Renaming Recovered FLAC Files In A Large Batch From Hard Disk Crash On Mac OS

[mikey8811]

Hi

 

 

I hope this is the correct area to post this.

 

 

I was hoping someone would be able to help me with a problem I have. Over the years, I had accumulated a decent sized music library of FLAC files but lost them all due to a hard drive crash with no backup. I sent the drive for data recovery and due to the file allocation tables and headers being damaged, they recovered the data but without the original names.

 

 

The allocated file names are like:

 

 

AA00EECDEFG1.FLAC

 

 

I can load the files onto eXACT and the tags and metadata are still there.

 

 

It would be extremely time consuming to manually load every single file to eXACT and then rename the files from the meta data.

 

Would you be so kind as to point me to a more efficient way to do this or a programme that is available which is able to batch rename the FLAC files from the meta data and tags?

 

Thanks and regards

[mikey8811]

Thanks Samirevah

 

I downloaded the Mac version and dragged one file into the interface - it did drag up the Title, Artist and Album.

 

That's as far as I went. I have about 10 subfolders of these FLAC files. Each subfolder has about 1,500 files (tracks or songs). Any pointers for a newbie as to how to proceed?

 

I tried "Help" but it said it was unable to display it in my browser. How do I find a manual?

 

Thanks

[mikey8811]

Thanks Audio_ELF / Eloise.

 

Very helpful. I gave this further thought and a plan of sorts has begun to take shape. If I follow the steps you listed above, presumably (and fingers crossed) I will end up with 10 folders of files named after the track number and song titles. The 10 folders have no particular meaning other than I grouped them by number of files for easier resorting. Tracks from different albums appear in the same folder and tracks from the same album may have spilled over to the next folder. I will still have to sort them out into sub folders named after "Artist - Album Title (Year of Release)". If it is not too much to ask of the programme, does it also sort and reorganise these named tracks into subfolders by album title and rename these subfolders too?

 

Is there a more logical and efficacious way to go about this?

 

Thanks again

[mikey8811]

Cool, thanks.

 

I'll give it a whirl.

 

This works for APE and Wavpacks too right? I have some - not a lot of these.

 

The other issue is these files are what the data recovery service gave me back - when I did checksums randomly on eXact, not all of them were good. Is there a batch checksum programme to do all of them at once like this batch renaming? eXact doesn;t take many which was why I started breaking them down into subfolders.

 

Thanks again

[mikey8811]

Not quite...

 

Assuming you have a folder called flacfiles and within that you have flacs1... flacs2... etc upto flacs10.

 

If you drag "flacflies" into MP3Tag, you will see all the files from flacs1 to flacs10.

 

Following the directions I gave above, all the files will be reordered under the root folder of flacfiles so you will end up with

flacfiles/album1; flacfiles/album2; flacfiles/album2; etc.

 

Eloise

 

PS. just to note I was slightly incorrect in the syntax I lists ... you should actually use \ in the convert string rather than / so

%artist%/%album%/%track% - %title%

is incorrect it should be

%artist%\%album%\%track% - %title%

 

 

Hi Eloise

 

I finally got around to renaming the files using mp3tag, trying the first batch. It seemed to take up a fair bit of CPU power, the temperature on my MacBook went up to 91 degrees C.

 

I got the following errors for all files:

 

File "\\?\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\0A2A7960.FLAC" cannot be renamed to "\\\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\Booker T. Jones\ The Road From Memphis\ 05\ Down In Memphis (Featuring Booker T on vocals).flac".

Path not found.

 

File "\\?\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\0A2B31E0.FLAC" cannot be renamed to "\\\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\Booker T. Jones\ The Road From Memphis\ 11\ The Bronx (Featuring Lou Reed).flac".

Path not found.

 

File "\\?\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\0A2C0718.FLAC" cannot be renamed to "\\\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\Anthony Braxton\ Italian Instabile Orchestra\ 04\ Composition No. 92 part 2.flac".

Path not found.

 

File "\\?\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\0A2EC308.FLAC" cannot be renamed to "\\\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\J. J. Johnson\ The Complete '60s Bigband Recordings- Disc 1\ 02\ So What.flac".

Path not found.

 

Can you tell me if the syntax is wrong? I followed your instructions.

 

The files are on a external USB drive (called Old Files Recovered) connected to my MacBook.

 

Under mp3tag, when I try to choose the directory by browsing on the interface, I cannot locate the external drive. I canonly get to the files by dragging the directory (\\?\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\ ) to the input window.

 

It seems to read the metadata alright - the only thing is it doesn't seem to do the renaming.

 

Your help and feedback much appreciated.

 

Thanks

[mikey8811]

You get a triple backslash, which is not allowed. It seems to occur because of the removal of the ?.

 

OK, so what should I do to make it work?

[mikey8811]

Hi

 

Up for some help please.

 

The path directory still seems to be like :

 

"\\?\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\0A2C0718.FLAC"

 

How do I get rid of the "?" ?

 

Thanks

[mikey8811]

Wrong question :-) The question should be what "?" represents. And you already managed to get rid of "?". You should get rid of "\?" from what I can see as your path should start with "\\" not "\\\". But it is difficult to judge without seeing what you're doing. Do you know what the path should read? Also, which process in MP3Tag did you use? Actions or something else?

 

I am just using File -> Change Directory and then browsing the directory where the FLAC files are located.

 

Under the path in the mp3tag interface, when I browse, the internal volume shows up as "/"

 

The external drives all show up under the subdirectory "Volumes". This particular drive shows up in a further subdirectory "Old Files Recovered"

 

The full path shows up as

 

"\\?\unix\Volumes\Old Files Recovered\3649030 (FLAC Deleted)\01\0A2C0718.FLAC"

 

 

So it is having a problem with the internal volume itself I think because the "?" is added even before the "Volumes" subdirectory. Once again, this is just my guess with my limited knowledge.

 

I just tried using the iTunes subdirectory on the internal volume (Macintosh HD) and even so, it is showing up as:

 

"\\?\unix\Music_1\iTunes\iTunesMusic\"

 

under the mp3tag Directory window.

 

So I guess mp3tag will not work even on an internal volume.

 

All Mac OS X drives internal and external, USB or Firewire will appear under the "Volumes" directory. I have another Firewire drive called My Book attached to the same Mac, where I copied the files to. It appears as:

 

\\?\unix\Volumes\My Book\

 

mp3tag will append any Mac OS X hard disk with "\\?\unix\" before the disk or directory name. From then, you cannot rename the files because the "?" is illegal.

 

That I think is the problem and cannot think of a solution.