CDRevolution Audio Archiving
- Introduction
- Archive Space
- Location, Location
- Data? What Data?
- Spotlight Searching
- iTunes Integration
- Additional Links
Introduction
Special archiving features were added to CDRevoluton in version 1.10.
For those that want to backup their CD collection, archiving to a Hard Disk can be an excellent space-saving solution. To save on archival space - CDRevolution now applies Apple's lossless compression to the audio image files it creates.
Storage is only one part of an effective archival system. The other part is retrieval. CDRevolution provides two complementary retrieval solutions by integrating with both Spotlight and iTunes.
Archive Space
So how much Hard Disk space do you need? To get a safe approximation I'll use the longest audio CD I can find - just over 72 minutes long - and base the calculations on that.
| Uncompressed 72 Min. Audio Image | Compressed 72 Min. Audio Image |
|---|---|
| 728.1 MB | 452.7 MB |
So the new compressed image is about 62% the size of the older uncompressed version. Lets see how many of these compressed images we can fit on different capacity Hard Disks:
| Hard Disk Capacity | Uncompressed Audio Images (approx.) | Compressed Audio Images (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| 40 GB | 56 | 90 |
| 80 GB | 112 | 180 |
| 160 GB | 225 | 361 |
| 250 GB | 351 | 565 |
| 320 GB | 450 | 723 |
| 500 GB | 703 | 1,130 |
| 750 GB | 1,054 | 1,696 |
| 1 TB | 1,440 | 2,316 |
Location, Location
By default CDRevolution will ask you where you would like to place an image each time you click the "Save Image..." button. But if you save your image files with the default album name and place them in the same folder each time, you can simplify things even further by setting up a default save location.
In the CDRevolution preferences, click Image, and select an option from the pop-up menu.
Selecting UserName/Music/CDRevolution will save your image files to a folder named CDRevolution in the Music folder in your personal home folder. Selecting Desktop will save your image files directly to the Desktop. And selecting Other... will allow you to choose another default folder where you would like your image files to be saved.
Now, when you drag a CD onto the CDRevolution source well, just a single click will save the image to your desired location.
Data? What Data?
To allow effective archiving, there are several things that can be stored within each CDRevolution image file:
- Apple Losslessly Encoded audio for each track
- The Table of Content (TOC) describing the layout of the original CD
- Additional layout information not provided by the TOC
- CD Text (if the original contains any)
- Asset Management data (if the original contains any)
- A CDDB (freedb.org) record containing tag data (metadata) about the CD and it's tracks
The CDDB record is usually created when you first save the image file, but if for some reason it does not exist (because you were not connected to the Internet, or because you are using an image created with an older version of CDRevolution, for example) the CDDB record will be automatically added when you drag the image file onto the CDRevolution source well.
If you are using CDRevolution on purely home grown recordings, you may want to switch CDDB data retrieval off. To do this; choose CDRevolution > Preferences..., select Advanced and then deselect the checkbox labelled "Automatically retrieve CD information from the Internet".
To find out more see CDRevolution CD Image 1.10 format technical information.
Spotlight Searching
You can of course perform a an effective system search using Spotlight from the menu bar, but for more advanced searching you can use the Spotlight search window. The search window can be activated at any time by using the Option+Command+Space key combination.
You can search on most album data, such as the album artist, album title, genre, year and MCN. You can also search on the track data too, for example, the track title, the track artist and the ISRC.
For a more detailed list of the CDRevolution Spotlight metadata see Spotlight Search Keys in technical information.
iTunes Integration
CDRevolution images can now be added to iTunes. This also has the added advantage of allowing you to play each track as though you were listening to the original CD.
For best results it is advisable to set the iTunes preferences to not make copies of the added audio files. This will prevent multiple copies of the tracks existing on your Hard Disk (one in iTunes and one in the CDRevolution image file) and also allow you to use iTunes to locate the original image file.
In iTunes choose iTunes > Preferences, click Advanced, click General, and then deselect the option "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library".
To add an image to iTunes, drag it to the CDRevolution source well and choose Source > Add to iTunes. Once added the album and tracks can be viewed and played just like any other.
You can also locate the original image file from within iTunes. Just find the track or album you are interested in, Control+Click (or left click) on a track to bring up a context menu then select Show in Finder. The Finder window of the folder containing the image file will pop to the front.