Digitizing vinyl

Also new to Audacity… also running Windows 10… just trying to digitize all my vinyl and gradually coming through the learning curve (agonizingly at times) with pretty good results so far. But I’m spending A LOT of time on the outset spinning my wheels on certain minor tasks… once I have them down, I’m cool.

Silence Finder… Has proved to be a bit cumbersome so far, so I tend to mark and label the gaps between songs manually. Eclectic tastes… I listen to a lot of traditional folk music, which includes a good deal of a capella vocals — lots of it solo, which means ultimately means LOTS OF SILENCE. I therefore spend more time REMOVING splits than adding them manually.

I’m currently grappling with speeding up entry of metadata. I just downloaded MP3Tag and have NOT found it to be so user friendly on the outset. Plus, when I seek help from the website or forum, I find very technical and cryptic solutions — not really helpful since I’m neither computer nor audio tech-savvy. So far it’s like the Marx Brothers’ “A Day at the Races” when Groucho needs to buy a whole series of large books to decipher an encrypted tip on a horse. Questions:

-Is MP3Tag only applicable to my tracks once I have exported them to my library (which I do in WAV format, which it supports… supposedly)?
-Is there an easy way for Audacity to import an album’s metadata and separate track titles (I’d prefer NOT to do this manually, if possible)?
-Is there a way to change the format of my metadata and album art so it will be read by Windows Media Player, iTunes, et. al.?
-Am I better off using MP3Tag to convert my projects to MP3 format (necessary if I want to play them in the car), rather than converting/exporting them directly from Audacity to my flash drive (not a big deal for saving time, but I’m open to any technical advantages)?
-Finally, in Audacity — I save and close a project and then Audacity won’t open it… I often have to open a large series of files — newly separated tracks — which ties up Audacity for for quite some time and rearranges the order of the album’s songs. How do I reopen a saved project without this headache?

I welcome anyone’s wisdom.

Cheers!
—Jim

MP3Tag is applicable only to MP3 files (or a selection of other file formats) exported from Audacity. MP3Tag can’t convert an Audacity project to MP3. You will need to export your project to MP3 file(s) from Audacity before you can use MP3Tag.

-Is there an easy way for Audacity to import an album’s metadata and separate track titles (I’d prefer NOT to do this manually, if possible)?

Hopefully someone else can chime in with an answer (I don’t know how to do this or if it’s possible).

-Is there a way to change the format of my metadata and album art so it will be read by Windows Media Player, iTunes, et. al.?

All of those applications should be able to read the metadata in the MP3 files from MP3Tag (assuming MP3Tag follows standards and conventions).

-Finally, in Audacity — I save and close a project and then Audacity won’t open it… I often have to open a large series of files — newly separated tracks — which ties up Audacity for for quite some time and rearranges the order of the album’s songs. How do I reopen a saved project without this headache?

That… shouldn’t happen. When you save a project, Audacity saves to a file called .aup and a bunch of data files to a directory called _data. You just have to open the .aup file in Audacity and the project will open the same way you left it. This system can be foiled if (for example) you move the .aup file but not the _data directory, or if you rename the .aup file or the _data directory. Someone may be able to help you with this issue in the Help forum.

christop beat me to it…

-Is MP3Tag only applicable to my tracks once I have exported them to my library (which I do in WAV format, which it supports… supposedly)?

MP3Tag seems to support WAV, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t used to. Metadata is not well-standardized or well supported for WAV. For that reason, FLAC is a better “archive format”. Plus, FLAC files are almost half the size.

Different file/compression formats use different tagging formats. Certain fields may not copy-over or the number of characters may be limited for certain formats, etc., so there may be some manual editing if you convert from WAV or FLAC to MP3, etc.

-Is there an easy way for Audacity to import an album’s metadata and separate track titles (I’d prefer NOT to do this manually, if possible)?

I don’t believe so. Also, Audacity doesn’t support album art and there may be other “missing” fields with some metadata formats.

• Is there a way to change the format of my metadata and album art so it will be read by Windows Media Player, iTunes, et. al.?

Audacity won’t keep the album art but most “conversion” programs will. If the format is correct your player-software should be able to use it.

For file conversion without editing I use [u]TAudioConverter[/u]. dBpoweramp might be better but it’s not free.

-Am I better off using MP3Tag to convert my projects to MP3 format

MP3Tag doesn’t do that. It’s just a metadata editor.

-Finally, in Audacity — I save and close a project and then Audacity won’t open it… I often have to open a large series of files — newly separated tracks — which ties up Audacity for for quite some time and rearranges the order of the album’s songs. How do I reopen a saved project without this headache?

I don’t know why you’re having trouble but personally I don’t make an audacity project when digitizing analog. I just save WAV files. Like I said above, with vinyl I make one-big WAV file from both sides of the record. Then I select & export the songs one at a time as the last (editing) step.

If I’m making a CD I leave it as one-long file and use a cue sheet with my burning software to set the track markers.

Silence Finder… Has proved to be a bit cumbersome so far, so I tend to mark and label the gaps between songs manually. Eclectic tastes… I listen to a lot of traditional folk music, which includes a good deal of a capella vocals — lots of it solo, which means ultimately means LOTS OF SILENCE. I therefore spend more time REMOVING splits than adding them manually.

I’ve never bothered with it. A typical album only has about 10 songs, the length of the songs is usually printed on the record or album cover, and you can see the gaps in the waveform (depending on the zoom).

I’m currently grappling with speeding up entry of metadata. I just downloaded MP3Tag and have NOT found it to be so user friendly on the outset.

Maybe you just have to get used to it. Most media player software can edit the metadata or there are other [u]Metadata Editors[/u].

The trickiest thing for me with MP3Tag is that you have to open a folder. You can’t select a file or song until after you’ve opened the folder. But, then you can select all of the tracks in the folder and enter the common information once (Artist, Album, Artwork, sometimes the year). Then select one track at a time to type-in the title and track number. (For compilation or greatest hits albums I try to find the original release year for each song.)

You can also copy back-and-forth between the file name and title, or MP3Tag can do that automatically but I’ve never used that feature. It can also go online and find the information but I’ve never used that either.

Thanks very much for your responses — all very helpful… if not as solutions, then as guidance to what is and isn’t worth my time. My quest for a metadata time-saver In Audacity is essentially trivial, since the only info I really need for each album I rip includes artists and titles. I can always loop back to my library to add full metadata at my leisure.

Christop — Re. your guidance on my problem opening Audacity files… Indeed I had move the project to a different folder after inadvertently saving it to the wrong folder. I obviously must “save as” in the future rather that cutting and pasting in Windows Explorer. But the best part of the tale is that after hours of trying to fix and relabel the out-of-order tracks (wheels spinning… spinning…), the whole damn thing crashed when I tried to export it… and then I couldn’t reopen the file! So, safeguarding against any file corruption, I deleted all of the files related to the one album (apologies to Steely Dan) and will start over. Live and learn!! It’s all part of the zen that I WILL make mistakes, so while the whole thing is annoying I’m getting right back on the horse… taking careful steps along the way to ensure I don’t have any corruption imbedded in the Audacity software itself. If in doubt, I can always delete the program and download it anew.

Again, I really appreciate the help… Cheers!
—Jim