[SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

pauligrinder · 2011-04-21 15:28:06

Hey,

I have a music library of about 100gb on my server, and since I'm starting to run out of space, I have been considering converting all the music (currently in mp3 format) to ogg vorbis to save some space, but not loose quality. I installed the mp32ogg script, which I tested on some mp3's. They became about 50% smaller and I didn't notice any difference in quality. (320kbps mp3 -> 160kbps ogg)
Anyways, the script does its job, but it's extremely slow. I'm at my parents place at the moment, testing it out on my old 35gb library, and it has been running since 3am to now (6pm), and it's not done yet (and my server is much slower than the desktop computer I'm running it on at the moment).

EDIT: OK, it just finished now. My library shrunk from 35.3gb to 28,6gb in 15,5 hours.

So I was wondering if there is a faster way to do this (as in another script/program)? Or should I just separate my library into say, ten subfolders and run an instance of the script in each of them simultaniously? I could also have my laptop run a few instances of it over samba, and my iMac too if the script runs on Mac OS X (probably does if I install some stuff from macports).

Another thing I was considering was converting it all to aac (which I believe would be even smaller?). The only script for that I found was audio-convert, but I didn't find any documentation on how to use it, and typing audio-convert --help just gave a bunch of error messages not related to the actual script at all. Obviously it didn't have a man page either, and by googling I only found a changelog etc. but no information about usage... Examples anyone?

Oh and obviously my server is CLI only, so no drag and drop converters please Also, I'm not really in a hurry with this, so it's OK if the conversion takes a few hours or even a day, but several days or weeks is completely unnacceptable.

Thanks in advance people

Last edited by pauligrinder (2011-04-21 17:09:06)

lives2evil · 2011-04-21 15:47:04

The conversion mostly is done by the cpu, dividing the data for many computers to work on will make it faster.
Though with a 2 cores cpu (without hyper threading) 2 instance of the script is recommended.
You should also consider the work your harddrive need to do too.

And why don't you just go out and buy a new harddrive, it's getting cheaper right?
PS: You shouldn't keep converting from one lossy audio format to another, with one conversion the loss is minor but after some serveral conversion, you may feel some loss in quality.

DimeShake · 2011-04-21 15:48:18

Well, transcoding between formats takes time. If you have a multicore processor, you could do a couple jobs in parallel the way you describe, by splitting your files up into the same number of groups as processors you have and running a thread on each. Beyond that, I don't think there's a faster way.

Honestly - I would get a larger disk; you will just have similar problems in the future.

pauligrinder · 2011-04-21 16:14:44

lives2evil wrote:

And why don't you just go out and buy a new harddrive, it's getting cheaper right?

That's what I will do eventually, but I'm broke at the moment, so I think this is the right thing to do at the moment. As for the processor cores, my iMac and laptop have 2 cores each, and the server only has one, so I guess I could do it 5x faster by utilizing all of them (loosing some speed due to the networking and harddrive speeds though).
35 gigs took 15,5 hours with one core only -> 100 gigs with 5 cores would take about (3x15,5)/5 = 9,3 hours, which is acceptable even if the hdd's and network slow it down, it'll be done in 12 hours for sure.

litemotiv · 2011-04-21 16:27:39

pauligrinder wrote:

I'm broke at the moment

"My machines: Arch x5 + Windows 7 x2 + Mac OS X x2"

Inxsible · 2011-04-21 16:32:18

I'd like to be that kind of broke

lives2evil · 2011-04-21 16:46:56

Well, "My machines: Arch x5 + Windows 7 x2 + Mac OS X x2" => That's probably why he's broke .

PS: I think those are his relatives' possession also .

Last edited by lives2evil (2011-04-21 16:47:56)

pauligrinder · 2011-04-21 16:53:23

lives2evil wrote:

Well, "My machines: Arch x5 + Windows 7 x2 + Mac OS X x2" => That's probably why he's broke .

I don't actually have 9 computers, I have OS X + 7 + Arch on both my Mac and my laptop, which already makes 6 then I have the server, which is an old laptop, and two nearly ten years old desktops which run Arch, so yeah. And I don't have the old ones at my apartment anyway. I'm broke because I just came back from a "world tour", visiting Japan and Australia... And also because I bought the iMac

Another reason why I can't buy a new HD for the server yet, is the fact that it's a laptop. It only has 1x IDE, and all my USB ports are already occupied by harddrives and my dtv-receiver, etc. What I will do someday soon, is turn my old desktop pc into a server. But that has to wait too, because I don't have room for it in my apartment (and it's too loud to sleep in the same room anyway). I'm actually waiting until I graduate and get a proper job, then I will upgrade the computer and make a server out of the spare parts.

I guess I'll mark this as solved now, since there doesn't seem to be a better way to do this.

Last edited by pauligrinder (2011-04-21 17:08:44)

stqn · 2011-04-21 17:23:22

See also this thread for an alternative method: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 66#p914366

pauligrinder · 2011-04-21 19:53:03

stqn wrote:

See also this thread for an alternative method: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 66#p914366

thanks for that, I'll try if that's any faster
and also, I realized I will have to go aac instead of ogg -> my phone doesn't support ogg (and I can't be bothered converting everything before sticking it onto the phone) so that thread will be even more useful to me now. (replacing the .ogg part with .aac and vorbis with libfaac) I also like this more because it tells me more about what's going on than mp32ogg

Last edited by pauligrinder (2011-04-23 00:10:06)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-04-21 15:28:06

[SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

#2 2011-04-21 15:47:04

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

#3 2011-04-21 15:48:18

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

#4 2011-04-21 16:14:44

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

#5 2011-04-21 16:27:39

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

#6 2011-04-21 16:32:18

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

#7 2011-04-21 16:46:56

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

#8 2011-04-21 16:53:23

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

#9 2011-04-21 17:23:22

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

#10 2011-04-21 19:53:03

Re: [SOLVED] Fastest way to convert entire music library to ogg?

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