Gottastopbuyinggear Posted July 27, 2016 Share Posted July 27, 2016 I've started recording our rehearsals so that we can all take a leisurely listen and decide what needs to be worked on. I'm using a TASCAM portable recorder, and currently importing the audio files into Logic Express, carving them up into individual songs, and then bouncing each song to MP3 individually. It all takes a bit too long, so I'm looking for a way to speed the process up. A way of carving up MP3s into individual files, removing the trash between songs in the process, would be ideal, so that I don't have to convert to MP3 at the end of the process. Alternatively something similar for WAV files with an efficient way of batch encoding them into MP3. I have both Windows and MAC machines I can use, and could even stick Linux on an old laptop if necessary. Does anyone have any good suggestions for software to try, or ways to do this? From searches I can see there are potential ways to do this with Audacity, or utilities such as mp3splt - I guess I'm hoping that someone here has done something similar and can recommend an approach. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skol303 Posted July 27, 2016 Share Posted July 27, 2016 I think you might struggle to find something that fits the bill here perfectly... off the top of my head I can recommend anything, sorry! The tricky part is finding a software that can distinguish between unwanted noise (as you say "the trash between songs") and the songs themselves. This can be done based on level - in the same way that a noise gate works - but if the unwanted noise is inconsistent, then I imagine you'd run into all sorts of issues with it deleting parts of quieter songs that you want to keep, etc... which would mean you'd have to check everything manually anyway. Very happy to be proven wrong here Someone else might have better experience of this than me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dood Posted July 27, 2016 Share Posted July 27, 2016 REAPER!!!!! It's a great DAW, but I use it exactly in this way when I need to. I can even import video files of rehearsals, snip up the audio then export as an MP3. - So an app that is great for recording is also a brilliant editor too. Visually, as you can see the wave form of when the band is playing, verses silence, you can quickly find where to snip the file up in to pieces. Once done it's a case of doing any audio editing you might want (EQ'ing or chopping out noise etc) then use the built in rendering options to create the file types you want. Reaper works on Mac as well as Windows and available as a free trial which is not limited in any way. Genuinely, I liked the app so much I coughed up for a license then and there - which was many years ago and I have since bought in to the latest version more recently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dood Posted July 27, 2016 Share Posted July 27, 2016 [quote name='dood' timestamp='1469623705' post='3099800'] REAPER!!!!! It's a great DAW, but I use it exactly in this way when I need to. I can even import video files of rehearsals, snip up the audio then export as an MP3. - So an app that is great for recording is also a brilliant editor too. Visually, as you can see the wave form of when the band is playing, verses silence, you can quickly find where to snip the file up in to pieces. Once done it's a case of doing any audio editing you might want (EQ'ing or chopping out noise etc) then use the built in rendering options to create the file types you want. Reaper works on Mac as well as Windows and available as a free trial which is not limited in any way. Genuinely, I liked the app so much I coughed up for a license then and there - which was many years ago and I have since bought in to the latest version more recently. [/quote] Oh yes, and Reaper allows for batch processing too. Set up 10 jobs for ten tracks, come back later to find a folder full of Wav files Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gottastopbuyinggear Posted July 27, 2016 Author Share Posted July 27, 2016 Thanks both. Skol, I might not have been completely clear. I'm happy to do the slicing up and removing the in-between-songs trash bit manually - it's just the effort of manually exporting 20 tracks to MP3 that I'm trying to get over. At the moment I'm slicing up the imported file in Logic Express, deleting the trash, and then bouncing each song individually to MP3, so that might mean 15 or 20 songs. I've done that once, the second time I just bounced a total of 20 songs across four files. I'm having trouble summoning up enough enthusiasm to do even that now! dood, sounds like Reaper's worth a look - I'll have to investigate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigRedX Posted July 27, 2016 Share Posted July 27, 2016 You don't need to bounce the tracks once you've split them into separate regions in Logic. Somewhere in the Audio Bin window there is a command that will make a new file from a region and as it happens off-line it's faster than real-time. Simply select the region you want and apply the command. You do have to do it individually per region, otherwise it combines all your regions into a single file with silence in-between. There is also a box you can tick when you do this that replaces the region with the new individual file in the Audio Bin. Then when you've made all you new files which should only take a few seconds per region, you can select them all and convert them to MP3s. If you also create keyboard shortcuts for the 2 commands you should be able to breeze through the process. Sorry I can't be more specific about the exact commands