Windows xp cannot display the duration of VBR mp3 made in lame correctly in explorer/windows media player.
It is correctly displayed in winamp.

Those mp3 can be corrected using this:
http://lrsp.chat.ru/mpxutilw.zip

Is that a bug of lame?

Sorry for my poor English.

It can be a number of things:

1. If you are using ID3v2.x tags in your mp3s, nothing will read your vbrs properly because those tags are stored at the beginning of the file so a player cannot read the info req'd for a vbr file.

2. WMP blows.

-Jeffrey

i don't use idv2, and I have other VBR mp3 made by unknown encoder (no lame tag inside the file) the duration can be correctly displayed. Only those lame made VBR files have their duration displayed wrongly.

And i actually can fix those lame mp3 with the Xing vbr header repair in this package
http://lrsp.chat.ru/mpxutilw.zip
and now explorer and wmp display correct durations.

I suspect that lame made incomplete xing headers

I think WMP does not display VBR file duration and bit rate correctly, and it cannot seek in those files. It can play the files though.

http://lrsp.chat.ru/mpxutilw.zip
Try using this tool to fix the lame VBR mp3!
WMP can display the duration and seek correctly afterwards.

My point is if WMP use the Xing header correctly after the mp3 have been fixed by a third party utility, the original header may contain error, ie Lame does not produce correct Xing headers.

yes it works.

but unfortunately bit rate display is still incorrect.

Oh, I did not notice the error in bit rate.
I don't really care what the actual bit rate is when the mp3 is VBR.
Well....WMP is full of errors......