Converted files won't play through - Please help!

[tcylinder]

I'm 1/4 way through converting 2000+ files from mp3 to WMA. In setup I selected VBR and normalization. I'm converting them to WMA as I am low on hardrive space and am trying to maximize space on my 1g portable player.

All seemed to be going well until I checked a few of the finished files only to realize that they are either incomplete or won't play through to the end. The time info in the tag seem to be correct but I tried playing various files with Winamp, Windows Media Player and the songs cut off at about 1-2 minutes in. I tried songs from 3 or 4 different folders and they are all cut off.

I hope I can fix the problem as I was deleting the source files due to lack of space.

Any idea what might be wrong. I appreciate any help with this as I don't use this softward too often.

Thanks,

John

[ChristinaS]

Re: Converted files won't play through - Please help!

I assume that your original mp3 files corresponding to the wma's that are incorrect are OK?

Do they all have the same exact settings concerning channels, frequency and bitrate?

I can think you may get into trouble if some of your original mp3's are not stereo or their frequency is not 44.1KHz .

And what settings did you select for wma? is it wma9 or wma9.1 ?

What version of dMC do you have? OS?

[tcylinder]

Re: Converted files won't play through - Please help!

Answers to questions and additional info:

Yes the original MP3's did not have this problem.

MP3's most likely have different settings as they are from a variety of sources.

Codec is WMA 9 according to file tags.

I couldn't figure out where to get the version info for dMC but I saw something that referred to 11 if that makes sense.

I'm running Win2K.

Thanks for the assistance.

[ChristinaS]

Re: Converted files won't play through - Please help!

Version info would be from dMC Configuration, one of the programs in your dBpowerAMP group.

In W2K you don't get WMP10 so wma9 make sense.

I think you should upgrade to the latest version of dMC - this is 11.5 .

You should try to figure out what the badly converted files have in common.

[LtData]

Re: Converted files won't play through - Please help!

Also, mass-reencoding many different files from different sources can result in undesired outcomes, as you have discovered. Also, deleting the source files is NEVER recommended as if the conversion does not work properly, as it did in your case, you are stuck without that file.
Try to determine what is breaking the conversion. Is it bitrate, channels, frequency, or are the original files corrupt?
Once you determine what is breaking the conversion, try to convert files that do not have this characteristic, and convert the other files. Then, try converting to an intermediary format, such as WAV, and then to your desired file and see if that works.
(Note that converting to WAV will result in the loss of any tags, so another lossless format would probably be preferable, such as Monkey's. Until the FLAC tagging problem is fixed, which should be soon, you should avoid FLAC.)

[Spoon]

Re: Converted files won't play through - Please help!

What are you playing the WMA files with? Windows Media Player? Hold the mouse over the file, does the length shown seem short?