Playtime display trimmed songs

[Malagant]

Not sure if this matter has been answered before (I did a quick search here and found nothing), but here goes.

When I play an imported music file on PA which has been trimmed (cut shorter than original time length) the original length of the song is displayed in the PA player window, not the new one.

Say the original song is 4 min 50 sec long but trimmed down to 4 min 14 sec using editing tools, my PA player reads/displays 4 min 50 sec, (the original length) though the song does stop playing at the new end point (4 min 14 sec) when I play it from start to finish (though weirdly enough when I start the song say midway through it runs all the way to 4 min 50 sec before it ends.. the edited length somehow messes with the player it seems).

Is there a PA setting I perhaps need to tweak for the player to display it correctly as 0:00 to 4:14? Or does the player not recognize such edits?

Thanks for any advice.

[6b6561]

For MP3 files track length is normally stored in the TLEN tag. If TLEN is missing then the length of the track can be calculated from file size / bit rate, but this will not work for Various Bit Rate (VBR) files.

Anyway, it sound's like the program used for trimming your files forgets about updating the TLEN tag. You could share one of the files and I could check what the issue is.

The solution is to push the files through a program that will fix the TLEN tag for you.

[andrewilley]

Agreed, whatever trimming software you are using is not correctly updating the header metadata tags to indicate the new running time. PA will always use a length tag if one is provided, and only if it is not included will PA try to interpret the song length from the audio data blocks - with variable success, as Variable Bitrates can mean that an accurate value can only be determined by rendering the entire song.

Andre

[Malagant]

Thanks for the replies and explanations, guys.

Strange thing is the same MP3 music file displays the correct (new) track length (4:14) in Windows Media Player on my computer and also in my music directory. If the TLEN tag you mention is not updated by my editing program, it seems strange that f.ex. Windows Media Player registers the correct (new) track length I would have thought, unless there are technical reasons for this?

The editing program I am using is called mpTrim 2.20. 

I enclosed the music file in question so you can take a look. 

Thanks again.

Toal - Unreal World.mp3

[andrewilley]

Foobar2000 shows 4:50, the same as Poweramp. Some other programs show 4:14 / 4:15. I assume there is no embedded duration tag, and different programs will calculate based the quoted kbps figure along with either the total file size or the file length minus the size of the header block.

I resaved the file using MP3DirectCut, which builds a whole new ID3 tag block, and then it seems fine. MP3Tag shows the following for the two files:

There's probably no need for both ID3 and APE blocks by the way.

Andre

[Malagant]

Thanks for the help and clarification!