but I've recently upgrade my Mac and haven't go around to re-installing Logic on it yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SubsonicSimpleton Posted July 27, 2016 Share Posted July 27, 2016 I found that the editing process from one large file was very time consuming, so I came up with a very simple and time efficient solution - I mount my zoom H2N on a mic stand and manually stop/start for each song/take so I can then just bang all the audio files in a zip, upload to google drive and email everyone else a link to the zip file. I record everything in WAV format, and don't bother converting, but I'm pretty sure you could set the tascam to record in mp3 format (the zoom does at various bitrates) and eliminate the need for converting. If the editing is not an issue, and you don't want to record in mp3 format, in audacity you can select a bit of a track and then export it mp3 using the "export selection" option on the file menu which is pretty quick, couple of clicks, name the track and you are done (unless you want to be really anal about the metadata and fill that in). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stylon Pilson Posted July 27, 2016 Share Posted July 27, 2016 (edited) I know how you'd do this in Audacity - after snipping out the between-song-guff, you place a label on the timeline at the start of each track, with the label title being the name of the track. You then use the "Export Multiple" menu item. [url="http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/export_multiple.html"]http://manual.audaci...t_multiple.html[/url] S.P. Edited July 27, 2016 by Stylon Pilson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SubsonicSimpleton Posted July 27, 2016 Share Posted July 27, 2016 Excellent link - the region label method would work really well for cutting out chat between songs, I'll give that a try myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
51m0n Posted July 29, 2016 Share Posted July 29, 2016 Reaper is killer for this Named regions can be rendered faster than real time into mp3s or wavs or oggs or whatever You can decide what tracks to mix for specific regions too if you need to I've been doing this with rehearsals for years Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dannybuoy Posted July 29, 2016 Share Posted July 29, 2016 Are your source files in MP3 format? If so, use mp3splt as it can do the task without affecting audio quality. Every other method mentioned will probably decode/re-encode the MP3 file, which you definitely don't want to do if audio quality is of concern. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JapanAxe Posted July 29, 2016 Share Posted July 29, 2016 [quote name='Stylon Pilson' timestamp='1469627426' post='3099843'] I know how you'd do this in Audacity - after snipping out the between-song-guff, you place a label on the timeline at the start of each track, with the label title being the name of the track. You then use the "Export Multiple" menu item. [url="http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/export_multiple.html"]http://manual.audaci...t_multiple.html[/url] S.P. [/quote] Now that's useful to know! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gottastopbuyinggear Posted July 29, 2016 Author Share Posted July 29, 2016 [quote name='dannybuoy' timestamp='1469820259' post='3101358'] Are your source files in MP3 format? If so, use mp3splt as it can do the task without affecting audio quality. Every other method mentioned will probably decode/re-encode the MP3 file, which you definitely don't want to do if audio quality is of concern. [/quote] Hahahahahahahahaaaa!!! Audio quality! You've not heard my band... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gottastopbuyinggear Posted July 29, 2016 Author Share Posted July 29, 2016 Being less flippant, yes, I've been using MP3. I'll give mp3splt a go sometime, but tonight I'm on my usually rock solid MacBook, on which Logic has just crashed losing me about half an hour of editing, so I'm a tad hacked off. My fault for not saving at the start of the session. Back to the beginning... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lurksalot Posted July 29, 2016 Share Posted July 29, 2016 The bit I used to find a pain was finding the starts and ends , but asking for a good 10s quiet after a the end of each song made It a lot easier to find the gaps ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gottastopbuyinggear Posted July 29, 2016 Author Share Posted July 29, 2016 [quote name='Stylon Pilson' timestamp='1469627426' post='3099843'] I know how you'd do this in Audacity - after snipping out the between-song-guff, you place a label on the timeline at the start of each track, with the label title being the name of the track. You then use the "Export Multiple" menu item. [url="http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/export_multiple.html"]http://manual.audaci...t_multiple.html[/url] S.P. [/quote] Just finished using this method - works like a charm! Thanks for all the input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodinblack Posted July 29, 2016 Share Posted July 29, 2016 [quote name='Stylon Pilson' timestamp='1469627426' post='3099843'] I know how you'd do this in Audacity - after snipping out the between-song-guff, you place a label on the timeline at the start of each track, with the label title being the name of the track. You then use the "Export Multiple" menu item. [/quote] Thanks for that. I use audacity but I just exported everything one by one. That is going to be easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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