I've tried mp3direct and a couple of others, but they are not intuitive
enough for my simple minded brain. Is there simple and intuitive a
non-install tool that I can use to do this task? For example, say that
I have book on tape mp3 file that is 300 MB in size, and I want to chop
it to ~30 MB segments each so I can easily advance from one section to
another in my tiny 1 GB MP3 player. I found one but it was shareware,
and it disabled itself after 30 days.
Something that would ask which file, and then how many segments to
break it into would suffice for me. (Note: simple file splitter doesn't
work as MP3 have some size specific requirements for it to work right).
MP3 Book Resizer 1.0
Freeware by Xenolith
In the following paragraphs, mp3 will stand for any MPEG-1 or 2, Layer
1, 2, or 3 file, which covers the file extensions mp1, mp2, and mp3.
Audiobooks are typically made up of large mp3s. I wrote this program to
convert these large files into many smaller ones to make it easier to
listen to them on a portable device. I call this "resizing." I've seen
programs that split one mp3 into many or combine many into one, but I
haven't found one that lets you take any number of mp3s and resize them
into any other number of mp3s, at least without defining a bunch of cue
points. If there is such a program, hopefully this one is more
straightforward.
Resizing can be done based on time, byte size, or number of files. For
example, if you have six 10-minute mp3s, you can resize them into 20
3-minute mp3s or 10 6-minute mp3s, etc. You could also combine smaller
mp3s into a larger file; the input and output file sizes can be anything
reasonable.
The program splits mp3s on frame boundaries and ignores everything in
the input files but valid frames. All values in the time, size, and
number boxes are close estimates of the actual times, sizes, or number
of files making up the output files. It's impossible to be exact
without cutting into a frame. When resizing non-mp3 files, the output
file sizes will exactly be the number in the size field.
The output name pattern box works like this: If you want your output
(resized) files to be named The Book 001.mp3, The Book 002.mp3, etc,
then put The Book *.mp3 in the box.
This program does not write any ID3 tags to the output files because I
consider those files temporary. They should be deleted when you are
done listening, and the original files should be saved. Splitting might
occur in the middle of a word/sentence. That doesn't bother me, but I'd
hate for such files to be posted to a newsgroup.
Features
-supports MPEG 1, 2, and 2.5, Layers 1, 2, and 3
-remembers your last split settings, position/size on the screen, and
column widths
-easy drag and drop/rearranging/sorting/removing of files. You can drop
folders, too
-to sort by a column, click on the column header
-to maximize the width of a column, double-click on the divider to the
right of the column header
-splits on frame boundaries and only copies valid frames into the output
files
-any other file type can be resized; for example several text files
could be concatenated into one file
-displays the number of sync errors in each mp3 and where they are in
the file in hh:mm:ss
-shows each mp3's type and frequency because only files of the same type
and frequency can be resized. Bitrate doesn't matter. Bitrate and time
are shown for no particular reason.
-operates without reencoding
If you're interested you'll find it posted in alt.binaries.freeware
