anyone know how to fix an incorrect total time length for mp3?

[RayEarth]

I have a few mp3 with incorrect time lengths, for example 1 of my mp3 shows a total time of 2:12mins in windows media player but the real length is 5:33mins. In windows media player 7.1 the slider at the bottom would stop before the mp3 is done but the song would still continue. In windows media player 9, the song would stop at the incorrect total time of 2:12mins rather than continue on to it's full length like wmp7.1, is there a program to fix the mp3 to show the correct time?

 

[Vehementi]

Same thing happens to me.

Whenever I go to burn a CD with "2nd Unit" by Funker Vogt it's recognized as 1:24, not the 5 something mins it actually is. I think it's a problem with when I downloaded it, I started it, got about 1:24 of it done, stopped for awhile, then resumed. I was using FlashFXP...

So I think that's the same thing that happened to you. Try to download it/rip it again. Very annoying...

 

[RayEarth]

It would be nice if there was another option to allow wmp9 to just continue playing the song like wmp7.1 did, I don't mind it having the wrong time as long as it has no problem playing in wmp. These songs are music from the soundtrack tracks of a few cartoons I got over a year ago. Probably doesn't exist anymore for download.

 

[JW310]

I'd venture to guess that the MP3s you're having a problem with the incorrect length are VBR (Variable Bitrate) MP3s. I've had the same experience with Media Player in XP, as all of my MP3s are VBR (ripped them from my CD collection, though I do have some downloaded VBR's as well). My advice would be to either find a CBR (Constant bitrate) version of the song, or use Winamp or another program that can properly read VBR MP3s to play those MP3s.

JW

 

[PrincessGuard]

Do the MP3s happen to have Variable Bit Rates?

If they do, then the problem stems from the fact that there's no way to calculate the time of a VBR-encoded MP3 without (slowly) analyzing every single frame. The encoder can put a field in the file to indicate the total length but not all of them do that.

I'm not aware of any program that can fix this, unfortunately.

 

[RayEarth]

I don't know much about mp3, so I don't how to tell if it's VBR, I went to the properties of the file in wmp and under content it says vocal.
I just tried using nero to burn these incorrect length mp3 to a new audio cd, and it had to correct time lengths, then I ripped it out with funny cd ripper back to mp3s and it also had the correct time, but the bitrate is only 320kb and the original was 675kb bitrate, is there a better cd ripper to mp3 that has the 675kb option than funny cd ripper that I just randomly downloaded from download at cnet?

 

[JW310]

As far as I know, 320kbps is the maximum bitrate for an MP3. If Windows is showing 675 kbps as the bitrate, then it's definitely a variable bitrate MP3. Windows and Windows Media player only properly read the bitrates from constant bitrate MP3s. Go download Winamp 2.81 from Winamp.com and that should show you the correct length of the MP3 in the program. It won't do anything to help the way it shows up in Windows or Windows Media player, but at least it'll let you play the song properly and actually read the bitrate of the song properly from within winamp.

JW

 

[RayEarth]

what's the difference between constant and variable, is one better than the other in any way?

 

[Moonbender]

Variable is better in that it's possible to encode simple parts of the song at a low bitrate, say, 32 kb/s, while more complex parts are encoded at very high bitrates of 256 kb/s and above. This leads to an overall better quality while keeping file size down. Because of this, VBR is a quite common setting for high-quality MP3s. I'd just use Winamp, it works fine - in fact I'm quite surprised WMP doesn't do it, I never knew it was that crappy.

 

[RayEarth]

thanks for the replys. I found something that can fix mp3s without the hassle of copying a VBR mp3 into a audio cd and then rip it back into a constant 320kb mp3 just so wmp can correctly recognize the right "total time" length. The program is called mp3doctor and I used it once so far, seem like it has a limit of 20 uses. I just pushed resample and it resamples my mp3 to the settings I had set early. The end product was a constant 320kb 48kz sample rate and the process was pretty fast.

Lucky I only have a few songs that need converting so I don't need to worry about the 20 use limit. Here's the website for mp3doctor I downloaded using download.com but I think it links to the official homepage also, the file size is 1.65mb but the rate of download was 630bytes a sec for me, slow but well worth it. If someone has webspace to upload to, I'll upload it if u can't get it from the website.

 

[JW310]

File's now hosted at download.crawford-tech.com.

JW

 

[RayEarth]

another thing I noticed is that if I copy and past the mp3 from the original folder to a new folder I created, the VBR total time is the correct length but it's incorrect in the original folder, I also tried copying all my mp3 to a new folder and they all worked but if I delete the original folder and rename the new folder to the name of the old folder, the files don't have the correct length again. In the end all I had to do was copy all my VBR to a new folder with a different name for wmp 9 to see the correct total time.

I don't know why this happens, I'm using win98se with wmp 9, hopefully this gets fixed by the final release, but it might not since the refresh rate lock still exist after sp1. Anyone else with this problem might want to try to copy and paste the mp3 to a new folder with a different name and see if it solves the problem as it did for me. Now I'm able to keep the better VBR version of the mp3 instead of having to convert it to CBR.