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[Drowbe]

Perhaps someone could help me out here...I am trying to build a smartlist that IGNORES my VBR files.  

Long story short, I am running Windows 2003 Server to stream music.  What I didn't read in the small-print was that it won't stream VBR MP3s properly (it takes the initial bitrate and streams the whole thing at the rate...much like playing a song at 1/2 speed, etc.)

So, I have a ton of mp3s...only about half are VBR.  I want to create a smartlist that ignores theh VBR files.  I've tried "not bitrate = vbr", but it doesn't work.  I think this is an issue with MediaCenter...it seems to show the initial bitrate under the "Bitrate" column whereas it *should* display VBR under the bitrate column (like other applications).  It plays them fine, but I want to ignore them.

As a workaround, I am doing "bitrate = 128" etc.  However, if the VBR file happens to initially be 128, it is not ignored and plays funny.

Ideas?

[lise]

Hmm.  Most of my viles are VBR, and I haven't found one yet that has a displayed bitrate of 128 (sorting by "bitrate").  Granted, I just did a random check, but I did take a look at many of them, and they were all CBR.

Perhaps you can do this:  view only those files that are 128, 160, etc., set the Action Window to File Type Info, and just scroll down the list (can be done pretty quickly), indicating in a custom field those files that are CBR (then use the field in a smartlist and filter to play only that smartlist). Not elegant, but it should work.

Of course, I offer this suggestion only because I don't think one can search directly for CBR/VBR.

[phelt]

I'm sorry that I don't have an answer for you, but I too would like a way to identify and filter VBR files.

lise's idea for filtering is generally sound, but would unfortunately include any VBR files which happen to average out to CBR presets (128, 160, etc).

Perhaps the J River folks will find time to add this to their seemingly infinite list of user requests  

[Drowbe]

set the Action Window to File Type Info, and just scroll down the list (can be done pretty quickly), indicating in a custom field those files that are CBR (then use the field in a smartlist and filter to play only that smartlist). Not elegant, but it should work.

Good plan; however, I too figure the odds of hitting a VBR with an initial bitrate of 128/160/192 are slim, so I think I will just continue using the smartlist I set up to include only 128/160/192/320 bitrates.   I try to avoid custom fields as much as possible.  

Still, I think MC *should* display the bitrate accurately.  A VBR file is not the initial bitrate, so MC is displaying incorrect information.

[lise]

phelt,

lise's idea for filtering is generally sound, but would unfortunately include any VBR files which happen to average out to CBR presets (128, 160, etc).

Not if you tag the files that are both 128, 160, etc  AND vbr files.  What I meant was: show only 128 and 160 etc files. Scroll through them one at a time, looking at the File Type Info box in Action Window, which shows CBR or VBR.  When you come across a VBR, tag it as such (or tag the CBRs, whichever you have less of).  Then filter.  

I only suggest this because in my case it wouldn't be that time consuming, as I have few CBR files (perhaps 6,000) and a random look at all my 128s showed none as being VBR.  Furthermore, I could scroll through 1 song/full album to determine if the album was ripped in CBR or VBR, then modify the search to eliminate all full albums. Probably down to about 1-2,000 tracks. Not that bad.

[Drowbe]

...but would unfortunately include any VBR files which happen to average out to CBR presets (128, 160, etc).

Is that how they calculate the bitrate of VBR Files?  Using an average?  If so, it seems like it would be much faster just to display "VBR" instead of going to the trouble of averaging the bitrate.  I'm trying to imagine a situation where you'd even want to know the average bitrate...