Audio Error

[rvrrat_jim]

When I try to View the wave form I get,

Audio Analysis Error
Can't init Conversion

I have the latest and greatest software, I've tryed 6 other songs and keep getting the same thing. Anyone have any idea's ?

Thanks Jim

[Don]

See this PDF from LOR. Most likely you will need to run the audio files through Audacity.

http://www.lightorama.com/PDF/Audacity_Lame_128Kbps.pdf

[Guest guest]

Sounds like the audio file is VBR instead of CBR?

Now I'm not sure if that does make a difference in the SE, but in the S2 SE I've encountered that problem with VBR MP3's and had to convert them to CBR.

[LOR Staff]

VBR (Variable Bit Rate Encoding) is a beast to deal with. WMP, the internal media system that things like the Sequence Editor use, usually fails miserably at it.

The problems I usually run into while programming WMP with VBR MP3 stuff is that it simply reports the wrong number of frames and/or an incorrect duration. The calling program, like the sequence editor, can't do much about that so all kinds of strange things start happening - including crashes.

In this day and age, I'm not sure what VBR encoding even buys us anymore. Back when it was created, it was the middle ground between keeping music files small vs not loosing a lot of quality - as the encoder needed more quality, it turned it up. When there was less quality needed, it turned it down.

At the time when it was done, hard drive space was still relatively expensive as was internet bandwidth - most of us were still using 56K modems. Today however many of us have broadband, and 3TB of space runs less than $120.

Just to give you an idea.... In 1981 1 Gigabyte of space cost $340,000. Yes, you read that right -- Three Hundred Forty THOUSAND DOLLARS. Today, that cost is LESS than $0.04 -- four CENTS.

So... When ripping music, just rip it to CBR, even at an insanely high bit rate. I personally can't hear much difference after 192k, but feel free to go to higher if you like.

[Guest guest]

One thing to note here, if you are using an mDC Mini Director or the DC-MP3 Showtime Director unit to run your show from an SD Card, many MP3's WILL NOT PLAY if they are above 192k! So I rip all my CD's as the default to CBR and 192k using the "OLD STANDARD" in WMP.

Never had any issues with 192k, but 256k and 320k, the show would stop dead and just hang there.

So just a word of advice and a warning for those using any of the LOR MP3 Directors and SD cards to run their show, 128k to no higher than 192k yields the best results with these hardware units.