Big, Big, Big CD Ripping Project
I'm waiting for a courier. Yesterday we had a motorcycle courier visit us but that was with just 110 CDs. Today is different.
I am waiting for our biggest ever CD ripping service order - a little over 3,000 CDs. It takes us into a new league as well as keeping us busy for a good few days.
Ripping CDs on this scale is really very little different to ripping smaller collections. We work to get the best sound, best album data and album art. However there are some things which are different. When we knew we had got the order we scratched our heads and came up with a special workflow process to incorporate extra steps to make sure we get it right first time.
First, Data Grooming is critical. Being able to find the music you want is essential when you're dealing with such a large music library. With a hundred or two CDs you might be content to scroll through a chunk to find the album, artist or track you want - with 3,000? Impossible. Albums need to come together so handling multi-album sets is vital as done badly the final CD could be hundreds of entries away. Nightmare.
Similarly we need to smooth out composer names, just a little confusion over Mozart, Mozart WA or WA Mozart will make an enormous mess.
In terms of data volumes we're into a different league. We've had to upgrade one of our PCs so we're certain to have enough space to finally merge all the work from our six computers when we finally bring it all together. Along the way we need to control precisely which CDs have been ripped, which drives the data is stored on, and make sure it's all backed up safely at the end of each day. Just think how you'd feel getting to 2,900+ and finding a hard drive failure wiped out all those hours and hours of work.
When it's all ripped and Data Grooming is complete we just have one final but not small step to take. It all has to be put onto a network connected hard drive. To make this as easy as possible we've upgraded our router and I've earmarked this task to be overseen by our new Mac Mini. Even so I think we'll be lucky to get this lot across in under 72 hours. But that stage seems an awful lot of CDs away.
I am waiting for our biggest ever CD ripping service order - a little over 3,000 CDs. It takes us into a new league as well as keeping us busy for a good few days.
Ripping CDs on this scale is really very little different to ripping smaller collections. We work to get the best sound, best album data and album art. However there are some things which are different. When we knew we had got the order we scratched our heads and came up with a special workflow process to incorporate extra steps to make sure we get it right first time.
First, Data Grooming is critical. Being able to find the music you want is essential when you're dealing with such a large music library. With a hundred or two CDs you might be content to scroll through a chunk to find the album, artist or track you want - with 3,000? Impossible. Albums need to come together so handling multi-album sets is vital as done badly the final CD could be hundreds of entries away. Nightmare.
Similarly we need to smooth out composer names, just a little confusion over Mozart, Mozart WA or WA Mozart will make an enormous mess.
In terms of data volumes we're into a different league. We've had to upgrade one of our PCs so we're certain to have enough space to finally merge all the work from our six computers when we finally bring it all together. Along the way we need to control precisely which CDs have been ripped, which drives the data is stored on, and make sure it's all backed up safely at the end of each day. Just think how you'd feel getting to 2,900+ and finding a hard drive failure wiped out all those hours and hours of work.
When it's all ripped and Data Grooming is complete we just have one final but not small step to take. It all has to be put onto a network connected hard drive. To make this as easy as possible we've upgraded our router and I've earmarked this task to be overseen by our new Mac Mini. Even so I think we'll be lucky to get this lot across in under 72 hours. But that stage seems an awful lot of CDs away.
posted by Unknown at 1:02 AM
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