Flac to Mp3 Simplified for Linux.

Well after alot of searching on the internet and not really finding a solution that was suitable to my needs, or having issues with getting Flac tags over to Mp3, i decided to write my own script that would pull the information. Also if you are like me you might want higher quality over smaller file sizes so i have added the option to change the bitrate you encode at.

The script listed below takes arguments in the following fashion. either you can specify a single file name to convert or you can specify a wildcard as example 2 shows.
Example 1: Flac2Mp3 01-The Black Parade.flac
Example 2: Flac2Mp3 *.flac

To use this script just copy and paste the section below and to a filename Flac2Mp3 and the chmod+x Flac2Mp3

If you have any questions please feel free to register and post a comment and i will do my best to answer.

***Update***
make sure that the (lame) package is installed if you using fedora / centos


#!/bin/bash
#########################################################
# Flac to Mp3 Conversion Software #
# Script Created by Nick Sklavenitis
# http://www.sklav.com #
# Date: September 18 2007 #
#########################################################
# modify the lame options to your preference example change -b 320 to -b 128 or -b 192 or -b 256
lame_opts=" --vbr-new -V 2 -b 320 "

# Creates the loop that allows more than 1 file to be specified, Can use single file name or example *.flac
for x in "${@}"
do
FLAC=${x}
MP3=`basename "${FLAC%.flac}.mp3"`
[ -r "$FLAC" ] || { echo can not read file \"$FLAC\" >&1 ; exit 1 ; } ;

#This section pulls the Tag info from flac and stores it as a variable.

TITLE="`metaflac --show-tag=TITLE "$FLAC" | awk -F = '{ printf($2) }'`"
ALBUM="`metaflac --show-tag=ALBUM "$FLAC" | awk -F = '{ printf($2) }'`"
ARTIST="`metaflac --show-tag=ARTIST "$FLAC" | awk -F = '{ printf($2) }'`"
TRACKNUMBER="`metaflac --show-tag=TRACKNUMBER "$FLAC" | awk -F = '{ printf($2) }'`"
GENRE="`metaflac --show-tag=GENRE "$FLAC" | awk -F = '{ printf($2) }'`"
COMMENT="`metaflac --show-tag=COMMENT "$FLAC" | awk -F = '{ printf($2) }'`"
DATE="`metaflac --show-tag=DATE "$FLAC" | awk -F = '{ printf($2) }'`"

#This section handles the conversion of the Flac file to MP3

flac -dc "$FLAC" | lame${lame_opts} \
--tt "$TITLE" \
--tn "$TRACKNUMBER" \
--tg "$GENRE" \
--ty "$DATE" \
--ta "$ARTIST" \
--tl "$ALBUM" \
--add-id3v2 \
- "$MP3"

done