Cassette to MP3

[Caravan Ray]

I'm sure somebody here can help me with this:

I've got a boxed set of the first 3 Harry Potter books as Talking Books on cassette. However, I just bought a new car that doesn't have a cassette player - but it does play MP3 CDs.

(...just an aside - am I the only person who think's it isn't strange to list "MP3 Player" as the most important thing in a car, and consider other things like make and model as mere details. I think I insulted quite a few car salesman by tuning out and wandering off as soon as they started rattling off all that other crap...I'm sure you people here understand...)

anyway - I figure I can record the cassettes as WAV files on my computer - convert them to MP3 - then burn the whole 4 books onto 1 CD. Problem is - each MP3 file will be 30 min long - so the story will restart at the begining of each track everytime you restart the car.

How can I cut a 30min long MP3 track into 15 x 2min long MP3's?
(For the 20 cassettes - this will be 300 x 2min long MP3s)

[Magnetbox]

anyway - I figure I can record the cassettes as WAV files on my computer - convert them to MP3 - then burn the whole 4 books onto 1 CD. Problem is - each MP3 file will be 30 min long - so the story will restart at the begining of each track everytime you restart the car.

Well, the first solution I can think of would be to pause the tape and stop the WAV recorder at opportune points during the cassette. This way, the MP3 break will be during a pause or break and you won't have to deal with a word being chopped off.

Failing that, you could load the WAV files into your favorite sound editor and just copy and paste the appropriate segments into new files and encode them from the resulting files.

I guess it really depends on what software you're using to record the WAV files and encode the MP3's.

[Caravan Ray]

anyway - I figure I can record the cassettes as WAV files on my computer - convert them to MP3 - then burn the whole 4 books onto 1 CD. Problem is - each MP3 file will be 30 min long - so the story will restart at the begining of each track everytime you restart the car.

Well, the first solution I can think of would be to pause the tape and stop the WAV recorder at opportune points during the cassette. This way, the MP3 break will be during a pause or break and you won't have to deal with a word being chopped off.

Failing that, you could load the WAV files into your favorite sound editor and just copy and paste the appropriate segments into new files and encode them from the resulting files.

I guess it really depends on what software you're using to record the WAV files and encode the MP3's.

Not sure about your first suggestion - pressing the pause button every 2 minutes for 20 hours - OK, I don't have much of a life, but...

I'm starting to think the best solution is chuck the tapes away and buy CDs

[Magnetbox]

[quote="Caravan Ray]Not sure about your first suggestion - pressing the pause button every 2 minutes for 20 hours - OK, I don't have much of a life, but...[/quote]

Point taken...

I'm starting to think the best solution is chuck the tapes away and buy CDs

You mean they still sell cassette tapes???

That's probably not a bad idea because no matter how you do it, it's going to be a good bit of work at the minimum flipping cassette tapes, converting files, etc, etc. You'll soon reach the point where you might as well just read the books in the time it takes you to encode the files as opposed to actually being able to get more done like you intended.

That being said, I HAVE seen software that will chop WAV files up into smaller bits, but I can't recall what any of it is now. It looks like you could probably get sox (in Linux) to do this with a bit of scripting. (It has a trim command)

[Plat]

Here are a few ideas off the top of my head; unfortunately they're unverified, so hopefully I'm not misleading you.

A) MusicMatch used to have a feature deep in their options, to record mp3s from an external sound source. Basically you tell MusicMatch that every time it hears 2 seconds of silence, it should continue that recording with a different filename. I believe you can change the threshold of seconds (e.g. 1.5 seconds) and possibly the volume threshold of "silence". This used to be in their free product (~2002?); hopefully it still is.

B) If the volume levels are weird on the tape, I'd just record the whole thing as a WAV and use your favorite sound tool (e.g. Sound Forge, GoldWave, etc) to normalize/noise-reduce/compress/maximize and finally chop up the file. But like you said, that can be work. Some sound editors might have a feature like what MusicMatch does, where it splits on silence, but I don't remember ever using a feature like that.

C) If you're on a Unix machine, mpgtx comes to mind. You can use your current software to record a big mp3 of your book, then use mpgtx's "split" functionality to split that mp3 into smaller chunks (e.g. into 10ths). Granted, it might split right in the middle of a sentence (not into logical chapters), which isn't what you'd want...but it's another idea. The site links to a Windows version but I've never used it.

I did use the Linux version to make a gimmicky Mad Libs-like page. (Give it a try, you'll see why I needed to split mp3s ).


Anyway, not sure if this helps at all, but maybe it gives you some new ideas.

[Caravan Ray]

Here are a few ideas off the top of my head; unfortunately they're unverified, so hopefully I'm not misleading you.



C) If you're on a Unix machine, mpgtx comes to mind. You can use your current software to record a big mp3 of your book, then use mpgtx's "split" functionality to split that mp3 into smaller chunks (e.g. into 10ths). Granted, it might split right in the middle of a sentence (not into logical chapters), which isn't what you'd want...but it's another idea. The site links to a Windows version but I've never used it.

.

that sounds like what I want - it doesn't matter if it splits in the middle of words - its just when you restart the car - the story will pick up where it was (say) 2 minutes previously - not 30 minutes previously

thanks - i'll investigate the windows version

[Plat]

its just when you restart the car - the story will pick up where it was (say) 2 minutes previously - not 30 minutes previously

Aww man, I missed that part from your original message. This is probably old news to you by now, but not all car stereos do that.

