Mass .WAV compression utility?

You could very easily do so with iTunes, select all your music, then under advanced choose convert to (whatever you like AAC,MP3) it will make a copy of everything selected as the other format. The problem is how to independently manage them. Their is a MAC plug in to allow you to run multiple libraries from one user account, but I do not know if anyone has make such a plug in for PC's. The other option is to make a second user account and then have iTunes sort all your library by type and cut and paste all the compressed files into another user's music folder and they 'load' then into iTunes by dragging the file into the library.

DO understand you are looking at a lot of processor work, and HD access time.... I would start the comression before going to bed, or out of town.... I have no idea how long it will take to compress and store that much data, but I will need to do the same thing soon....

I am currently re-burning all my and my wifes CD's in AIFF on a seperate user account titled 'Music Server' and then just let the wife and I share that users account, both of our own libraries are compressed.

Hmm. I was hoping there was a way to do it with iTunes, but I couldn't find that option. Are you using iTunes 5.0? Half the problem is that with Apple's overscan, I can't see the menu bar on the top. I had that fixed for a while with Panther, because it gave me a new "no overscan" option when it recognized my TV/monitor, but then I hooked the whole shebang up to an HDMI switcher, Panther decided my display was no longer a TV, and the "no overscan" option disappeared. Aie. Anyway, maybe I didn't get the choice b/c I didn't have anything selected.

Yeah, I agree about the conversion times. It took 45 mins for Applescript to convert the directory info into tags, and mp3 compression is going to take even longer. I figured I'd start it up and let it run for a couple days. The mac doesn't get much use beyond running iTunes anyway.

Hadn't thought about the management of the files. I was going to put them on a separate directory on a file server I have. I thought, for some reason, you could have them in the library but choose to "show" only mp3s or wavs as the case may be. In any event, thanks for the help. I'll dig through iTunes once again.

Kenny, thanks for the advice. Can you provide more information, or a link, about the itunes plugin for Macs that allows reference to multiple libraries. I think I might need that!

Thanks, Peter S

Well, I pieced it together. There is a line item under one of the top menu selections that previously read "Convert to WAV", but I found that if you go into the advanced preferences, you can change the preferred encoding the "mp3" or "AAC" or whatever. That is great, I can mass convert a bunch of selected files.

In terms of references to multiple libraries, why not just use the playlist feature as a sorting mechanism? I took the library of WAVs and turned it into a playlist called "All WAVs." I'll go back to the whole library when its finished converting to create a second playlist called "All mp3s." Rudimentary library management, but it should work.

But, I have another problem! Since all my files are on a server, iTunes puts a "!" in the library next to each file name until you double click to play the file. Its like some cautionary note that it doesn't know whether the file exists or not. If you double click to play it, iTunes will use the password on your "keychain" to pull it off the server, and the "!" goes away. The problem is that for whatever reason, asking it to convert does *not* cause iTunes to use the keychain to get to the file, and it simply ignores files with the "!". Any idea whether there is a simple way to force iTunes to verify access to the file? Playing all 15K songs will take me (according to iTunes) 40 days.

Ed,

Why not try clearing the iTune files that catalog your tunes (in the music folder for the user and also the files relating to iTunes in the user/library/preferences *itunes.plist for mac)

Then Just drag the folder from the server and drop it in the library of the i
Tunes window (I hate calling them that on a MAC but...) iTunes will the recreate the files that keep all the music info. If you have your preferences set to keep your music on the server, then it hopefully will now recognize them all.

DO NOTE. This will not erase your music, just iTunes files it uses to find the music.... it will take a minute to recatalog, but might solve the problem. You will however loose your playlists in so doing this.

If you are using a MAC server, and have it still under their warranty, and have some patience, they will fix almost anything. If the server is PC.... I am unclear, but I would still suspect clearing the iTunes files and restarting iTunes (after you clear the reference files iTunes will open like it has never been used before and recreate all these files. If you are careful, and remember/write down where you got them all from, you could easily reverse this process as well.