[gentoo-misc] Re: Re: Applying a command to multiple files in succession?

[Zariel S. <sk...@gy...>]

> I can't tell you anything about issues you have, but I want to tell you 
> that decoding mp3 files and reencoding them in ogg is *NOT* good idea. 
> They use different compression methods so when you reencode your files 
> in ogg you loose another data from your songs. So if it isn't realy 
> necessery then don't do it.
>
> Bye,
> 	Tomas

Yeah I've heard of this, but I usually reencode to ogg when the original mp3 has a very high bitrate, and I listen to both my mp3s and oggs using my headphones trying to notice any distortions or lack of quality... and I can't find any. (Heck my hearing is so bad that I can't notice the difference between -q5 and -q0 on CDs I've encoded, so I don't think this is really a big issue for me, it's more for saving space more than to preserve quality)

> No, that is absolutely correct, and precisely how mpg123 behaved here
> for me. I tried with version 0.59s-mh4 which seems rather old (2000),
> but which is what Gentoo Linux (not to be confused, and so on) gave me.

> I tried the above command definition on a few MP3s, with "ps aux" run-
> ning in a separate window, and jumped on the space bar after starting
> the command. I never saw more than one mpg123 process, and the .wavs
> appeared in proper sequence too.

> Yeah... I guess the proper way to go around that, short of changing
> mpg123, is to let a shell compute a proper filename. One way of doing
> this could be to define the command as:

>    bash -c 'mpg123 -q -w $(basename {f} .mp3).wav {fup}'

	I tried the command and it works fine. Altough I had to change it to:
	bash -c 'mpg123 -q -w "$(basename {f} .mp3).wav" {fup}'
	to make it work with files which had a space in them.

> Mind the quotes, replace bash if you have a different favorite
> shell (editing as proper of course), and set the CD source and source
> rescan options. I tried this, it works just fine too, with no parallel
> mpg123 processes happening.
	I am not even seeing the shell since it's a background process, so I left it at bash (I use zsh.. but if it's to execute a command automatically, I really don't see the point of changing the shell from bash).
	And my problem persists... I tried it out. I had TOP opened while I selected a whole bunch of tracks and then sent them all to be decoded, my TOP filled with mpg123's instances and my pc still came to a crawl. Obviously, something here is NOT working the way it should. But I don't know what to do about it... I launched Gentoo under another user (one that was never being used in my system anyway), created a new entry to have the aforementioned command for decoding (and the only option was to CD to destination prior execution) and tried to decode a lot of files.. and top informed again a lot of mpg123 processes being running in parallel... grr. I suppose it must be some kind of bug somewhere in my dependencies (who knows if it's even related to the mysterious "Couldn't EnterDir" message?) Ah well... I suppose it isn't a major thing, and it will eventually be figured out (if it's related to glibc, and I am not the only one in the planet that bumps into this, that is)

> Anyhow, I hope this reply helped. Thanks for your interest in gentoo, of
> course! Regards,

> /Emil
Yer welcome. My only concern is that Gentoo is staying as a Gtk-1.2 app. So far my only Gtk-1.2 apps remaining are Xmms, Sylpheed and Gentoo (and the previous two are already undergoing the transition). It would truly be a shame the day people refuse to try Gentoo because "it runs on the ancient Gtk+-1.2!". I've heard of the performance issues and how Gtk+-1.2 is much faster than the Gtk-2.0 versions, but I also heard that much of the slowdown is because of the antialiased text (that if it's removed, Gtk-2 widget rendering becomes much faster), and also that Gtk-2 is becoming much faster with the newer versions. Hopefully someday Gtk-2 will be "good enough" to deserve a port. And even if not... well, I am sure someone will eventually take the effort to port it, this is a very good filemanager.
	Skot.