Batch-convert and split .ape with .cue to .flac in various folders from terminal
I have a 44GB (yes, forty-four) folder of .ape
CD files. Each .ape
is a complete CD, and there is usually a .cue
file along with each .ape
. I need to convert but not split these, since there's no cue data to go by. There are also some .jpg
s and .log
s in there too, which I don't care about. If a tree
command output helps visualize this, here you go:
├── Philips Mozart Collection - 180 CD
│ │ ├── box01-Symphonies
│ │ │ ├── 1B.jpg
│ │ │ ├── 1F.jpg
│ │ │ ├── cd01
│ │ │ │ ├── CDImage.ape
│ │ │ │ ├── CDImage.ape.cue
│ │ │ │ ├── Complete Mozart Edition, Vol. 01, Early Symphonies (Disc 1) - Neville Mariner, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.log
│ │ │ │ ├── img421.jpg
│ │ │ │ └── img422.jpg
│ │ │ ├── cd02
│ │ │ │ └── CDImage.ape
│ │ │ ├── cd03
│ │ │ │ ├── CDImage.ape
│ │ │ │ ├── CDImage.ape.cue
│ │ │ │ ├── Complete Mozart Edition, Vol. 01, Early Symphonies (Disc 2) - Sir Neville Marinner - Acadamy of St Martin in the Fields.log
│ │ │ │ ├── img426.jpg
│ │ │ │ └── img427.jpg
│ │ │ ├── cd04
etc... all the way to 180 CDS.
Basically, I want to split all the .ape
files into multiple .flac
files, and copy over the tag info from the .cue
, keeping the directory structure (preferably in a completely new and different directory). I prefer a single-line command to a script if possible. How would I go about this? Thanks to anyone who knows how to do this!
And before anyone flags this question as a duplicate to this one here: Convert all .ape files to .flac in different subfolders, I would like to point out that that user didn't need to split the .ape into multiple .flacs.
I would do this in multiple steps, since you do this rarely. Transparency is more important than automation here. But a single line is also possible. I assume that if you use only one command for all the files each step, this is what you intended.
You need to have ffmpeg
(or avconv
), shntool
and cuetools
installed.
To convert all your .ape
to .flac
in place:
find . -name "*.ape" -exec sh -c 'exec ffmpeg -i "$1" "${1%.ape}.flac"' _ {} \;
If you install the patched MAC encoder and decoder for APE files from http://www.etree.org/shnutils/shntool/, this first step is unnecessary. But you would need to compile it with g++
and yasm
yourself. Same goes for .tta
files, which are also often used instead of .ape
.
Split and name .flac
files:
find . -name "*.cue" -exec sh -c 'exec shnsplit -f "$1" -o flac -t "%n_%p-%t" "${1%.cue}.flac"' _ {} \;
If shnsplit
is also used for the conversion, replace the .flac
in "${1%.cue}.flac"
with the extension of the format you are converting from.
-
%n
– track number -
%p
– performer -
%t
– track name
is taken from the .cue
file for the .flac
file names. To tag the resulting, split .flac
files:
find . -name "*.cue" -execdir sh -c 'exec cuetag "$1" *.flac' _ {} \;
Remove the remaining CDImage.ape.cue
, CDImage.flac
, and CDImage.ape
files at your leisure. The names are unique, so a simple find . -name "CDImage*" -delete
is sufficient, except if Mozart made a composition starting with CDImage
which I am not aware of.
For shnsplit
to work, all necessary encoders/decoders need to be installed so it can read and write files. Modules for APE (and for the TTA format) would need to be compiled from source, the others by installing the package (i. e. FLAC).
This works for all standard cases where .cue
and .tta
/.flac
/.ape
files have the same name, except for the extension.
Side remark for others: If you deal with this conversion, your source files might be of Japanese origin, where APE and TTA were more popular than elsewhere. If the .cue
files were initially SHIFT-JIS coded and now opened as UTF-8, the shnsplit
step will break. You need to rename the .cue
files with
find . -name "*.cue" -exec rename 's/\.cue$/.cux/' -- {} +
and convert the intermediate files to UTF-8 with
find . -name "*.cux" -exec sh -c 'exec iconv -f SHIFT-JIS -t UTF-8 -o "${1%.cux}.cue" -- "$1"' _ {} \;
before you attempt to do the steps above. Don't forget to get rid of the .cux
files when you are done with:
find . -name "*.cux" -delete