Re: Best tool for splitting long MP3's at frames?

The --nogap argument is deprecated since 3.89. LAME now writes the nogap
metadata by default. I'm using 3.90.3 myself. I believe the way this works
is that LAME continues to write a partial last frame, but then writes some
metadata to the file that says where the true end of the data in the last
frame is. As far as I know, this will only work with players that are aware
of this metadata and know how to use it. I'm guessing that Audiotron does
not fall into this camp, which is why I still hear slight gaps between
tracks, and why I'm interested in ways of eliminating partial frames
altogether. The only player I am aware of that can take advantage of LAME's
nogap metadata is a software player called http://www.foobar2000.org/


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Peschka" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, February 25, 2005 5:26 PM
Subject: Re: [AT] Best tool for splitting long MP3's at frames?


> Brent-
>
> LAME offers a series of --nogap command-line arguments that will let you
> do gapless encoding for a set of files such as those from an entire
> album. I've never tried it myself, but I assume that instead of padding
> the last frame with zeroes, it goes ahead and starts using data from the
> next track. This would accomplish what you want and be a LOT less work
> than slicing the files manually.
>
> Hope this helps some,
>
> - Mike
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Turtle Beach Audiotron User Forum
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Brent Aliverti
> Sent: Friday, February 25, 2005 1:04 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [AT] Best tool for splitting long MP3's at frames?
>
> The MP3 format endodes each fractional second of song information into
> individual "frames". As such, the last bit of information in the song
> often only partially fills the last frame. The rest of that last frame
> is zero'd out. For this reason, songs that are meant to flow into each
> other will have perceptible gaps in them, even if the playback device
> does a good job of pre-buffering the next track.
>
> Such partial frames can theoretically be eliminated by encoding the
> entire "album" or "album side" as one long MP3 and then using a tool to
> split the long MP3 into individual MP3s, only allowing splits at frame
> boundaries. Has anyone had experience doing this, and if so, what is the
> best tool to use?
> Will it make a difference for the Audiotron...IE will eliminating
> partial frames yield truly gapless flow from one song to the next (for
> albums like Dark Side of the Moon for instance) or are there still some
> limitations of the buffering process that will insert a noticeable gap
> regardless?
>
> As it is, Audiotron is really great at minimizing the gaps between
> songs.
> I'm just trying to see if it can be even better. :-)
>
> Cheers
> Brent
>