Mpcut - X11 mp3 frame editor

Version 1.1b

Copyright (c) March 2000, Warren Toomey, wkt@tuhs.org

This program allows you to visualise the power levels in each frame of an MP3 file, select a number of frames, cut out frames you don't want, and then save the selected frames (excluding the cuts) to a separate MP3 file.

Note: If the input MP3 stream uses the bit reservoir (and most do), then the first frame in the selection will be incomplete, as it depends on the previous frame in the stream. You will get some problems on playback. If you disable the bit reservoir when encoding (e.g use --nores with Lame), then this isn't a problem.

Download

Installation

This is my first GUI program ever, and I've only tested it on FreeBSD 3.x and Mandrake Linux 6.0. To install it, you will need: Unpack the tarball (you've probably already done this). Run the autogen.sh program:
% sh autogen.sh 
**Warning**: I am going to run `configure' with no arguments.
If you wish to pass any to it, please specify them on the
`autogen.sh' command line.

processing .
Running aclocal  ...
Running autoheader...
Running automake --gnu  ...
automake: Makefile.am: required file `./NEWS' not found
automake: Makefile.am: required file `./AUTHORS' not found
automake: Makefile.am: required file `./ChangeLog' not found
Running autoconf ...
Running ./configure ...		[ etc etc etc ]
Now you should be able to run GNU make to make the program
% gmake
You should (hopefully) end up with a binary called mpcut in the src/ directory. You can either run it as is, or install it into /usr/local/bin:
% gmake install

Usage

Usage: mpcut [input_file]

Running mpcut will bring up a window with a white rectangle to display the frame powerlevels. You can either open a file by naming it on the command-line, or by using File->Open by the drop-down menus.

After opening an MP3 file, you will see a plot of frame power vs frame number in the display area. The frame numbers are shown on the horizontal scale above the display area. Use the mouse and click-drag to select a region, which will be displayed in red. A single-click will deselect the region.

Note: there is no visual feedback when performing mouse drags. A future version will remedy this omission.

If you click-drag from within the selected region and drag outside the region, the new area is added to the selection. If you click-drag from outside the selected region and drag into the region, parts of the selection will be removed.

You can do Edit->Select All to select the whole file, or Edit->Unselect All to clear the selection.

You can also set a marker by doing a single middle-click. The marker is shown as a vertical blue line. If you then do a middle-button mouse drag, the marker sets the start of a selection, and the end of the drag sets the endpoint of the selection.

You can `cut out' a selected area by using the `c' key. The frames will be greyed out in the display area, but they will never be played or saved to your save file. You can remove all the cuts you have made with the `r' key. You can undo the last cut by using the ctrl-Z keystroke.

Screenshot of mpcut

If the number of frames is too many to fit into the display area, you can use the scrollbar at the bottom to scroll around the file. Note that it takes some time to decode the MP3 file to get the power levels, so the program may appear to `hang' when scrolling on long MP3 files. Once a frame's power level is found, it is cached by the program.

After you have made a selection, you can Edit->Play the selection, as long as you have mpg123 installed. You can also File->Save the selection to a new MP3 file.

Comments

That's about it. Please see the TODO list for features not yet implemented, and remember that this is version 1.1. Feel free to improve it! Any comments and suggestions can be sent to Warren Toomey: wkt@tuhs.org
Mpcut home page: http://minnie.tuhs.org/Programs/Mpcut/index.html