Converting FLAC to MP3 and retagging

MusicBrainz Picard
1

I have started ripping and re-ripping my whole CD collection to FLAC, improving MusicBrainz data in the process. I use whipper for ripping, Picard for tagging, Quod Libet for playback and ReplayGain.

Of course, this only covers playback on my computer, not on mobile devices. For that I plan to convert albums and songs “on demand” to MP3. I already have a simple script that does the conversion and the most basic tags, but it does not handle covert art (stored separately in my FLAC folders, and that I intend to embed at lower resolution in the MP3 files) and other tags.

I wonder if I could use Picard to ease the process. The idea is to convert to MP3 only keeping the core MusicBrainz ID tags (either with my standalone shell script, or a Quod Libet or Picard plugin), and let Picard to a new round of tagging / embedding covert art / naming / moving files. For that to work, however, I need different settings in Picard (different album art handling, different naming rules), and I need to be able to switch between the “MP3” settings and the “FLAC” settings easily.

Does Picard support some sort of profiles for settings? Is there a way to quickly switch settings?

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I’m afraid that it isn’t possible to have multiple sets of Picard settings. There is a ticket for this issue, in case you’re interested.

Maybe you could get a second instance of Picard going? You could also reconsider whether you really need very different settings for mobile usage. I only turn on cover art embedding whenever I process files for mobile, because for that purpose I only really need the basic tags and cover art anyway.

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I recommend FFMPEG to do that.
It works fine with tags and cover art (at least with my FLAC and embedded cover art).
You can find some conversion commands here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26109837/convert-flac-to-mp3-with-ffmpeg-keeping-all-metadata

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