Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be (Read 7435 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Please can somebody help me with this...

I am ripping my music using EAC with the LAME MP3 Plugin.

When I rip it the track length is incorrect.  For instance a song from a cd I have just ripped should be 3.03 in length.  The MP3 is showing in VLC player as being 1.58 in length.
If I skip to near the end, say 10s from the end it still plays out the last part of the song.

If I let it play it plays for 3.03 yet still registers as 1.58. 

If I open the same song in windows media player it shows it as being 3.03 and if I let it play thought it plays for that time but if I fast forward it past the 1.58 point then I get an error in windows media player and it stops playing.

I then open the same track in mediamonkey and it shows it as 3.03 and plays correctly. 

The issue is I need to to play with the right time in whichever programme I wish and for me to be able to skip to whichever part without it crashing.

Where am I going wrong?
The flac or wav rips do not have the same issue from the same CD.

Thanks for your help

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Reply #1 –
What is the LAME MP3 Plugin for EAC?  Link?

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Reply #2 –
It sounds like you are playing vbr files in players that don't handle them correctly, or else the files don't have a proper xing header.
 

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Reply #4 –
If you tried to build LAME yourself, perhaps there's something wrong with your build? Have you tried a precompiled version from rarewares or some other site that's known to be reliable? I'm not aware of any sourceforge page that has LAME binaries.

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Reply #5 –
I don't know what the cause is, but Vbrfix or MP3 Diags may be able to repair the files.

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Reply #6 –
Yeah what's this "LAME plugin" you're talking about? What are your compression settings in EAC?

Never mind. Just do this:
  • Get LAME 3.99.5 from http://rarewares.org/mp3-lame-bundle.php
  • Make a note of where you unpacked lame.exe. For example I put mine at E:\apps\lame3.99.5-64\lame.exe
  • In EAC, Compression Options, check the "Use external program for compression" box.
  • Parameter passing scheme: User Defined Encoder
  • Use file extension: .mp3
  • Program, including path, used for compression: in my case I put E:\apps\lame3.99.5-64\lame.exe
  • Additional command-line options: -V0 %source% %dest%
  • Bit rate: doesn't matter because -V0 will vary the bitrate. 256 kBit/s is probably closest to being right.
  • [X] Delete WAV after compression
  • [X] Add ID3 tag
  • [X] High quality

Click the Test encoder button and make sure it works. That should do it.

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Reply #7 –
I'm sure he means the dll, which I think used to work.

Foobar2000 can likely fix the files as well, though it's probably better to recreate them. Best yet is to rip to a lossless format and then convert to mp3 at a later time, keeping the lossless source files.

Having to re-rip simply because you have to reencode is a pain. In addition, you have a backup in case your discs become damaged (wait I didn't just say that [a href="http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=108334&hl=" target="_blank"][/a]).

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Reply #8 –
Indeed.. sounds like an vbr file without a vbr header. It might happen that strip headers is selected  ( -t setting ) or something like that.

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Reply #9 –
To try to get to the bottom of it, I got lame_enc.dll from the LAME 3.99.5 bundle at RareWares, and put it in my EAC 1.0 beta 4 folder. I launched EAC, and in Compression options, External compression, I disabled the external compressor. In Waveform, I set Wave format to LAME MPEG Layer-3 Encoder v3.99 DLL v1.32. I set Sample format to Preset: Extreme. I ticked the "Do not write WAV header to file" box and entered .mp3 as the file extension.

I picked a .wav from my hard drive at random, nothing special about it, and chose to compress it via EAC's Tools menu.

EAC crashed when it started to do the encode. *shrug*

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Reply #10 –
Quote from: mjb2006 on
Yeah what's this "LAME plugin" you're talking about? What are your compression settings in EAC?

Never mind. Just do this:
  • Get LAME 3.99.5 from http://rarewares.org/mp3-lame-bundle.php
  • Make a note of where you unpacked lame.exe. For example I put mine at E:\apps\lame3.99.5-64\lame.exe
  • In EAC, Compression Options, check the "Use external program for compression" box.
  • Parameter passing scheme: User Defined Encoder
  • Use file extension: .mp3
  • Program, including path, used for compression: in my case I put E:\apps\lame3.99.5-64\lame.exe
  • Additional command-line options: -V0 %source% %dest%
  • Bit rate: doesn't matter because -V0 will vary the bitrate. 256 kBit/s is probably closest to being right.
  • [X] Delete WAV after compression
  • [X] Add ID3 tag
  • [X] High quality

Click the Test encoder button and make sure it works. That should do it.


Hello,

I have followed your instructions and ripped the same CD, I now have the correct timings displaying so my issues is now resolved. 

I suspect is was the Lame encoder that I had been using.  I now have the correct one. 

Many thanks for your reply and thanks to everyone else who commented.

MP3 track lengths are shorter than they should be

Reply #11 –
I'm glad it works for you.

I feel there is no advantage to using EAC's interface to the outdated ACM codec system. It was a neat idea around the year 2000, having all the codecs you'd ever need installed and accessible through a common Windows API, so that programs like EAC wouldn't have to be specially written to work with each codec and so you could just pick from a list. This system works great for audio players and for making WAV files, including WAVs that contain audio in obscure compressed formats. But no one cares about those formats anymore, and for just creating files like you do when you're ripping CDs, just running a standalone external encoder app is the simpler option.

Other rippers generally just support a few standard codec .dlls, and they bundle as many of them as they can. Or they just write WAV files and nothing else.