Anyone ever tried this one?

I have an audio conversion and tagging project I'm working on. I'm working with .wav files which become .mp3. I have been able to automate tagging of the mp3 using an external flat file. But this process requires that I fire off a batch file from a DOS window. I use two programs. One is called Razorlame v1.1.5 and the other is called Tag. There are several other things left for me to figure out.

1. Schedule the batch so that it runs on it's own based on a schedule
2. Somehow get SQL or Access (which ever is better) to talk to the "Tag.exe" program that does the actually conversion but on the mp3 server.
3. Completely automate the process and be able to convert multiple mp3 files based on schedule, batch file and software.

Has anyone ever done anything like this and if so which database program did you use and how did you get it to work? Details please as I am still learning SQL Server 2005 and am not a .Net guru either.

Any help is much appreciated. I may be reached at: erico4@.u.washington.eduI wouldn′t automate that from SQL Server. Write an application which can be scheduled and uploads the data to SQL Server. SQL Server is for storing data not external processing.

HTH, Jens K. Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de|||Jens - thanks but what exactly am I storing in SQL? Am I storing the tags themselves?

Example:
Artist: Company Name
Title: Test Title
Album: News & Information
Year: Copyright 2006 Company Name
Genre: news
Comment: John Smith etc etc

This was suggested by a coworker via email. But I'm not clear on what they mean. How would you interpret this?

If you end up using

Access .... you might be able to get the SQL script out of the Access wizard

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/HP051876301033.aspx?pid=CH063648341033

I'm trying to piece together how all this flows from step one and so on. I need help thinking it through the process so I can have a better understanding of that part of it.

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Thats a bit hard to tell for us, as we don′t know the specifics of the TAG program and the process itself. A possible solution for this could be:

1. Grab the Wav file from the folder
2. Extract the Tag information from the Wav file and store it in a flat file
3. Call the MP3 converter
4 Call the tag application using the flat file.
5. Delete the flat file.

This can be all done without any interaction with a SQL Server unless you want to persist the data on the server.

HTH, Jens K. Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de

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You would use Access or SQL Server to store some data related to the process and/or the files that are being processed. It sounds like tag.exe is applying the contents of the data file (Artist, Title, Album, Year, etc.) to the metadata of the mp3 file. If that's correct, you can replace everything that deals with these data files (create the file, parse the file, etc.) with a database and a corresponding query. At it's simplest, you could simply map the data file to a table in the database. If you wanted to start doing more interesting processing (say, all Titles with "Hendrix"), you would want to create separate tables for your query dimensions (e.g. Artist, Genre, Year)...

There are lots of options here for what you can do. There is a good starter link on SQL Server at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/aa336347.aspx (Look in the section titled "How do I learn more about SQL Server 2005"...specifically the Architecture and Design link and the Programmability link).

Access is a great introductory tool to help get your head wrapped around how you can use a database in this scenario. SQL Server 2005 Express Edition when used in conjunction with Visual Studio 2005 would be another good option.

Hope that helps and good luck!