convert VBR to CBR

[polkon]

hi mate
i would ask You how to find on hardrive mp3 files that are in VBR?

i have rather large archive of mp3s and its rather foolish make such work without any app
reconverting would give me more more disk space that i need
(i'll reconvert them to CBR with gxtranscoder)

[ChristinaS]

Re: convert VBR to CBR

It's not the fact you used VBR that makes them any bigger than they'd be otherwise. It's whatever the average bitrate ends up being that determines that.

In any case, I don't see any tools to separate automatically VBR as from CBR.

All transcoding between lossy formats will lead to further loss of quality.

Unless you want to lower the overall bitrate significantly, you shouldn't bother. Or if you have a portable device that cannot handle VBR.

[gameplaya15143]

Re: convert VBR to CBR

in my experience VBR saves space and gives you better quality files

if you really want to save space, use ogg vorbis

[ChristinaS]

Re: convert VBR to CBR

in my experience VBR saves space and gives you better quality files

if you really want to save space, use ogg vorbis

Only if you can use it. Not when you need mp3 :D

[xoas]

Re: convert VBR to CBR

i would ask You how to find on hardrive mp3 files that are in VBR?

I am unaware of any really quick and easy way to do this, but I can tell you what I think would be quickest within the dBpowerAMP family of programs. If you use another program for arranging your audio files, your might be able to identify a quicker way.

If you use dAP (dBpowerAMP Audio Player) to store and play your tracks you can call up MMC (My Music Collection, the library for tracks within dAP) and click on the header for the column kbps (which displays bitrate).

This will arrange all tracks in ascending order of bitrate. This does not identify whether tracks are cbr, abr or vbr. However, it may be a safe assumption that your existing cbr files will be at certain fixed bitrates (say 96 kbps, 128 kbps, 160 kbps, 192 kbps and so forth). Abr or vbr tracks will generally have irregular bitrates (129 kbps, 131, kbps, 163 kbps etc). Before proceeding further, you could look at the file tags for some of these tracks to help determine how sound this assumption is (although looking at your problem as you describe it, it does look like the issue is less cbr vs vbr as it is saving file space-here cbr vs vbr might be one variable but converting downward to particular bitrates is equally important: Example: if you convert all mp3 files with bitrates from 129 kbps to 151 kbps to 128 kbps cbr all will end up cbr and you should save space in every case regardless of whether the files being converted were cbr, abr or vbr before conversion).

So then it is merely a matter of selecting the tracks to convert based on kbps (see example above), right-clicking on the group and selecting "Convert To".

Please be aware that while I do trust to the user's judgement as to what their needs are, I do share the reservations expressed by others regarding your project. Unless you back up your existing mp3 files as they are, you will be losing a certain amount of quality and unless everything was ripped by you from cd and your have access to all of those cds (and assuming those cds remain in decent condition) you will NEVER be able to regain the lost quality. As Christina has pointed out, you will lose quality both in re-conversion and also in reducing the bitrate. So unless you are making a very large number of fairly samll changes, I would advise that you consider your problem as being one of storage that you can help address by backing up your existing mp3 tracks as they are to cd-r before these conversions or that you look for ways to increase your system's storage space. But again, the choice is yours.

Best wishes,
Bill