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This Question is pretty much the same as this one: Convert Ogg Vorbis to MP3 with Metadata only in reverse

I want to convert all my Music Library From MP3 (some are WMA or M4A, but those can be handled manually if need be) to Ogg Vorbis, as I finally booted (in the shoe-sense) Windows from my Desktop. I've looked in the Repos and found Sound Converter and OggConvert, but Sound Converter loses all my Metadata and Ogg Converter can't batch. I've also tried mp32ogg on the commandline, but the Filenames it gives are just awful.

Does Anyone know a batch MP3 to OGG Vorbis Converter that doesn't lose Metadata or mess up filenames?

I'm using Ubuntu 9.04 and I'd prefer Free Software.

P.S. I wouldn't mind FLAC either. Anything Open Source.

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    Be careful with your conversions - you could lose audio quality if you aren't careful. If you have CDs for any of this music, you might want to go re-rip the CDs directly to OGG Vorbis, rather than convert those tracks and risk audio quality. Feb 18, 2010 at 11:49
  • Careful or not, converting from a lossy codec to another lossy codec will lose audio quality. Maybe with high quality source the result will not by terrible.
    – fluxtendu
    Feb 18, 2010 at 13:33
  • What metadata did soundconverter throw away? I have over 6,000 congs originally ripped using itunes I converted to ogg using soundconverter. It retained tags that iTunes had put in that Rhythmbox couldn't display. I 'rediscovered' them just recently using the QuodLibet player. Feb 18, 2010 at 21:25

2 Answers 2

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I know this is a half answer but...

When I look at mp32ogg I see this:

--rename=format          Instead of simply replacing the .mp3 with
                         .ogg for the output file, produce output
                         filenames in this format, replacing %a, %t
                         and %l with artist, title, and album name
                         for the track
--lowercase              Force lowercase filenames when using --rename

It sounds like mp32ogg --lowercase --rename=??? may help you come a little bit closer.

I have not tried this my self, so good luck.

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  • I tried, all Spaces in the name are replaced with underscores. terrible!
    – SP
    Feb 18, 2010 at 13:11
  • You like spaces in the file name? Then you should reformat your computer an install Windows immediately. :-) Really, though, if that's the only problem, just replace the underscores with something like: rename 'y/_/\ /' * (this will depend on the version of rename on your system, though. Ubuntu works like this, fedora does not)
    – SuperMagic
    Feb 18, 2010 at 14:45
  • I would also agree with @fluxtendu above that lossy to lossy conversions are bad. Re-rip all you cds if you can. I keep my collection in FLAC and have a suite of scripts to convert those to ogg or mp3 for mobile device playback as needed. Alas, it depends on the metaflac and flac commands to extract and propogate the metatags. I could do something similar with mp3s.... but haven't needed to to date.
    – SuperMagic
    Feb 18, 2010 at 15:01
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Ubuntu comes with SoundConverter which does exactly what you want. You can choose to keep or delete the original files. Look at Preferences and make sure they are what you want.

SoundConverter

To convert mp3s, your ubuntu needs the lame package and the ugly-plugins. Make sure yoiu have the multiverse repository enabled, then you can:

sudo aptitude install lame gstreamer0.10-plugins-good \
                           gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad \
                           gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly

If for somereason soundconverter is not on your system, type:

sudo aptitude install soundconverter
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  • And don’t forget to delete the plugins afterwards. If you keep them you can as well keep your mp3s.
    – Debilski
    Feb 19, 2010 at 0:18

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