Converting FLAC to itunes

Question

Folks,
I've purchased a Grateful Dead album, one of Dick's Picks, and downloaded them as FLAC files. I've converted the FLAC files to AIFF files using a program called XACT. Now I want to import these AIFF files into itunes and burn the tunes onto a CD.
Here's the question. How do I keep the TAGS from the original FLAC files when I burn the CD? I don't want to have to retype all the tags, but I can't figure out how to retain the tags. Any help greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Bond

Answer 1

actually there's a shell script that will convert FLAC directly to MP3 using LAME. It will preserve the FLAC metadata and put them in the MP3 tags if there is metadata.
It does depend on having certain libraries installed, so it can be kind of advanced. But it works well once you get it working.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040323004759816
Another version of this idea is here (haven't tried this one):
http://www.gurulabs.com/goodies/downloads.php
You definitely need LAME installed. once you get it working and in your path, you just cd to the directory of the flac files and then type:
flacmp3 *.flac
(I am using a modificaiton of the Chris R's FLACMP3 script to use LAME preset standard encoding. Here is what I'm using.)
#!/bin/sh
# flacmp3 - convert a flac file and its tag data to mp3/id3 format
# Thisscript takes in FLAC files and spits out MP3 files. If youÕve assigned
# metadata to a FLAC file (usingvctool, for example), it carries that information over to the MP3:
# % flacmp3 *.flac
# ThatÕs all it takes to do the job.
# other settings for the lame line:
#      lame -h -m s -b 192 \
# this also has the lame command deliberately put on one line
if [ "$1" ]
then
  for file
    do
    if [ -e "$file" ]
    then
      flac -c -d "$file" |
      lame --preset standard --tt "$(metaflac --show-tag=TITLE "$file" | sed 's/^TITLE=\(.*\)/\1/')" --ta "$(metaflac --show-tag=ARTIST "$file" | sed 's/^ARTIST=\(.*\)/\1/')" --tl "$(metaflac --show-tag=ALBUM "$file" | sed 's/^ALBUM=\(.*\)/\1/')" --ty "$(metaflac --show-tag=DATE "$file" | sed 's/^DATE=\(.*\)/\1/')" --tn "$(metaflac --show-tag=TRACKNUMBER "$file" | sed 's/^TRACKNUMBER=\(.*\)/\1/')" --tg "$(metaflac --show-tag=GENRE "$file" | sed 's/^GENRE=\(.*\)/\1/')" - "$(basename "$file" .flac).mp3"
      mv "$file" /.Trashes/501/ 
    else
      echo >&2 "No such file: "$file" -- skipping."
    fi
  done
else
  echo >&2 "Usage: "$(basename "$0")" FLACFILE [...]"
  exit 1
fi