to contribute, and it's probably a case of most of the people here don't have anything to contribute either...most of us have probably never encountered the particular problem you're talking about.

Sorry.....we don't always respond to every post on the forum. Feature request is a feature request...that's generally Chris' department.

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 8:38 pm
by donrandall
What, NOBODY has ANYTHING to say about this?
I wouldn't want you to feel neglected, so I'll say something about it: "No Comment"... Heh, heh, heh... Just kidding.

I am thinking that others who may have a similar need would be most likely to add join in and express their agreement. Since no one has jumped in yet to do so can mean different things. Maybe your need isn't shared by others or - more likely - Someone having a similar need hasn't logged in so soon after your post appeared.

Most of us don't hang around here all day every day. Some of us log in once or twice a week and others, even less often.

I am a fairly heavy Goldwave user and I have never had any need for such a feature as you have advocated - at least not yet.

Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 1:22 pm
by rfcomm2k
My need is to convert all my collection of m4a files to mp3. I have 31,515 .m4a files that need to be converted, and they are spread over 4389 folders and subfolders. So you can see the tedium of adding each folder individually

Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2009 11:19 pm
by DewDude420
If you are STRICTLY converting programs...Goldwave is not the program to use. While it can function as a converter, that is not it's intended use. Perhaps the batch problem you've found is a reason...

If you're wanting to convert m4a to mp3...then I suggest dbpoweramp if it's a one time deal...sadly the new version is locked from using anything but thier mp3 encoder, which expires after 30 days...but if you can get the conversion done in 30 days, then it'll work fine.

It fully supports subfolders and such. However, I really don't recommend converting from a lossy format to another lossy format unless you have a VERY specific reason (other than "I just want to convert 'em). The degradation in quality will be horrendous.

Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2009 3:47 pm
by Gord
>a limitation is placed somewhere
>that causes the batch job to fail
>after x number of files processed
>(I do not know what x=, but I am
>guessing around 200)

Well, if there is such a limitation it is considerably higher than that. I just crunched 775 files in 165 folders from .wav down to .flac and GoldWave processed all of them without a hitch. In fact, I was even able to change the batch processing priority on the fly to give another application more CPU.

Maybe your batches are failing because the computer is getting low on resources. Do you receive any sort of error message when a batch quits?

Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 9:34 pm
by rfcomm2k
DewDude420,

Please explain "lossy format to another lossy format". All the music my family has downloaded came to us in .m4a format and seems to sound fine. My reason for converting is because 2 of our .mp3 players do not support the .m4a format. Do you have any advice?

Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 11:04 pm
by DewDude420
m4a and mp3 are what's known as lossy formats.

basically...the encoders take the raw audio CD data and in a manner only conceptually similar to image compression...picks out parts deemed unnecessary. it's a complex process that makes use of physcoacoustics...which is basically a model of how human hearing responds. it uses this model to determine what information from the frequency domain to remove and what to keep...and since mp3 and m4a keep thier information in frequency domain as opposed to time-domain which is what raw PCM is, the result is a reduced data rate required.

removing all these frequencies sounds fine and dandy..if i can't hear 'em, why have 'em to begin with...but the reality is with current technology, it doesn't work that way. the audio is degraded, although generally in ways you can't really hear. most of the audible artifacts are pushed in to the extreme stereo portions that you cannot hear or masked very very well by some techniques in an encoder. This is the reason why if you look at an MP3 or other compressed format in goldwave's spectrogram, you'll notice the upper frequencies don't look quite right..they'll either be cut off or look very "splotchy"

sadly, once the audio is compressed there's no way to gain that data back...so if you decode an mp3 or m4a to wav, you're going to have a wav created from the damaged audio data to begin with...and even on mp3 that's been out for years, it's not possible to open the iDCT data and apply further processing to reduce the data rate becuase it's essentially already fixed...

so, if you take your m4a files, which probably sound very good to your ears...and run them through an additional mp3 process...the mp3 process is going to treat the data as it would audio-cd format...this causes the encoder to reduce frequencies even further and since the file already has distortion from the first lossy process...the second generally "enhances" it to a degree.

format support on portable hardware is really the only time I see re-encoding appropiate....as the fidelity on the players is generally questionable to begin with..however, if you're listening to something with a lot of stereo content, don't be surprised if by some reason the mp3's you created from the m4a's sound "washy" or just otherwise not right.

also, if "all your music" truely came in m4a format...where did it come from exactly? it's likely these files, or at least a good portion of them, are encrypted with some from of DRM. That could be what's causing Goldwave to crash in the first place.

Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 11:38 pm
by donrandall
I found an interesting article on the m4a format:

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/313850

...both the .m4a and .mp4 container file formats are the same, they just have different file extensions. If your software program doesn't recognize your file extension, you can rename the file extension to the other one (i.e. m4a or mp4) and it should work. Source: http://www.m4a.com/

A program that might be worth having is Sound Taxi:

http://www.soundtaxi.us/soundtaxi.html


Their website claims that they can handle that conversion. I don't know whether or not it will perform the job in the way you need, but something tells me that it will.

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2009 10:56 am
by rfcomm2k
"...both the .m4a and .mp4 container file formats are the same, they just have different file extensions. If your software program doesn't recognize your file extension, you can rename the file extension to the other one (i.e. m4a or mp4) and it should work."

This must be incorrect. I tried that for a .mP4 file I was given by a friend. He could play it because he downloaded it, but .mp4 is protected in some way because I could not play it, even after I changed the file extension.

Not that it matters, because I found the tune in my wife's collection of CDs anyway.

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2009 1:48 pm
by DewDude420
No, Don was correct.


.MP4 was the original designation for the MPEG-4 Part 14 format. It is a container format because it can contain audio and video streams with other data such as subtitles...and the audio/video streams are not locked to one specific type of format. This in contrast to say a .mp3 which contains only MPEG-1 Layer-3 or .mpg which contains specifically mpeg video (although it can contain MPEG 1 or 2, making it a pseudo-container format), and very similar to AVI, which can contain just about any kind of audio or video format with additional data embedded, although the additional embedded data an only be used by supported players.

.m4a is not an official extension according to the ISO specifications. .m4a was first used by Apple to designate the difference between mp4 files which contain only audio. As a result, the only difference is the file extension; an m4a and mp4 have the same internal data structure.

The .mp4 file your friend gave you was probably protected by some form of DRM, which I metioned before. The DRM protection is part of the data contained in the file and is not attached to the file extension in any way. So if you have a protected .mp4 file, changing the extension to .m4a won't change that fact. Most of the iTunes songs that are protected use the extension .m4p. Again, there's no difference between the formats except the file extension...it's a vanity change more than anything.

Most programs SHOULD treat a .mp4 and .m4a the same way and look solely at the file headers to determine contents. The changing extension blub Don mentioned does not account for protected files, such as ones that come off the iTunes music store. There are some programs which won't look at a file with .m4a extension at all...likewise there are some programs which break standard and treat a .mp4 as an audio/video format.

The actual audio format of most mp4/m4a files is MPEG-4 Part 7, known as AAC (Advanced Audio Codec). Prior to the standardization of .mp4 these AAC only audio files contained only the audio bitstream and were known as .aac. In an unproteced file the audio can be extracted from the mp4 giving you an AAC file, likewise, AAC content can be embedded in an .mp4 container for more portability.

A good example of breaking standards is now broken chinese "MP4" player. It handled ALL .mp4 files as video regardless if they contained video or not and would not look at .m4a files. Audio only content had to be in the raw AAC bitstream format.

As I said, I think some of the problems you were encountering was not due to a Goldwave bug, but possibly protected audio files. Again, if the audio content/file is protected, changing the format WILL NOT change that fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_14 goes in to full detail about the .mp4 standard and the various "extensions" Apple brought to the market.

Re: Batch improvement

Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 3:09 pm
by GoldWave Inc.
rfcomm2k wrote:The problem there is that a limitation is placed somewhere that causes the batch job to fail after x number of files processed (I do not know what x=, but I am guessing around 200)
There is no hard coded limitation in GoldWave. Some users have processed thousands of files in GoldWave in a single Batch Processing session. Lack of RAM and hard drive space (or other errors) can cause processing to terminate.

The new "Only overwrite files that are older than the original" option on the Folder tab may avoid reprocessing the same files.

Chris

Re: Batch improvement

Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 5:02 pm
by majhar99
I am thinking that others who may have a similar need would be most likely to add join in and express their agreement. Since no one has jumped in yet to do so can mean different things. Maybe your need isn't shared by others or - more likely - Someone having a similar need hasn't logged in so soon after your post appeared.

(Spam deleted by administrator. Note to spammers: Don't waste your time!)

Re: Batch improvement

Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2009 1:12 pm
by intoaudio
Hellooo.
What are you up to, majhar99? Got some spamming up your sleeve? donrandall already said exactly what you just posted a while ago. This is obviously a copy-paste thing. If you haven't got any thing better to do...