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johnk1973
21st July 2006, 07:47 PM
Hi, no matter what music player i use on my XDAIIi i always get gaps in-between my songs. I have a lot of dance music which mixes into the next song on my CDs so if i play it on a CD player i have un-interrupted music but if i convert it to MP3 (CDex) then i have about a 1 sec gap from the 'end' of a song to when the next one starts.
Is this just the way it is or am i converting to MP3s incorrectly?

cheers

shuflie
21st July 2006, 10:43 PM
I seem to remember from my original Orange SPV smartphone days that there were workarounds for the fact that you couldn't skip forward movies, what you did was to create a playlist which pointed to different positions in the same file to simulate chapters. You could always try ripping your entire CD as one single MP3 and create a playlist for the individual songs in the file. That way if you play the playlist instead of the MP3 you can listen to it without gaps and still have the ability to jump forwards and backwards though it to a particular track.
This is how you do it.

File name = my album.mp3
Album title = my album
Track 1 = "one" Length = 3 mins
Track 2 - "two" length = 2 mins
Track 3 = "three" length = 6 mins

Playlist = my album.asx

Playlist contents

<asx version="3">
<TITLE> my album</TITLE>

<ENTRY>
<StartTime Value = "0:0.0"/>
<TITLE> one </TITLE>
<Ref Href = "my album.mp3"/>
<Duration Value= "3:00.0"/>
</ENTRY>

<ENTRY>
<StartTime Value = "3:00.0"/>
<TITLE> two </TITLE>
<Ref Href = "my album.mp3"/>
<Duration Value= "2:00.0"/>
</ENTRY>

<ENTRY>
<StartTime Value = "5:00.0"/>
<TITLE> three </TITLE>
<Ref Href = "my album.mp3"/>
<Duration Value= "6:00.0"/>
</ENTRY>

</asx>

Once you create the playlist put it into the same folder as your mp3, or if you want to have a seperate folder for the playlist and the mp3 then change all the <Ref Href = "my album.mp3"/> lines to something like <Ref Href = "..\my music\my album.mp3"/>, which assumes you store your MP3s in "some path\my music\" and your playlists in "(the same) some path\my playlists\"
It looks like quite a bit of work but I'd imagine that you won't need to be too accurate with your track timings, as long as they all add up. The tricky one is the start time as you need to remember to roll in all the track durations preceeding it. Madu (from modaco.com) had released an excel file with macros to enable you to partially automate the creation of the asx code but I can't seem to find it now.

johnk1973
21st July 2006, 10:54 PM
The thought had already crossed my mind about ripping it to a single file with no chapters, do you know a good ripper that does this before i have to start downloading and installing everything i can find. I've already checked and CDex can't do this.

shuflie
22nd July 2006, 01:10 AM
Haven't actually done it myself in a long time, but I'm sure that there are plenty of capable programs out there. CDex was one suggested on Modaco, I'm surprised it doesn't work, are you sure that you are selecting to extract a section of the CD to a compressed file and not just selecting tracks and ripping them?. You could always rip the raw data from the CD in BIN-CUE form and rename the .bin file to .wav then use any wave to mp3 convertor out there. This way you would also have a starting point for your playlist in the cue file.

shuflie
22nd July 2006, 04:59 PM
Just had a play around with this and discovered that the playlist idea doesn't seem to work on the universal. I was able to set up the playlist and have all the songs entered into it, but when it reaches the end of the first track it just jumps back to the beginning again, ignoring the start time of the next track. Perhaps I'm just using the wrong format, I tried with both WMA and MP3, or perhaps its just WM05 which doesn't allow random entry into a file. If anyone else knows please post.

EDIT: Must be a Windows Mobile 05 or SD card problem, the playlist plays perfectly in windows, jumps to the right track and plays without any gaps.

johnk1973
22nd July 2006, 08:38 PM
Haven't actually done it myself in a long time, but I'm sure that there are plenty of capable programs out there. CDex was one suggested on Modaco, I'm surprised it doesn't work, are you sure that you are selecting to extract a section of the CD to a compressed file and not just selecting tracks and ripping them?. You could always rip the raw data from the CD in BIN-CUE form and rename the .bin file to .wav then use any wave to mp3 convertor out there. This way you would also have a starting point for your playlist in the cue file.

You're right, CDex does do it! :oops:
I works too, great!

Thanks everyone.

shuflie
22nd July 2006, 11:20 PM
Haven't actually done it myself in a long time, but I'm sure that there are plenty of capable programs out there. CDex was one suggested on Modaco, I'm surprised it doesn't work, are you sure that you are selecting to extract a section of the CD to a compressed file and not just selecting tracks and ripping them?. You could always rip the raw data from the CD in BIN-CUE form and rename the .bin file to .wav then use any wave to mp3 convertor out there. This way you would also have a starting point for your playlist in the cue file.

You're right, CDex does do it! :oops:
I works too, great!

Thanks everyone.
How about the playlist idea, are you using one or are you just playing the entire album from start to finish?

johnk1973
23rd July 2006, 09:56 AM
I'm not going to bother creating playlists, i'm waiting for the T-mobile MDA Vario II / HTC Hermes like anyone else!