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[ansky]

A few variables here, so I'm sure there is a simple solution amongst the changes... I just upgraded my HTPC to Win 7 Ultimate, and used that opportunity to go from MC13 to MC15.  Naturally, now I can't remember exactly which MP3 converter I was using in MC13...

Anyway, I keep most of my music in two separate locations -- one at full bitrate, and one for loading my handheld, where I keep bitrates in the 128Kb.

Since the two upgrades, conversion (using the MP3 converter that came with MC15) is failing 70% of the time... I've tried the ape converter, which only fails at at 15%.... But, I've never had a problem before, so thought I'd throw myself on the mercy of the forum...

Thanks.

[DarkPenguin]

You might try enabling logging and mailing a crash log to j river.

[ansky]

Great suggestion...didn't even know that option was available.  One problem -- I went in and set it to just log "Encoders" and then restarted MC...  After the next conversion failed - no log was generated...  Might you have a suggestion for some other type of events to log?  I'm going to try a bunch one at a time....  Thanks!

[DarkPenguin]

Enable them all.  Crash it.  See what crashed.  Change your options and crash it again.

[ansky]

Got it... is there a support e-mail address I can send findings to?

[JimH]

If you have IE9 RC installed, please read other threads here.

[ansky]

IE8... I was able to get things converting in "stages"... going down from 320 to 256 to 192 to 160 to 128... time-consuming, but not the preferred method.

[DarkPenguin]

That makes no sense.  Anything else failing on that machine?  Can you do conversions with microsoft's player?

[Alex B]

IE8... I was able to get things converting in "stages"... going down from 320 to 256 to 192 to 160 to 128... time-consuming, but not the preferred method.

I agree with DarkPenguin, that makes no sense. For instance, the process to convert 320 > 256 is exactly same as the process to convert 320 > 128. The only difference is in the command line that is passed to the LAME encoder. There should not be any technical difference.

In addition, you should never re-encode a lossy file to the same or any other lossy format, but if you must, you should not do it more than once.

Transcoding from a lossy file to another lossy file is a bit like taking photocopies of photocopies. The first copy may look as sharp as the original, but each subsequent pass will further degrade the quality. At some point the quality loss will become apparent.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcoding#Drawbacks:

Drawbacks

The key drawback of transcoding in lossy formats is decreased quality. Compression artifacts are cumulative, so transcoding causes a progressive loss of quality with each successive generation, known as digital generation loss. For this reason, transcoding is generally discouraged unless unavoidable.

It is better to retain a copy in a lossless format (such as TTA, FLAC or WavPack for sound), and then encode directly from the lossless source file to the lossy formats required. For image and audio editing, one is advised to capture or save images in a raw or uncompressed format and edit (a copy of) that version, only converting to lossy formats for distribution.