Amadeus Pro Index

6 Batch processing

Amadeus Pro includes a powerful batch processing engine. A new batch processor can be created by choosing New Batch Processor in the File menu. A batch processor allows you to not only convert files from one file format to another, but it also allows you to apply various effects (normalizing, fadings, etc). An example of a batch processor that converts AIFF files into Mp3 files could look like this:

The Change Name To field allows you to specify a name for the resulting file. The special sequence of characters %name will be replaced by the name of the currently processed file. Other usable special sequences of characters are %title, %artist, %album and %year. These correspond to the contents of the corresponding metadata fields. However, note that these fields can be empty if the sound being processes contains no metadata.

The Filter Files setting allows you to enter a regular expression against which filenames will be checked. Only files with matching filenames will be processed. Explaining in detail what regular expressions are goes beyond the scope of this manual. Information about the type of regular expressions used by Amadeus Pro can be found at the following link:

Examples of valid regular expressions are

A file or a collection of files is processed by the batch processor by dragging the file(s) onto the indicated area. If a folder is dragged to this area, only the files at the first level within the folder are processed by default, unless you check the Open subfolders recursively option, in which case the whole folder hierarchy is processed.

The Actions tab allows you to choose an arbitrary number of sound effects to be applied to the sound being processed. These effects are applied to the sound in the order in which they appear in the list. They are the same as the ones appearing in the Effects menu, except for a few items that allow to manipulate the current selection of the sound, as well as the sound quality. Suppose for example that you wish to create a 20 seconds summary in the Mp3 format for a collection of audio tracks. In order to achieve this, you would create a batch processor with the following settings:

1. In the Format section, select Mp3 as your resulting format and select the appropriate settings (see Section 3).

2. Check the Change Name To: checkbox and enter %name-summary as your filename.

3. In the Actions section, add one Set Selection action and choose 30 seconds from the start in the dialog that will appear. Then, add a Delete Selection action, followed by another Set Selection action with this time 20 seconds from the start and a Crop Selection action. This leaves us with a 20 seconds piece of sound located 30 seconds into the original sound. We then add 1 second fade in and outs, follwed by a normalisation. This should leave you with the actions section looking like on the following screenshot:

   

   
   
   It now suffices to drag your collection of files onto the area at the bottom of the batch processing window and sit back to watch Amadeus Pro do all the hard work for you.

The Metadata tab allows you to change the metadata of the sound being processed. This allows you, for example, to convert all the tracks from a CD to Mp3 and simultaneously set the artist and album names to the correct values. The special sequences of characters mentioned above can be used in any of the metadata text fields. So you can for example enter %title - %track in the Title field in order to change a name like Wish you were here to something like Wish you were here - 3.