Music: What is the best way to convert and structure it?
#1
Music 
I am coming from WMC, where I had all of my CDs ripped to WMAL.

I have separate folders for each Album Artist, inside which are folders with the individual albums bu that artist.

I understand that I should convert the WMAL files into Apple Lossless, which XBMC can read. But I am wondering what is the best way to convert it?

Also, what is the best structure to maintain, so when I go to XMBC Music, I can see thumbnails for each Album Artist, then when I click on the thumbnail, I'd get to thumbnails of all the albums by the by that artist, then if I click on the album thumnail, I can see the individual tracks?
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#2
I use FLAC for audio. This seems to me to combine lossless playback with the widest possible compatability.
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#3
Thanks. I considered FLAC, but thought that now that Apple Lossless is open sourced and XBMC supports it, it may be more versatile in my case (all my computers other than the HTPC are Macs, plus the iPad and iPhones.... Smile

How do you structure your music so that it can be browsed by Album Artist thumbnails, though?

Also, anyone knows how to convert the WMAL folder structure I have now into the same structure but with Apple Lossless (or FLAC)?

I am using DBPowerAmp, but it does not copy the folder structure to the new (converted) Music Folder.
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#4
WMAL?

I *think* xbmc kind of assumes an artist/album folder structure. I'd put your artist.jpg if that's what you've got in the artist folder.

Foobar2000 is what I use for music conversion and file management. If it can read it (wmal?) it can convert it to flac or apple lossless. You can set it to retain your current folder structure or create a new one based on tags. Very powerful program, but does take a bit of learning.

Edit: WMAL = WMA Lossless? And your artist thumbs are embedded perhaps? Foobar2000 can deal with some types of embedded artwork. Also try mp3tag. Sorry, no actual experience in dealing with wma.
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#5
(2012-05-07, 21:10)Zellig Wrote: How do you structure your music so that it can be browsed by Album Artist thumbnails, though?

I use D:\XBMC\Music\MP3\AB\ABBA\Album

I use an extra layer of subdirectories, AB, CD, etc because I mostly use file mode and if I put all the artists in a single directory there are too many of them to browse comfortably. If you scan the music to the library the exact layout doesn't matter that much.

I can't comment on the Album Artist thumbnails since I don't use the library and I have few, if any, compilation albums. I try and make sure all the tracks have embedded images, and I guess if you do this the XBMC library will automatically show the correct thumbnail.
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