How to manually tell iTunes how long a track is

March 31, 2006 1:51 AM

How do I manually tell iTunes how long a particular track is?

I have a few tracks in iTunes where the track length is incorrectly reported. One was from using Audacity to remove the blank crap at the end of an album. Others came from *ahem* downloads. Track length doesn't appear to be an ID3 tag as far as I can tell, from loading up an ID3 editor. In fact, the ID3 editor tells me the correct track length, but doesn't list it as an option to change. Is the information stored in an easy to access place in the XML file? If so, is it safe to manually edit? (On a Mac, in case it matters.)

posted by salmacis to computers & internet (9 comments total)

You can change track length by right clicking on the file, choose Get Info and then go to the Options tab and set the stop time (before the blank part starts). This info will stick with the file.
posted by special-k at 2:18 AM on March 31, 2006

Or rather To change track length, right click on the track....
posted by special-k at 2:19 AM on March 31, 2006

Or, presuming that it's just that iTunes has cached the track length on a file that you have changed since importing it to iTunes, you could always remove and re-add from/to your iTunes library.
posted by antifuse at 2:23 AM on March 31, 2006

Is the information stored in an easy to access place in the XML file? If so, is it safe to manually edit?

The XML file is a duplicate of the real non-XML library file. Editing it does nothing.
posted by cillit bang at 2:35 AM on March 31, 2006

Re-encode it. Use the Advanced menu and select "Convert to MP3".

Some VBR encoders are rather crappy in their methods, and causes the incorrect time listing. I've found a re-encode (at the cost of a little sound quality) in iTunes always straightens it out.
posted by Remy at 5:38 AM on March 31, 2006

You can change track length by right clicking on the file, choose Get Info and then go to the Options tab and set the stop time (before the blank part starts). This info will stick with the file.

That doesn't work. I think you can use this feature to tell iTunes to only play part of a file, but it doesn't tell iTunes how long the track actually is.

I'm going to try Remy's suggestion to re-encode to MP3 (assuming iTunes allows me to convert from MP3 to MP3!), and if that works I'll mark it.
posted by salmacis at 6:15 AM on March 31, 2006

It's a poorly encoded/tagged mp3. I've had this issue with a few downloaded dj sets: iTunes reported the length as 28 minutes while another (more forgiving) player reported it as 55 minutes. I could jump around within the track in iTunes and hear all parts, but if I played it straight through it'd stop after the supposed 28 minute mark.

Reencoding with iTunes did not work for me. I had to check a few different mp3 players/decoders before I found one that'd fix the file. Finally I noticed that Audion (Mac OS) would decode the whole thing so I had it export to a .wav file and then reencoded that. There was some quality loss. I'd also recommend hunting around for mp3 repair utilities that analyze frame data. I had some luck with one of those a few years ago.
posted by mikeh at 9:10 AM on March 31, 2006

Re-encoding to MP3 did work, but there was a noticeable drop in volume, which I attempted to correct with MP3Gain. Thanks for your help.
posted by salmacis at 9:31 AM on March 31, 2006

Make a backup copy before you do! Every conversion degrades your sound quality, and ideally someone else will provide an answer that allows you to keep the high quality file.
posted by Ptrin at 11:07 AM on March 31, 2006