Playing 60-90 seconds of songs

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zipthebird
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Playing 60-90 seconds of songs

#1 Post by zipthebird » Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:47 pm

Here's another I-Tunes/mp3 player capabilities question for y'all. Is there any way to set I-Tunes to play just the first 60 to 90 seconds of each song in a playlist? Or another commonly available mp3 program?

Alternately, can anyone think of an easy way to burn a cd that contains one or two minutes each of about 25 songs?

(Why in the world would I want to do this? I'm trying to make a "hills" or "rollercoaster" style workout mix of songs at various tempos, and I don't want to have to stop and hit "next" in the middle of swinging out.)

ktron
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#2 Post by ktron » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:47 pm

one way to do it in itunes (kinda a pain and not so automatic! hopefully somebody knows a better way!) would be to go into the "Get Info" on each song. under the options tab, set the start time and end time to the particular 60-90 s you want.

i haven't tried burning a cd this way -- i suppose the options would stay set however you have them for the recording?

lipi
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#3 Post by lipi » Thu Mar 13, 2008 3:00 pm

well, "zipthebird" didn't ask for it to be burnable, necessarily, but: no, when you burn a track from itunes, it will burn the entire track and ignore the begin and end points you set. it won't burn partial tracks.

anyway, you can always use audacity to edit your tracks down to a minute. the resulting cd would drive me loony, practice or not, though.

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J-h:n
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#4 Post by J-h:n » Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:05 pm

lipi wrote:well, "zipthebird" didn't ask for it to be burnable, necessarily, but: no, when you burn a track from itunes, it will burn the entire track and ignore the begin and end points you set. it won't burn partial tracks.
It will work fine if you enter the begin/end points BEFORE you rip the original CD (and probably if you do it in a file before you import it into the iTunes library, but I haven't tried that). If you already have the song in the library, don't forget to rename the cut version (for example by adding "(CUT)" to the title) to avoid disastrous mixups.

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#5 Post by lipi » Fri Mar 14, 2008 11:36 am

J-h:n wrote:
lipi wrote:well, "zipthebird" didn't ask for it to be burnable, necessarily, but: no, when you burn a track from itunes, it will burn the entire track and ignore the begin and end points you set. it won't burn partial tracks.
It will work fine if you enter the begin/end points BEFORE you rip the original CD
sweet! i didn't know that worked. i'd never tried setting the points before ripping.

when you do that, does it rip just the section you selected?

i'll experiment this weekend, i guess.

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J-h:n
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#6 Post by J-h:n » Fri Mar 14, 2008 4:36 pm

lipi wrote:when you do that, does it rip just the section you selected?
Yup. I think it was Lawrence who mentioned it here a while back. A bit of work, but it's a great way of permanently trimming unwanted intros, lengthy applause etc off songs.

I don't know if you can make iTunes fade out the song at a given point instead of cutting it sharply. That would be nice in some situations, including zipthebird's, but you probably need some real editing software to do it.

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Lawrence
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#7 Post by Lawrence » Wed Mar 19, 2008 10:53 pm

lipi wrote:
J-h:n wrote:
lipi wrote:well, "zipthebird" didn't ask for it to be burnable, necessarily, but: no, when you burn a track from itunes, it will burn the entire track and ignore the begin and end points you set. it won't burn partial tracks.
It will work fine if you enter the begin/end points BEFORE you rip the original CD
sweet! i didn't know that worked. i'd never tried setting the points before ripping.

when you do that, does it rip just the section you selected?

i'll experiment this weekend, i guess.
Under "Options" in the "Get Info tab" for any given song, you can set the start and stop point. If you do so BEFORE you rip, then, yes, it sill rip only the "selected" (read: "desired") section and you cannot broaden it back to the full length because it did not record the full length. Doing so allows you to use the trimmed song in any MP3 program/player.

If you select the start and finish time AFTER you rip it to MP3, then it just internally edits the start/stop time within ITunes, only, and you can change it back later.

I also try to use the "Get Info" tab to program all the MP3 tags before I rip a song, as well, such as BPM, year, artist, etc. Doing so makes it so they are in the MP3 tags, not just ITunes internal database.
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trev
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#8 Post by trev » Wed Mar 19, 2008 11:48 pm

In my experience, if you burn a CD it WILL burn it based on your edited start-finish times. ie: if you make it end after 1:30 in iTunes even after you have ripped it, it will burn it to 1:30 on the disc. The burned disc will not contain the end of the song, but your iTunes file remains editable.

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#9 Post by straycat » Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:09 am

trev wrote:In my experience, if you burn a CD it WILL burn it based on your edited start-finish times. ie: if you make it end after 1:30 in iTunes even after you have ripped it, it will burn it to 1:30 on the disc. The burned disc will not contain the end of the song, but your iTunes file remains editable.
Seconded. I've made a lot of use of this facility.

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#10 Post by lipi » Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:53 pm

i suspect this is a change that came in somwhere along the way, then.

i know that itunes (for mac, i don't use the windows version) version 6 did not burn just the selection if you selected after ripping.

i also know that current versions will store everything (except rating, but including bpm, etc.) in the id3 tag, not the database.

i think lawrence and i both remember things from version 6 (or previous) that are not true anymore.

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Lawrence
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#11 Post by Lawrence » Sat Mar 22, 2008 11:48 am

trev wrote:In my experience, if you burn a CD it WILL burn it based on your edited start-finish times. ie: if you make it end after 1:30 in iTunes even after you have ripped it, it will burn it to 1:30 on the disc. The burned disc will not contain the end of the song, but your iTunes file remains editable.
Not sure if that was a rejoinder or a supplement [or a rip on my typing "sill" instead of "will" 8) ], but to clarify what I meant, I use "ripping" to refer to saving it from CD to MP3, and "burning" to refer to saving from a computer file (e.g., MP3 or wav) to a CD. If you edit (namely, reduce) the time settings in the "Get Info" -> "Options" tab before doing either process, the saved result (rip or burn) will be saved at that trimmed time setting and you cannot recover the unsaved portion without re-burning/re-ripping. The "trim" becomes a permanent edit in the copy. But the time settings on the original source (CD or MP3 or wav file) will of course remain unaffected and changeable/editable because the "trimmed" source material is still all there.
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