MP3 conversion speed and ?wav tags

[rwsimpson]

Two questions from a new user:

1. I am converting lossless WMA to MP3, what would be a reasonable speed to expect for such a conversion on a reasonably fast Pentium 4 machine? I am getting about 3x , thought it would have been faster.

2. I previously tried converting lossless WMA to WAV, but seem to have lost all of the tags except song title, is that a limitation of the WAV format, or did I set something wrong as far as tags on the conversion?

Thanks!

Ross

[Wayne]

Re: MP3 conversion speed and ?wav tags

The WAV format doesn't support tags so that is why there aren't any.

As to the speed when converting to mp3, what is dMC priority set to?
Have you attempted a test conversion? If you did what speed did you get?
What are the frequency and bitrates you are converting from and to?

Wayne

[rwsimpson]

Re: MP3 conversion speed and ?wav tags

The program is set to "above normal" priority.

I am converting from lossless WMA to MP3 160 bit rate.

I did not do a test conversion, I am just running it and it is going without error, but at the 3X speed. 4500 files so it is going to be a while...

Ross

[LtData]

Re: MP3 conversion speed and ?wav tags

Lossless files always slow down the conversion, as they have to be uncompressed before you can re-compress them to mp3. Try converting a file to WAV and then see how long it takes to convert that file to mp3 as a test.

Also, what is your CPU speed, hard drive speed (normally 5400RPM or 7200RPM), amount of RAM, Operating System)?

[xoas]

Re: MP3 conversion speed and ?wav tags

Also, resetting your conversion priority to "Below Normal" may actually help the conversion go faster.

Checking the Test Conversion speed of a sample WMA lossless file will pretty much tell you how long it takes for dMC to read the file (the first step of the conversion, the rest of the time is converting and rewriting the file to the new format).

Best wishes,
Bill

[Spoon]

Re: MP3 conversion speed and ?wav tags

Lossless or lossy source shouldn't make any difference, it is perhaps more down to the settings chosen for the mp3 encoder, try alt preset fast.