Subject:Clueless about markers......

Posted by: KenJ62

Date:9/10/2012 5:38:41 PM

Seems like such a simple and routine operation.....

I have nine hour-long speaking sessions recorded with a clip-on recorder. I downloaded to PC, opened SF Studio and added all the sessions, one after the other. After minor editing I found the start of each session and added a "marker."

After saving out the audio as a 16 khz audio file in mp3 format the audio plays with entirely adequate audio fidelity but I can't get any player to skip to the next session. I use a USB drive which is playable on my portable stereo and VLC, WMP etc on the PC.

The Help file doesn't give a clue. Searching here gives me a clue.....
It seems there is some "convoluted" way to do this. I just don't know how yet.

As I said in the beginning, this should be obvious, straight-forward and easy. What am I missing?

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:9/10/2012 10:22:04 PM

Probably the MP3 format doesn't support markers. The only way i've accomplished this is to save a separate MP3 file for each section.

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: musicvid10

Date:9/11/2012 12:13:22 AM

Workaround is to save your file as PCM .wav first.

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: KenJ62

Date:9/11/2012 12:40:19 AM

I want to thank you two for your replies - just before my diatribe!

We have the "obvious" capability to add markers to video and expect our DVD players to behave, moving properly from chapter to chapter. But audio? Noooooooo!

This is utter nonsense. I come from an earlier technological era and I still think cassette tape was better!! At least EVERYONE had the same media and it could be played everywhere by everyone. Now I can put my digits on a variety of devices but I am not likely to be able to play it back unless I supply the playback device.

@musicvid What would be the advantage of the WAV file? My one hour sessions transferred onto my PC as WAV files. I combined them in SF Studio with the intent of using the "obvious" timeline markers to create chapter marks and saved them out as a single mp3 file. <shrug>

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: rraud

Date:9/11/2012 8:54:18 AM

One of the advantages of saving to WAVE is having the option to edit or re-edit w/o further quality loss, and and to encode different resolution MP3s. Once an MP3 is saved, there's no way to return it to it's pre-MP3 resolution/quality without starting from scratch from the original source files. Every time an MP3 is saved / re-re-saved, quality loss occurs. Wave files can and should be saved regularly whilst editing in the event of a crash.. either the OS or SF. MP3s or other lossy formats should be the absolute last step. If that's all that needed, the 'master' WAVE file can eventually be deleted.
The segments should be separate files. The MP3 files can be made into a 'playlist' which will be accessible on most players.
FYI- On spoken word material, a mono MP3 file will yield better quality at the same kbps res and file size as one encoded in stereo.

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:9/11/2012 1:54:16 PM

But, as per the original question, saving it as a WAVE file may store the markers, but that still doesn't get the markers into the MP3 file. While the advice to have a WAVE copy of the file is good for other reasons, it doesn't address the question at all. For all we know, Ken is already doing this anyway.

As far as chapter markers on a DVD, note that these are not markers stored in the video .vob media file on the disc. They are indexes stored separately in the .ifo files. Most disc authoring software is nice enough to take the markers you insert in your NLE and convert them into chapter points for you and this hides the fact that they're not file markers. Certainly someone could build an MP3 player that used the indexes stored in an index file created from the markers when encoding into MP3, but no one has ever put forth an industry wide standard and there apparently hasn't been enough market demand to make it happen.

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: KenJ62

Date:9/11/2012 4:21:54 PM

Thanks again for the help.

Source files are from a Sansa Clip+. The files transferred to my PC according to MediaInfo are 384 Kbps bit rate, mono, 24 KHz sample rate, 16 bits bit depth, PCM Wave. The unit simply clips onto my shirt and picks up conference speakers surprisingly well. It is capable of storing hours of recordings; I have never begun to fill the memory.

Steps:
1. Forget using the 'marker' facility in Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio! It cannot be used for chapter markers. (Don't try to edit like video!)
2. Precess each file individually in SFAS, cutting unwanted portions and applying signal processing as needed, saving out out any portions intended to be separate files.
3. Save the processed files as an mp3 (using the '16 Kbps, Voice Audio' template) using Save As with an alpha-numeric sequence that is likely to sort properly on the target devices/players.

This does now work for me. Exception: copying to a USB thumbdrive and plugging in to my stereo system, the LAST selection always appears first in the display instead of the first selection! The chapter selection works properly up and down though.

Something for the future: look at the ID3v2 Chapter Tool for embedding chapter information into mp3 files.

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:9/11/2012 5:31:10 PM

CDs seem to work pretty well universally with consecutive tracks that play without problems for everybody. You don't need to dig back as far as cassettes. And cassettes couldn't skip to the next 'marker' at the push of a button.

Your complaint is that your player cannot sequence separate MP3s.

geoff

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: KenJ62

Date:9/11/2012 6:34:17 PM

Player sequences separate mp3s just fine. Players cannot utilize chapter marks within one contiguous mp3. That needs to be fixed/implemented.

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:9/11/2012 9:44:13 PM

I'm not sure that you can put markers inside an MP3 file. Every software i've seen that saves markers when encoding MP3 creates a separate file to hold the marker information. Same with MPEG.

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:9/11/2012 9:45:56 PM

Geoff, not that i would dare contradict someone such as yourself, but i own three cassette decks that all have a "skip to next" feature. True, it's looking for a blank space of 2 seconds or more followed by more audio rather than a marker, but hey, markers are normally just for showing where the next song starts anyway.

One of the decks even goes backward to the previous "marker" as well.

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:9/11/2012 10:07:44 PM

Works on 3 minutes pop songs, but anything sophisticated with pauses or quiet spots tend to confuse those old clunkers ;-)

geoff

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: rraud

Date:9/12/2012 9:46:09 AM

In SF, when a MP3 is encoded , markers are normally saved in the file.. however, I have not come across other app.s that wll 'see' them.
Yes, when creating a MP3 playlist, in Winamp for instance, a separate .m3u file is created.

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: jaykayess

Date:3/10/2014 2:53:51 PM

I once spent two and a half hours carefully inserting markers at critical points in a five-hour recording. Then I saved the file. The next time I re-opened the saved file, all the markers had disappeared!

After a lot of trial, error and heartburn, I realized that if you uncheck the "Save metadata with file" box, the markers don't get saved. In other words, the markers get saved in the .SFK (metadata) file.

Subject:RE: Clueless about markers......

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:3/10/2014 3:25:23 PM

Not in the .sfk file, but in the media file itself if the file type supports it, or in a separate .sfl file if the media file doesn't. The .sfk file only holds the picture of the wave form, nothing else.

Still though, if you uncheck that box the markers won't be saved anywhere even if the media file does support them.