software to optimize mp3 cd, fill up the whole 700 MB capacity Options

[maiki]

Is there any software that can calculate MP3 audio files so that they JUST fit onto the whole MP3 CD? In other words, software that can set the best posible MP3 quality for the audio tracks that would fit onto a CD. In practise: if I want to add 100 tracks that would result in eg. 128 kbps, 20 tracks would result in 320 kbps etc. The source files being standard CD-audio.

[pdq]

How about just creating a table of standard mp3 bitrates vs. the number of minutes that fit onto a CD at that bitrate? All you need is a dozen or so lines in the table and you are done.

[nbarzgar]

How about just creating a table of standard mp3 bitrates vs. the number of minutes that fit onto a CD at that bitrate? All you need is a dozen or so lines in the table and you are done.

Well, the OP asked just that, if I understand him correctly. It's a question I myself would love the answer to. So this comment is not really helpful, since obviously he was giving an example and asked for exact directions/a calculator.

Thanks for any help!

[rohangc]

What about using Burn to the Brim?

Stupid me! I completely misunderstood what the OP was asking.

This post has been edited by rohangc: Dec 18 2008, 12:54

[pdq]

How about just creating a table of standard mp3 bitrates vs. the number of minutes that fit onto a CD at that bitrate? All you need is a dozen or so lines in the table and you are done.

Well, the OP asked just that, if I understand him correctly. It's a question I myself would love the answer to. So this comment is not really helpful, since obviously he was giving an example and asked for exact directions/a calculator.

Thanks for any help!

I thought the actual calculation was rather trivial, but I guess it needs further explanation.

I don't know offhand the exact capacity of a cdrom, but taking 700,000,000 bytes as this value:

700,000,000 * 8 bits/byte / 320,000 bits/second / 60 seconds/minute = 291 minutes and 40 seconds

repeat for 256k, 224k, 192k, etc. and you are done.

This post has been edited by pdq: Dec 17 2008, 13:17

[2Bdecided]

If you were encoding just for that CD, you'd use ABR, with some safety margin if required.

Don't know of any automatic tool.

Cheers,
David.

[senab]

As 2Bdecided says, ABR is the way to go. If you're not restricted to MP3, then the Nero AAC Encoder has a -2pass switch which will mean the safety margin won't be needed.

[Slipstreem]

I can't help but think that you're going about this all back-to-front. Wouldn't you be better off determining a minimum acceptable level of quality in MP3 VBR via ABX testing and using that setting? VBR equates to constant quality, so going any higher would be a waste of space and going any lower would be audibly detrimental.

For example, using LAME MP3 at -V3 would give you just over 9 hours (typically) on one CD-R and would be perceptually transparent to almost everybody. What are you trying to achieve exactly? It would be helpful if we knew the final purpose of said CD.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

This post has been edited by Slipstreem: Dec 17 2008, 15:13

[Kujibo]

It's funny I was thinking of the same application a couple of days ago. I have been manually doing this by making repeated guesses at quality level using LAME to fill up 700 MB CDs. After a few rounds of this I figured an app was probably the way to go.

I thought there would probably be something like this already out there but was too lazy to hunt it down. Sounds like there might not be?

If there isn't I might be able to spare myself some time to write a very simple app to do this. For me, all I need to do is read a subdirectory of FLACs, then encode them with LAME with a VBR setting that will fill up the allotted space as best as possible. A really dumb version would just continually convert until it had found the required quality level, via binary deduction.

A simple command line tool to do this shouldn't be more than a few pages of code I'd think.

As for why I would want this kind of app - A 700 MB CD is often big enough to fit an entire discography on. I would like to have one artist per MP3 CD. I'd rather have quality suffer a bit (it is just car listening for me), or waste bits, and have a discography on one CD instead of spreading it out or merging with other artists. It gets hard to keep track of that way. Of course some artists won't fit on one CD, so maybe there would be an option to fit across multiple CDs. You could even specify a minimum quality and have it auto generate multiple CDs if it won't fit.

This app could even be extended to other things, e.g. media players with limited flash, etc.