What does Windows Media Player look at (the ones that come with Windows 98 XP, etc.) to determine the bitrate of mp3 files?

If its within the first 100 frames, can't we force LAME to specially encode those first 100 frames at say a fixed number, or the average bitrate so Windows Media Player will display the correct (or close to the correct) time instead of something absurd like 26 seconds at 500 kbps -

Please don't answer that I should use another player because WMP sux. I personally use either WinAmp or Foobar2k, but I have many friends who, just simply will not use anything else; they're too lazy to download another player, and WMP works just fine for them, it comes with the operating system already.

My question (or suggestion) is posed more for the developers. Is it possible? Make Microsoft's piece of junk display the correct time.

That would be a nice thing to implement in the next release of LAME, and I'm quite certain not something difficult to do.

David Racho

Why should LAME waste bits (or quality) if Microsoft is too lazy to implement Xing / VBRI tag capabilities?

Hmm, I have latest windows media player here, and it showed the length of the file I've tried correctly, only the bitrate came out screwed.

And I must say that your suggestion to make lame workaround wmp problems with some stupid hacks is preposterous. Try asking microsoft to fix their software instead.

to get the correct time you just have to set a TLEN id3v2 tag with the track time. WMP does a decent job of estimating based on the first couple frames but its usually off by a few seconds. As far as bitrate goes, I have no idea how to fix that, as I have no idea how they calculate it (I usually get around 450kbps for --preset standard files!)

Probably using an intentionnaly broken way, as a non free-format mp3 can not go higher than 320kbps.