Multi-drive Ripping / Burning Support?

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Multi-drive Ripping / Burning Support?

Posted by pudge on Tuesday January 20, 2004 @10:54AM from the ripping-for-dummies dept.

jasonisnuts writes "I currently have a DVD-ROM (internal), a CD-RW (FW), and a DVD-RW (FW), and I also have a massive assortment of music CDs that I want to rip and catalog. Are there any free, shareware, or commercial utilities for Mac OS X that support ripping CDs from multiple devices at the same time and offer full CDDB/GraceNote support? And does this same utility or another offer burning to multiple sources in multiple formats? This will all be done on a Sawtooth 500MHz (upgrading soon)."

12 of 105 comments (clear)

Re:iTunes perhaps? by dgrgich · 2004-01-20 10:59 · Score: 5, Informative

Sawtooth is a codename for a particular motherboard that Apple used for certain PowerMacs. There were different G4 500mhz motherboards that had different capabilties, i.e. bus types, etc.
How useful would this be? by Meowing · 2004-01-20 11:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

I also have a massive assortment of music CDs that I want to rip and catalog.
When you say "rip", are you also intending to encode these with MP3 or whatever? If so, you're pretty likely to be CPU bound, so ripping from multiple drives isn't going to buy you much. If the idea is just to queue up multiple drives so you can wander away for longer, never mind.
1. Re:How useful would this be? by MarcQuadra · 2004-01-20 15:12 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Not on a G4! Any self-respecting encoder on the Mac will be tuned for AltiVec, and the CD-ROM will easily be the bottleneck.
  
  People really underestimate the signal-processing capabilities of these processors. The machines might take their time at day-to-day application use, but when you need to encode video, apply effects, or generally do very multimedia-intensive stuff the G-series CPUs really take Intel and AMD to the cleaner.
  
  --
  "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Possible burning solution by godawful · 2004-01-20 11:04 · Score: 5, Informative

haven't ever tried ripping from multiple drives at once, but it should very well be possible, but on your 500 sawtooth, ripping form three drives at once will be pretty slow. maybe 1.5X tops..

but as for burning, you can use toast. you take the copy you have and make two other copies (AFAIK this is not illegal) open each one and set it to a specific drive.

and on this note, i would assume there it is likely feasible to do something similar with an mp3 ripper, iTunes however, will only allow for one copy to be running at a time.

--
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
(A) (B)etter (C)(D) (E)ncoder by legLess · 2004-01-20 11:08 · Score: 4, Informative

I'm pretty sure abcde will do the job for you. I've not tried it on OS X, but in theory it will work. It's a shell script wrapper for several CD-related programs. I've used it on a Debian box to rip hundreds of disks.

--
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
1. Re:(A) (B)etter (C)(D) (E)ncoder by shfted! · 2004-01-20 13:16 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  From the front page of the site:
  
  MacOSX keeps on failing because the OS mounts the CD before we finish ripping it... or something else. Please, test test test the code, and report your findings. Pretty please. I have not been able to make it work with the reports I have received.
  
  -- Jesus Climent Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:06:07 +0000
  
  --
  He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
more on Sawtooth... by boomerny · 2004-01-20 11:08 · Score: 5, Informative

Sawtooth was the first 'real' G4 Powermac, the Yikes model came out first but it's motherboard was more like a modified Powermac G3(I think that's where the Yikes moniker originated). Sawtooth G4's can use all sorts of G4 CPU upgrades, the Yikes models can not.
use iTunes, and try this by datacide · 2004-01-20 11:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

Well, assuming that iTunes meets your other requirements, this AppleScript may prove useful to you:

http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts 02.shtml#ripcdsinarow

I haven't used it; I saw it earlier today when grabbing another script from their site. My experience with other Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes has been quite positive. I ripped (in some cases, re-ripped...stupid LAME bug!) all 1500+ or so of my CDs last year, and I used a few of those scripts to make my life easier. Give it a look-through.
Re:iTunes perhaps? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-20 11:44 · Score: 5, Informative

You can rip from 2 drives at once with iTunes. You can click "import" for one, but while that is going, you can't click "import" for the other. You can, however, select the songs by clicking on them (or any combination of shift/control clicking) and drag them to your library. That willl get iTunes to rip the songs from the other CD.
Re:Your CPU will be the bottleneck, not the drives by jeffehobbs · 2004-01-20 12:09 · Score: 4, Informative

what does iTunes do if you tell it to automatically RIP and eject CD's and you put CD's in multiple drives?

I did this with a couple Sony Firewire CD-R drives when I was ripping my 1,000+ CD collection. iTunes will dutifully lookup and rip one CD after the other after the other, and all you need to do is keep all the drives full. All having three drives means is that you have to babysit the process 1/3 of the time you would with one drive. This is the way to go, I think.

~jeff
Been there...fixed that by djupedal · 2004-01-20 13:07 · Score: 4, Informative

Dragon Burn has allowed me to burn 3 disks at one time G4 dual 1.25GHz 1.) Internal ComboDrive (Phillips 32X CD-R/RW) 2.) Internal SuperDrive (Pioneer 2X DVD-R/RW) 3.) External Firewire enclosure (Samsung 52X CD-RW) All burn at one time, with no issues, except for making it easy to bleed down my blank media inventory.
Follow up from the poster by jasonisnuts · 2004-01-20 19:44 · Score: 5, Interesting

I really would like to thank anyone who replied, and especially thank those who gave informative info! This is why /. is like crack frankly. On to business: Between late Monday night and most of Tuesday I was rearranging my room, cleaning, and ripping CDs. Although I know iTunes can be buggy with ripping MP3s, I've personally never had a problem or felt it lackluster, so I stuck with it and only it. So I went against those who recommended Lame and other options. On the advice of those who suggested iTunes I did what worked best and most easily; import and eject. I tried importing one CD, and dragging the contents of a second into the library or by invoking the import command and I could not get that trick to work, which saddened me. Sticking with import and eject I ripped CDs at 192kbps (except 165 classical songs which I ripped at 224 with "use error correction when reading audio CDs") and the disks did go sequentially. This batch weighs in at 54 discs, 593 songs. Of those 165 were ripped at 224, the others at 192. I was shocked that the encoding speed stayed very, very close no matter the CD or the drive, though the Pioneer DVR-106 was just a touch slower! On average I would say encoding on a 500 MHz G4 with 512 Mb RAM (100 MHz bus) to a Western Digital 80Gb 8Mb cache drive on an ACARD ATA 133 card was about 7.4X realtime. It varied between 6.2 and 8.9 depending on the disc, drive, and the area on the disc. The drives were a Pioneer 16X/40X DVD-ROM (internal ATA33), I/O DATA 52X/32X/52X CD-RW in an Oxford 911 enclosure (FW), and a Pioneer DVR-106 in an Oxford 911 enclosure (FW). How did it pan out? It took roughly 11 hours, 16 minutes to get 593 songs from 54 discs. Space required was 3.92 Gb for roughly 49 hours, 10 minutes worth of music. I am definitely satisfied, though I would like 1 Gb of RAM and a 1.5 GHz G4 (waiting for new 7457 cards). I'd like to see the speeds then! Thanks for your input!