Hydrogenaudio Forums > mp3 seek time

roentgen

Jul 15 2006, 00:27

for an ~1h length mp3 the seek time is terrible

After doing some tests:
- foobar 093 with fade on seek 100ms: jumping in the middle of the song takes 2-3 secs
- foobar 093 without fade on seek: 1-2 secs (maybe just my imagination but this is what I get)
- foobar 083 behaves slightly faster (but still qualifies for 'terrible'

)
- winamp 504: INSTANTANEOUS
- WMP: INSTANTANEOUS

Note: this applies only to mp3's not flac or any other format

guruboolez

Jul 15 2006, 01:25

Slow MP3 (and only MP3) seeking is explained in the FAQ:

QUOTE

# Q: Why is MP3 seeking so slow?
# A: The MP3 format doesn’t natively support sample-accurate seeking, and sample accurate seeking is absolutely required by some features of foobar2000 (such as .CUE playback). MP3 seeking can’t be optimized neither for CBR files (frame sizes aren’t really constant because of padding used), nor for VBR files (both Xing and VBRI headers in those files contain only approximated info and are useless for sample-exact seeking). Therefore MP3 seeking works by bruteforce-walking the MPEG stream chain and is appropriately slow (this gets faster when you pass through the same point of file for the second time because seektables have been built in the RAM).

http://www.foobar2000.org/FAQ.html

roentgen

Jul 15 2006, 01:43

Now that you've point it out I remember reading it back when I registered for this forum. But... since I had no problem with it up until now I forgot about it.

Still.... clicking on the seekbar does not qualify for 'sample-accurate seeking', as there's no possibility to go exactly at a specific frame. Going half a second sooner or further wouldn't be noticeable and I guess this is the current implementation for winamp and WMP.

guruboolez

Jul 15 2006, 02:02

I suppose that it would be hard to mix two different seeking engines: one (accurate) for cuesheet and a second one (approximative) for basic seeking. I would appreciate such hybrid seeking mode, or simply to make a choice between two modes in the advance options tab

kjoonlee

Jul 15 2006, 02:22

Probably not possible.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=8862

With 0.8.3, you could embed the MP3 file in an MP4 container for fast seeking in foobar2000. I don't know if the MPEG-4 tools are still available in 0.9 or if old MP3-in-MP4 files will work in 0.9.

kjoonlee

Jul 15 2006, 03:42

Update: MP3-in-MP4 files work with 0.9, although AFAIK the tools to create them are not bundled with 0.9.

roentgen

Jul 15 2006, 03:51

QUOTE(kjoonlee @ Jul 15 2006, 12:42)

Update: MP3-in-MP4 files work with 0.9, although AFAIK the tools to create them are not bundled with 0.9.

Thanks for the info. I've previously used matroska but somehow I dislike it mainly because has non-standard tagging system (DATE_RELEASED, etc) and always complains about some mp3 header error

sony666

Jul 15 2006, 05:19

QUOTE(roentgen @ Jul 15 2006, 08:27)

for an ~1h length mp3 the seek time is terrible

After doing some tests:
- foobar 093 with fade on seek 100ms: jumping in the middle of the song takes 2-3 secs
- foobar 093 without fade on seek: 1-2 secs (maybe just my imagination but this is what I get)
- foobar 083 behaves slightly faster (but still qualifies for 'terrible'

)
- winamp 504: INSTANTANEOUS
- WMP: INSTANTANEOUS

Note: this applies only to mp3's not flac or any other format

I can't confirm this

Just tried with my longest mp3 file (Oum Kalsoum - Enta Omry, a 59 minute live recording), right after starting playback I jumped near the end. That took less than 1 second, and after that everything was instant.
It's not a huge problem... try MPC for real headaches

0.9.2

thuan

Jul 15 2006, 19:41

You can try mp4box (google this) and make a converter profile for it to wrap mp3 in mp4, haven't try it myself but I think it should work, or you can write a batch file and use mp4tag commandline in the batch file to tag (this is getting complicated). Luckily I have no such long mp3 file.

roentgen

Jul 16 2006, 04:20

QUOTE(kjoonlee @ Jul 15 2006, 12:42)

Update: MP3-in-MP4 files work with 0.9, although AFAIK the tools to create them are not bundled with 0.9.

QUOTE(thuan @ Jul 16 2006, 04:41)

You can try mp4box (google this) and make a converter profile for it to wrap mp3 in mp4, haven't try it myself but I think it should work, or you can write a batch file and use mp4tag commandline in the batch file to tag (this is getting complicated). Luckily I have no such long mp3 file.

Well... it seems that finding the right mp4 converter tools is not an easy task

Do 'they' have an official website. Is there an official tool?
I read something about Nero Recode but I can't find the standalone app or, as usual is bundled with other Ahead products?
As the last resort... does someone have a link to the foobar 083 mp4 tools plugin?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

kjoonlee

Jul 16 2006, 04:31

foo_mpeg4u.dll was probably bundled with "special" installers.

edit: It seems it was also bundled with "normal" installers as well.

roentgen

Jul 16 2006, 05:08

Thanks. I got it working. No more playback gaps.

Is there any reason why this plugin is not included (developed) anymore with foobar?

thuan

Jul 16 2006, 17:20

mp4box's here

Slotos

Jul 17 2006, 05:07

Matroska?

andro77

Aug 20 2006, 10:34

QUOTE(thuan @ Jul 17 2006, 01:20)

mp4box's here

And here's YAMB, a nice and easy frontend for mp4box... it accepts also chapters, but only in ogm format, not CUE... it's possible to add cue later in foobar, with "tools->mp4 chapters", but it hangs for like 10 seconds every time you change song... it's still much faster to have cue+mp3, even if it's so damn awkward....

roentgen

Aug 20 2006, 12:00

even more awkward: I make mp4 using fb2k 0.83 and add chapters using 0.93

thuan

Aug 20 2006, 17:57

Well you can use mp4box with foo_run pretty good and no other frontend madness.

andro77

Aug 21 2006, 07:03

QUOTE(thuan @ Aug 21 2006, 01:57)

Well you can use mp4box with foo_run pretty good and no other frontend madness.

yeah I thought about it but I'm no good in ('$_things_like_this$')

is it only my problem that it hangs every time I change song inside of a "chaptered" mp3? might be helpful to know... thanks