Thanks for your input, Ray.
On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Ray Olszewski wrote:
1. See if the app "mp3wrap" (that's the Debian-Sid package name) helps in any way relevant to your problem.
Ok. I'll check that.
2. Consider using playlists rather than joining the files. If you use xmms for playback, it has a deccent GUI for creating playlists, and it has no problem with the "weird" characters. (This naming standard is also a problem for those of us who rip our own CDs to our hard drives as well, and xmms plus playlists has always handled it for me.)
In this case, I think cat'ting files together is going to be the right solution, though it might create a bit of extra work. I've discovered that it joinsd movments together almost precisely at the point where the break was made (ca. 30 seconds into the beginning of a given movement). The breaks are almost unnoticeable when I cat the files together into a single file. I'm guessing with a playlist, I'd get a pause at the break, meaning I would hear the first 30 seconds of a movement at the end of the preceding movement, then a pause, then a continuation of the movement that got cut off by the software. Isn't that how the playlist scenario would work out?
3. TAB completion is your friend. Using your first example, I bet something close to "Anton<TAB>" would complete that entry on the command line. From the examples you provided, I can't back out where the movement differentiators are in the names, but such things are typically at the end of the name, so you might have to entry just a couple of additional characters to complete.
Tab completion only gets me so far, and is less helpful because of all the wierd characters that are getting inserted. For example, "cat Pat" gets me the following output (I include the tail end of the direcory's content from an ls command):
Luigi Boccherini - No. 8 in B flat -- Allegro.mp3
Luigi Boccherini - No. 8 in B flat -- Andante affetuoso.mp3
Luigi Boccherini - No. 9 in F -- Adagio assai.mp3
Luigi Boccherini - No. 9 in F -- Andantino.mp3
Luigi Boccherini - No. 9. in F -- Tempo di minuetto amoroso.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In D Major, Op.56£¯5, G411 -¥². Andante Come Prima.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In D Major, Op.56£¯5, G411 -¥³. Variazioni.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In D Major, Op.56£¯5, G411 -¥°. Andante Sostenuto.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In D Major, Op.56£¯5, G411 -¥±. Minuetto Allegro.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In E Minor, Op.56£¯1, G407 -¥². Minuetto Con Moto.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In E Minor, Op.56£¯1, G407 -¥³. Allegretto Final.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In E Minor, Op.56£¯1, G407 -¥±. Adagio.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In E Minor, Op.56£¯1, G407 -¥°. Allegro Comodo.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In F Major, Op.56£¯2, G408 -¥². Poco Adagio.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In F Major, Op.56£¯2, G408 -¥³. Allegretto.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In F Major, Op.56£¯2, G408 -¥°. Allegretto.mp3
Patrick Cohen & Mosaiques Quartet - Quintet For Piano & Strings In F Major, Op.56£¯2, G408 -¥±. Minuetto Amoroso.mp3
Portland Baroque Orchestra under Monica Huggett, with Richard Savino, baroque guitar - Concerto In A Major, Op. 30 Allegro Maetoso.mp3
Portland Baroque Orchestra under Monica Huggett, with Richard Savino, baroque guitar - Concerto In A Major, Op. 30 Polonaise.mp3
Portland Baroque Orchestra under Monica Huggett, with Richard Savino, baroque guitar - Concerto In A Major, Op. 30 Siciliana.mp3
Portland Baroque Orchestra under Monica Huggett, with Richard Savino, baroque guitar - Sinfonia Allegro E Con Imperio.mp3
Portland Baroque Orchestra under Monica Huggett, with Richard Savino, baroque guitar - Sinfonia Allegro.mp3
Portland Baroque Orchestra under Monica Huggett, with Richard Savino, baroque guitar - Sinfonia Grave.mp3
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/Classical$ cat Patrick\ Cohen\ \&\ Mosaiques\ Quartet\ -\ Quintet\ For\ Piano\ \&\ Strings\ In\
As you can see, I have to complete the key, then the opus number, then the Yen symbol--etc etc. It's still pretty involved, even using autocompletion. Getting rid of odd characters in file names won't help much with that, but it will give me a valid name to use as my full-piece.mp3 file name.
A less targeted solution *might* be to try the app "mmv". (It's just amazing what oddities are lurking around in the Debian packaging system.) I haven't used it myself, but from the writeup, it might offer you some help ... though you'll still have to define your own naming convention, so a custom script (see below) may be about as easy.
I'll take a look at that, too.
This sort of script wouldn't be too tough to write in Perl, just using a few tr commands plus the commands to read and mv file names, and probably a shell script wouldn't be much tougher. If I have time later, I'll try to cobble something together to serve as an example.
Flemming's has gotten me most of the way. He's just posted a slight modification that may get rid of the rest of the problem characters for me. I'll post to the list whether it works as advertised. If you have the time to try a bash script, that would be interesting to see as well.
Closing thought ... take a look at
http://www.classiccat.net/
for another way to acquire (legitimately, as far as I can tell) free MP3s of public domain classical recordings. Or try Google; there seems to be a lot of this stuff around.
Another interesting way the internet is turning staid institutions on their ears. I was expecting to see old recordings digitized or something. But the little bit of snooping I did there reveals that at least some of these (the Beethoven piano sonata's I was interested in) are private recordings done by unknown (but wanting-to-be-known) artists. It's not going to be Schnabel, but nearly any decent interpretation will suit my needs just fine. The recording industry has not only file sharing to worry about, but independents with access to a wide audience without corporate
intermediaries.
James