About 2 years back, I replaced my car's stereo with a JVC player very similar to this, which I'm still in love with (despite its 8-character display). It only plays mp3s (no wma, vorbis, etc) but it doesn't choke on high bitrates, cd/rw discs, multi-session, etc like others did at the time. And it starts up right where you left off, when you turn the car off/on. I think it was about $250, plus $40 for parts and "free" installation.

If you take the CD out and put it back in the player, of course, it doesn't resume at a track nor mid-track level; but switching from radio to mp3, it did remember the track position.

It sounds like you got the car for the CD/Mp3 player, so you might not like the idea of swapping it out, but it's another option. If you go this route, I HIGHLY recommend burning a test CDRW to compare systems with. There used to be, and probably still are, a lot of bad (even broken) designs.

Good luck with your splitting, I hope it works out. I'll be doing something similar to an 8-hour mp3 book.

[Magnetbox]

Just a quick idea--may not be what you want, but:

What about converting the cassettes directly to CD without going to MP3? I know, I know, but hear me out.

Most of the newer car CD players can handle playing CD-RW discs. So if yours can do that, both sides of a 30-minute tape will fit on one disc. Record a few discs and you're ready to go. Plus, in CD mode your player should be able to pick right up where it left off without going back to the beginning of the track like it would for MP3's, right? (If it doesn't behave differently, than scrap this idea)

[Caravan Ray]

its just when you restart the car - the story will pick up where it was (say) 2 minutes previously - not 30 minutes previously

Aww man, I missed that part from your original message. This is probably old news to you by now, but not all car stereos do that.

Nothing is 'old news' to me - I'm old and have very few brain cells left - it's all new as far as I'm concerned.

I don't actually pick the car up till next week - so I don't know what the CD player does - if it picks up where it left off in an mp3 - then all of this is unneccesary - that's all I want - (I didn't know mp3 players could do that )

[HeuristicsInc]

yes, my portable soul picks back up where you left off. give it a try and see.
i think "portable soul" is a good song title.
-bill

[HeuristicsInc]

I did use the Linux version to make a gimmicky Mad Libs-like page. (Give it a try, you'll see why I needed to split mp3s ).

that was goofy, as all good mad libs should be.
-bill

[Phil. Redmon.]

You know, I've seen this thing, it's a thing thing, and it plugs into the headphone jack of a cd player, or cassette player (like, you know, a walkman.)

You can use said thing much like tose toy microphones, like, they transmit radio signals tune-in-able via fm radio. It's for people who only have radios in their car.

I saw it at the drugstore.

Walkman. Thing thing. Radio. problem solved.

Well... except for finding the thing thing.

But they do exist.

And would save you a lot of time.

[bz£]

thing thing thing thing

I have one of those things and it doesn't work very well.

[Caravan Ray]

But I want to impress people by holding up a CD and saying "there are 3 Harry Potter novels on this one CD!"

Thats why I bought the new car with an mp3 player

[jb]

<b>WTF People</b>

You don't cut the f-ing MP3 in half, for god's sake! You cut the WAV in half! Or into as many pieces as you need.

Caravan Ray, you have a WAV recording application, right? If it's even somewhat fancy at all, you can click your mouse in the middle of the WAV and split it. Or select half the WAV file (click/drag to select eh?) and do the ol' CTRL-X to cut it, then paste it into another track. Save each track as a separate MP3.

If you don't have a fancy-enough WAV recording program (I dunno what you use to make your songs), you can probably find one that's a time-limited demo (rather than a save-crippled demo) and use that.

Why is everyone making this so difficult? Geez.

[HeuristicsInc]

if he wants to do that every 2 minutes in 50-some tapes, that will be a big pain in the ass. but ya know, if you can have 3 harry potter books on one cd...
my fiancee uses one of those transmitter thingies. she says it's good enough for books on tape, but it sounds terrible with music.
-bill

[j$]

Yup, try http://www.goldwave.com - pretty useful fully functional for 30 days shareware audio editor

create new file > press record > when recording is finished (limit per file 60 minutes) > put a marker at an obvious quiet bit around the length you want the file to be > copy 'n' paste > save as mp3 > repeat process until complete.

That would be what i would do. If I even wanted to do that, of course...

j$

[Hoblit]

<b>WTF People</b>

Geez.

Well, at first he needed really small pieces which meant a lot of work splitting up hours and hours of tape. Now he has learned that maybe his new mp3 player in the car will

1. Keep track of where it left off each time the car is turned off and back on.

2. Have an aux in so maybe utilizing a portable casset player with a stereo patch cord will also solve his problem.

They were looking for the BEST solution, not necessarily the simplist one.

[Caravan Ray]

<b>WTF People</b>
You don't cut the f-ing MP3 in half, for god's sake! You cut the WAV in half! Or into as many pieces as you need.

Even I figured that out for myself.

I just wanted to know if I could cut 40 MP3 into 15 pieces each - rather than convert 600 WAVs into MP3s.
The first option sounds possibly worthwhile if it's do-able. The second option isn't do-able

[HeuristicsInc]

Actually there are batch converters that you can tell to transform all WAV to MP3 in a directory or whatnot and it'll do all of them without asking you again. mkwact can do this, for example.
-bill

[bz£]

my fiancee uses one of those transmitter thingies. she says it's good enough for books on tape, but it sounds terrible with music.

Actually that is the opposite of what I would expect. Mine sounds bad with music and I would think it would be worse for books on tape: I don't mind a bit of static here and there in a song because my brain can fill in the missing parts, but if you take a few words or a sentence out of every paragraph in a book it becomes a lot of work to decipher.

[HeuristicsInc]

Hmm, I don't think she has a static problem. Might be some local interference with yours?
I can ask her tomorrow, but she's almost certainly asleep by now.
-bill