Does anyone scan in their CD paperwork?

I don’t listen to Opera, so that shouldn’t be a problem for me.

I’ve just bit the bullet, and scanned in my most recent CD, and then another 5 of Kate Bush. In the end, once I had a flow it wasn’t too bad. Front and Back covers simply get grabbed from Amazon, MusicBrainz didn’t have anything above that for the CD’s I have scanned today but will keep looking. Incidentally it looks like you can create an account on MusicBrainz and upload your scanned files, so perhaps I should do that.

For the booklets, I used flatbed scanner/printer. To prevent any post editing, I set it to the correct orientation, then set output to JPG 240dpi, then with the booklet opened up and pushed into the corner of the scanner, set the area to scan with Preview. As all pages are then the same size, I could just flip the page and scan again. Then just a matter of renaming the JPG’s to BookletPage1/2/3. Didn’t take too long in the end, so I will continue starting with my favourite artists, plus any new CD’s as I get them.

I catalogued my collection on Discogs so when playing flac files just open the listing for the CD which invariably has all the documentation already loaded. Bit of a faff, but works for me.

What do you mean by cataloging, is that saving all the discogs urls?

Within Discogs I mostly scanned the bar code on the CD jewel case and the app loads the release version of that CD. The bar code reader can be a bit quirky, but it takes a few seconds to search for each CD. A task for those wet, dismal days whilst listening to music :smiley:

Just checked the Discogs website, and presumably what you see in the app, is the pictures under More Images. I checked these out for a couple of CD’s and the results were varied. The ones that were there were of limited quality, so unless it has everything for my favourite CD’s, then it will probably have limited use. I’d also prefer to use a laptop rather than a phone with a small screen, however it is good to know there is another source available - thank you.

Always one of the downsides of cd. That annoying bit of paper with the " sleeve" notes on. Couldn’t get it out or in easily in 1984. Struggled to read it then. Certainly can’t now.
What we need is a bigger version. Sort of 12" square. We are all getting older, it would be so much easier!

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That’s one advantage of scanning them in, in that you can now read them, and you only have to fight/ease them out their case once.

Completed 12 CD’s today, and realised that lots of CD’s dont have inserts, so will probably slow down a bit

Good on you. Bit I’m not sure I could be arsed! Ripping them was enough for me!

I wonder if it’s because their stats show more playlists and track to track change than whole album plays on streaming services.

Still bizarre that if you buy a whole album you don’t get a small PDF to go with it - Apple have occasionally had booklets with albums in iTunes I guess it’s a case of how users then view if there’s no user friendly app integration.

Roon also seem to offer up some Qobuz booklets even when streaming titles not purchased.

Not sure that anyone providing booklets will win the race to be honest, it’s probably all evolved from MP3/AAC downloads to small portable devices before smartphones when the basic devices couldn’t provide the rich user experience they can now - no reason not to change things for the better just not sure if that many people bother with inserts in CDs. I rarely do.

I never did, partly because the CD was upstairs away, or because they are too fiddly, or because they didn’t contain useful info like lyrics. Now I have a load scanned in, I’m hoping I’ll get more use from it. Time will tell.

Actually at least one label, Hyperion, already does all this. They offer pdfs of the album booklet you get in the jewel case with the CD. These are freely downloadable for most, if not all, of their very extensive catalogue, including albums no longer available to buy as physical CDs. This seems to tie in with their excellent provision of metadata — far and away the best of any of the labels I regularly buy from.

Roger

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Thanks Roger, that is impressive, and I so wish that I liked that type of music, as I would have been on that site all night - I’m sure it will appeal to others.

As a child of the 60s I’ve found CDs have had far and away better inserts than vinyl at its alleged peak. Greater ore estate of inserts and far higher quality even when it was just art. Yes, obviously often far too small but that doesn’t really mean I wouldn’t benefit from a decent version on a screen. Pdf really isn’t solution but goodness knows there are enough decent magazine apps out there with the ability to turn pages etc.

Would I want them with my FLAC downloads? Well I’m confused. All these people telling me how great Roon is with all its extra info and yet here they are telling me they don’t want that same info. #confused

PDF could quite happily be ‘paged’ with visualised page turn with an appropriate app to do so.

It’s a good universal format and frankly ideal for album inserts due to widespread compatibility, anything else is rarely going to be system agnostic.

Just my tuppence…

Qobuz really do measure up with album covers - images are normally 1440x1440 but many are 3000x3000 pixels+ which is great provided the source image was good enough!

However, how many albums are there where we don;t just want front cover but back cover and inserts/middle pages.

It really is criminal that these things are not provided.

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There are significant privacy and security issues with pdf as a format.

How so with a mostly read-only distributed document?

Latest of many many examples here.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/03/hacking-digitally-signed-pdf-files.html

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Still think it’s a minor risk for low profile files such as album lyrics/art.

Not for manufacturers of hardware it’s not.

Not quite sure what you article is suggesting - insecure supposedly secure file that can be changed or any old PDF potentially carrying a malicious payload?

Exploits have affected countless file types over the years.

Good riddance Flash, but exactly what the threat is here I’m not sure.

macOS has always had a dubious ‘Open safe files automaticallyt on download’ which includes PDF and stupidly it’s on by default.