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[lalittle]

I seemed to have found a bug which results from using MC9 to encode with VBR and playing the songs back on the iPod.  The new 2.0.1 firmware did NOT fix this issue.

Using Media Center 9 to encode with VBR, the VERY end of the songs will be clipped when playing back on the iPod. This is not normally noticeable on songs that end with silence, but when the song goes right up to the end of the track (like on albums where one song leads directly into the next) you can notice it.

Track 1 (Drowned World) on Madonna's "Ray of Light" is a good example of this.  When it changes to Track 2 (Swim) half of the word "religion" is cut off.

The issue is specifically related to Media Center 9's VBR mp3 encoding combined with the iPod's playback. If I use Nero instead of MC9 to encode VBR, I do not get this issue. If I play the mp3's directly off my hard drive through MC9 instead of from the iPod, I do not get this issue. If I use MC9 to encode CBR, I do not get this issue. The clipped end requires all three conditions to be met -- MC9 to encode, VBR instead of CBR, and iPod to play.

I'm using the default MC9 mp3 encoder (LAME.)

An interesting point is that when I tried re-ripping and encoding the files through MC9, the end of the song was still clipped, but not by as much -- i.e. it got closer to the end of the song before getting clipped. The amount that is cut off, in other words, is not consistant. What IS consistant is that at least "some" of the end is always clipped when using MC9 + VBR + iPod.

Larry

[SteveG]

Larry,

This is a hard one to chase down. I have seen some similar reports on the iPod thread recently. In doing some testing here, it seems really sporadic. Try doing the conversions from within MC and see if you can find a file that always gets truncated. If you can, please send it to me. If you cannot get MC to fail, please see if you can find a file that always fails when doing the on the fly conversion and send it to me.

Thanks,

Steve (steve @ jriver.com).

[Wobbley]

Larry,

Are you using the "MP3 Encoder VBR", which is the LAME dll, or are you using the "External Encoder" and setting the encoder to LAME.exe?  If you're using the "MP3 Encoder VBR", try changing your encoder to the "External Encoder" and pointing to the LAME.exe file (if you don't have it for some reason, download it from http://home.pi.be/~mk442837/ (click any of the "lame-3.93.1" links, regardless of country origin, then extract the downloaded files into your "Plugins" directory in the J River/Media Center directory).  Just for the test, use these command line parameters after setting up MC to use the external LAME encoder (the "Parameters:" string should look exactly as I've typed it below):

%IN %OUT --alt-preset standard -Z

Now, encode a few files using the external encoder and copy them to the iPod and see if these recently encoded files are cutoff.

Let me know what you discover.

Wobbley

[lalittle]

Steve -- I sent you an mp3.

Wobbley -- I'll try pointing to the LAME encoder via the "external encoder" option.  (Yes -- I have the lame.exe file in the plug-ins folder.)

I just noticed that in Windows Media Player, the time runs out before the song is finished.  The whole song plays, but the counter shows "5:09" for the last couple seconds.  This seems related to what's happening -- i.e. the iPod cuts the song according to the counter, which clips the end.

Larry