Editing mp3's (long one into lots of little ones)

[jahtao]

Greetings,

I want to edit mp3's without re-encoding - and thus preserving quality. But i want to do it quickly and easily.

Basically i've got lots of long mp3 radio shows that i want to divide into individual songs - just wondering if anyone knows of any software that allows you to do this in one go, maybe by putting in all the track points (like cd mastering?) and then just exporting all the segments. Possible?

I've got 20hrs of long mp3 to get thru maaan - i really don't want to each song individually. But if i have to do it song by song what's the most userfriendly tool for the job?

Many thanks!

[grizzle]

Sound Forge will. You can set up region playlists for non destructive editing. Should be exactly what your looking for.

[auralassassin]

right click(in windows) on the file, open with> soundforge... edit, close... save as?

yep, save as.

Done.

[twatty vagitis]

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/audio ... ectcut.cfm


freeness and simple to use

[crash fistfight]

If you get adobe audition you can batch process the files, its simple and it gives you the choice where to land the cuts. I'm not sure wether you can do that in sound forge but I am sure it is possible.

[decklyn]

Everytime you open an MP3 it is decoded.

If you copy out a piece of it and save it again, it is re-encoded.
If you are not making any modification, if you save at an equal or higher bitrate, you shouldn't lose any additional quality, as during encoding, the same information that would be scrapped will already be missing. While I've professionally programmed, I've never personally worked with MP3 compression, but I'm assuming that this information would be accurate - that if you encode at 128kbps certain aspects of the sound are discarded. If you decode and then re-encode at the same bitrate, it wouldn't chop off other pieces of sound - it would try to remove the same sounds that it already has, so you would not loose quality. It is just an assumption tho, so I may be wrong. A good way to test would be to take a 128kbps mp3 and open it, then save it then open your saved copy then save it then open your saved copy, then save it 10 or 12 times. Compare it to your original. Then you'll know for sure.

As far as I'm aware, there would be no way to directly manipulate the encoded data tho - you can't listen to or edit an encoded mp3! That is like saying that you'll open up a zip file in word and edit the text that is zipped up in it. If you open a zip in word, you just see a bunch of seemingly random data.

[kernelcoremode]

Everytime you open an MP3 it is decoded.

If you copy out a piece of it and save it again, it is re-encoded.
If you are not making any modification, if you save at an equal or higher bitrate, you shouldn't lose any additional quality, as during encoding, the same information that would be scrapped will already be missing. While I've professionally programmed, I've never personally worked with MP3 compression, but I'm assuming that this information would be accurate - that if you encode at 128kbps certain aspects of the sound are discarded. If you decode and then re-encode at the same bitrate, it wouldn't chop off other pieces of sound - it would try to remove the same sounds that it already has, so you would not loose quality. It is just an assumption tho, so I may be wrong. A good way to test would be to take a 128kbps mp3 and open it, then save it then open your saved copy then save it then open your saved copy, then save it 10 or 12 times. Compare it to your original. Then you'll know for sure.

i think you are right, i'm not sure though what happens when the encodings have been made with different encoders than the one u use.. i mean depending on the encoder u can get different quality at same bitrate so my guess is that not all encoders discard out the same parts...

[decklyn]

Everytime you open an MP3 it is decoded.

If you copy out a piece of it and save it again, it is re-encoded.
If you are not making any modification, if you save at an equal or higher bitrate, you shouldn't lose any additional quality, as during encoding, the same information that would be scrapped will already be missing. While I've professionally programmed, I've never personally worked with MP3 compression, but I'm assuming that this information would be accurate - that if you encode at 128kbps certain aspects of the sound are discarded. If you decode and then re-encode at the same bitrate, it wouldn't chop off other pieces of sound - it would try to remove the same sounds that it already has, so you would not loose quality. It is just an assumption tho, so I may be wrong. A good way to test would be to take a 128kbps mp3 and open it, then save it then open your saved copy then save it then open your saved copy, then save it 10 or 12 times. Compare it to your original. Then you'll know for sure.

i think you are right, i'm not sure though what happens when the encodings have been made with different encoders than the one u use.. i mean depending on the encoder u can get different quality at same bitrate so my guess is that not all encoders discard out the same parts...

Yeah I was thinking about that as well.
Quality is subjective, so I would suggest trying to resample a portion and comparing it to the original.
At the very least if you save at a higher bitrate than the original you should be pretty safe.

[jahtao]

Nice one grizzle i'll check that out, thanks man.

[westernsynthetics]

You can open up a MP3 using Adobe audition. Cut up the tracks and the save each track as the song name. Then, id create an M3U file and tie the whole mix back together but now instead of one big track you have all the individual tracks seperated. But now if you play the M3U file, you wont have gaps in betewwn the songs if you still want to listen to the tracks being mixed together.

[mrhope]

Here is what I do with a huge MP3 file:

1) Convert it to .WAV
2) Add split markers and save as separate files automatically with freeware CDwav.
I leave out the ass tracks, so they don't get turned into files.
3) Burn the separate .WAV's to CD

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q= ... arch&meta=

Good luck