Cutting tracks from an long MP3 file

I was wondering if someone could help me in this area.

Basically I capture some internet broadcasts in long MP3 files.

I want these files to have tracks mainly so if I stop a 2 hour long track in the middle I don't have to fast forward to get back where I left off.

Is there a program that will chop a long track in to some specified intervals (like 5 mins) and insert tracks? Or maybe a program that divides the tracks but still lets me burn with out the 2 sec interval (track v. disc at once?).

One of the broascast (more below) actually has 2 sec pauses between songs. Is there a program that divides the tracks based on 1 or 2 pauses that it can detect?

I don't do much music file editing so I am not wanting to spend too much money but I welcome any suggestions.

BTW, there is a free AOL Radio station called The Martini Lounge that is probably the best mix of exotica, sabp, lounge, spy jazz, cha-cha, mambo, etc. as well as some modern stylings that fit in those categories. The station is not burdened with Frank Sinatra or torch singers.

Thanks for any help,

Tiki Bob

I use Sony's SoundForge for cutting up recordings from my band's practices into individual tracks... which is pretty much the same thing that you are wanting to do...

Not sure what you're using to record, but you can do this with Audacity - and it's free. Just set your labels, then Export multple tracks.

Here are directions on it:
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Splitting_recordings_into_separate_tracks

Cheers,
Rupe

Depends if you have a PC or a MAC.

I use a free program on the MAC called MP3 Trimmer.

i use the old wavepad freeware.....easy to use,lets you save files in all kind of formats...real helpful recording those retro cocktail hour broadcasts too...lol..wait...did i say that out loud?

[ Edited by: savoy6 2008-08-21 16:34 ]

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On 2008-08-21 12:09, rupe33 wrote:
Not sure what you're using to record, but you can do this with Audacity - and it's free. Just set your labels, then Export multple tracks.

Here are directions on it:
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Splitting_recordings_into_separate_tracks

Cheers,
Rupe

I'll second the Audacity motion...it will record anything that is playing on your computer's sound card (even MySpace profile songs :wink:) Also if you have a phone that supports MP3 ringtones you can use it to cut your MP3 files up however you like.

thanks to all for the comments.

rupe, i had already downloaded Magisofts Capture and Audicity.

i just did not know about the scanning for silence feature. and once i found it it looked "turned off" like it was something i had to registar to be able to use.

i have been having pretty good success but there is a lot of variation of the dB levels for silence and the length of time. 26 with 0.90 sec seems to work pretty good.

does anyone use that for Retro Cocktail Hour (of course the don't but I curious to see what setting one WOULD use for such a recording).

btw, is anyone thinking about going to Kansas for his anniversary party?

Maybe a little late, but I wanted to weigh in on this. If you use a normal audio editor (adobe audition or audacity) you will end up editing the audio in wave-format. If you then want to have your newly splitted tracks in mp3's you will have to re-encode them. This is often considered a Bad Thing, since mp3-encoding always makes the audio sound a little bit worse. There is more to it but that's too technical for me.
If you on the other hand just want to burn an audioCD after you have splitted the long file into separate tracks then you will have no degradation of sound quality as long as you save the splitted tracks to .wav or something lossless.
If you want to split your long mp3-file into smaller mp3-files and want to avoid re-encoding there's a way however. A program called MP3 Surgeon Pro can split mp3-s without re-encoding.
Now, re-encoding is actually not so bad if the original mp3 is of high quality (maybe bitrate 160-192 or more) and if you re-encode it to at least the same bitrate.
[edit:spell]

[ Edited by: barfa 2008-08-31 10:58 ]

just a follow up to the helpful ohana.

everything is working pretty good.

barfa, these is a little loss in the wav to mp3 but it is nothing major.

and i am going to ask this question again:

"i have been having pretty good success but there is a lot of variation of the dB levels for silence and the length of time. 26 with 0.90 sec seems to work pretty good." does this sound good to everybody???

finally, i am using this process mostly on AOL Radio (free) Martini Lounge (under Lite Sounds). the music selection is a great mix of Lounge, Exotica, SABP, new Lounge, etc. give it a listen and let me know what you think.