Converting Music Files, Can I?

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Bomma72
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Nov 18, 2014 6:47 pm

Converting Music Files, Can I?

Post by Bomma72 »

Hi so this is my second time using your product. I bought the one for WHS V1 as well. Very nicely done.

So here is what I am trying to do. I want to be able to keep a separate library on my server for syncing with my phone. Your product seems to do the trick except for a few steps and I am wondering if it is possible.
What I am trying to do is translate my MP3 files to the AAC 125-bit default for my iPhone. I would like this to happen at the import step when your product moves new files into the watch folder. I am wondering if I can do that with this product. If not I noticed there is a batch command tab I am wondering if I wrote a batch file to run would that work. I am thinking I can set up your product to restart iTunes once a night and that the batch will kick off when it restarts. If that is the case how this will effect the sync if say I translate the files and remove the MP3 files from the iHomeServer Library will that then be seen as a missing file and will it try to re-copy the original MP3 file that will still be on my master-home library?

Finally as a suggestion, as an added feature you should allow your product to kick off scripts via Timers or events. That way we could run stuff like http://dougscripts.com/itunes/ to help organize or libraries.

Anyway great product.
bizmodeller
Posts: 458
Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 8:40 pm

Re: Converting Music Files, Can I?

Post by bizmodeller »

Hey - thanks for your complements about iHomeServer - it does mean a lot to us :)

Re your request, I think what you are asking for should be possible, however, it needs testing to be sure. Within iHomeServer settings (the Watch Folder tab) you can specify which file types are natively imported into iTunes and which file types are pushed through the iTunes conversion engine. Theoretically, you can remove .mp3 from the watch folder list which will prevent those being imported directly. Then you can try adding .mp3 to the converted file type list.

I would suggest testing this on a watch folder with a small amount of test content to see if it meets your requirements. Be aware that whenever iTunes converts an audio file (and even if iHomeServer triggers that conversion) it will place it into the iTunes Media Folder so the AAC versions of your files will all end up in that folder.

As for your other suggestion, as you suggest, the batch file will trigger when the scheduled restart hits. However, I'm not sure about the last step - "if say I translate the files and remove the MP3 files from the iHomeServer library will that then be seen as a missing file" <- how would you remove it from the iHomeServer library; will it no longer be in the Watch Folder? Let me know a bit more detail and I can try to work this through.

Re the feature suggestion. Yes, this is something we want to do - and we could theoretically provide access to both the native iTunes library as well as the iHomeServer API that we have developed on top of it to add the 'iHomeServer' special functionality like AutoTagging etc. You could script around that and those scripts could be scheduled or triggerd as you suggest. In fact, we already have this functionality at a coding level through, as you can write 'plugins' in .NET that integrate into the iHomeServer engine, however, the kind of scripting people want to do needs something higher level like the Apple scripts provided on the Mac...... we'll do some thinking here! But if you have further suggestsions / detail on this suggestion, please let me know.

thanks
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