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So, let's say I have a pile of a couple thousand .aifs all nice and pretty with Soundminer metadata perfectly intact. But for one reason or another, these .aifs need to be converted to .wavs. Is there a way to perform such a conversion so that I don't have to manually re-enter or cut, copy, and paste all the metadata from the .aifs to the .wavs?

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4 Answers

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So here's the process that wound up working:

  1. Use Barbabatch to create new .wav versions of the offending .aifs
  2. Create a new database in Soundminer of offending .aifs
  3. Export the .aif metadata as a text file from Soundminer
  4. Open the text file in Word, Find and Replace all instances of ".aif, .AIF, .aiff or .AIFF" with ".wav"
  5. Save the new .wav metadata text doc
  6. Create new folder in Finder named "Old AIFS of Library" move all the old .aifs there
  7. Put new .wav files in the folder where the old aifs used to be
  8. Create a new database in Soundminer of the new, metadata-less .wav files
  9. Merge the .wav Word doc metadata file with the new .wav file database
  10. Happiness :o)

There were a couple issues the first time through. Barbabatch doesn't recognize four letter file extensions (.aiff) or capital letter file extensions (.AIF) and so we wound up with files named "soundeffect.AIF.wav" which didn't correspond to the changes that were made in the spreadsheet. So about 3/4 of the files worked. Once we figured out the situation there were about 30 files had to be edited by hand and re-copied. Far better than the 2,200 that we were facing.

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wowzers, that makes my head hurt. – Jay Jennings♦ Sep 1 2010 at 7:07
hooray for complicated fixes. now we just need someone to program a script for the whole thing, and no one will have to go through that again...lol – Shaun Farley Sep 1 2010 at 11:58
@Jay & @Shaun yeah, there has to be a simpler way, but at least it worked. – Steve Urban Sep 1 2010 at 12:50
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I haven't tested this specific application, but I know that izotope RX doesn't mess with the soundminer metadata in wav files when I edit stuff after it's already been added to my library.

It has a batch process function, so it certainly could work.

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@Rene- While I'm hoping to get RX soon, buying it for this purpose was not in the cards. I'll be sure to look into it once I have it though. – Steve Urban Sep 1 2010 at 3:20
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this one's gonna be difficult, because the metadata is contained in the header of the file (which is being altered when you convert it from one format to another). is there no process in soundminer to handle that for you? if not, i know the support team over at soundminer is really good, maybe they can point you in the right direction.

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The problem is, I was asking this by proxy. I haven't actually touched soundminer in about 5 years. Unfortunately in this instance, the support contact information was being withheld (long story) and basically we were left to our own devices to figure out a way. – Steve Urban Sep 1 2010 at 3:27
@Steve - wow! that does sound tough. – Shaun Farley Sep 1 2010 at 11:55
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monkey tools "sound grinder" works great and preserves metadata just fine

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Certainly sounds way easier @studio13. – Steve Urban Sep 2 2010 at 0:52
Soundminer uses what's basically a proprietary metadata system (meaning most other programs can't read it), do you know anyone who's used Sound Grinder for handling Soundminer metadata? I'd be curious to know if it definitely works with that protocol. – Shaun Farley Sep 2 2010 at 1:10
I have used this combo recently it works just fine thats why I posted it. PM me if you want more detail provide more or batch some files for you to try first ... – studio13 Sep 15 2010 at 17:35

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