mp2 to mp3 conversion

[musik]

I´m living in Germany and here in Europe we have hundreds of satellite-stations sending in DVB-standard (digital video broadcasting). That is not only video, also radio-programs are sent with interesting music. The format is Mpeg 1 layer 2 (mp2). Most stations are using 48000 kHz, 192 kbps, channel-mode Stereo, encoded by Lame. Some are in higher quality with 256 kbps, a few with Joint Stereo.
I´d like to burn this music an CD and play it on DVD-, CD- or mp3-player, connected to my hifi-equipment, but that is not quite simple.
Most players do not accept .mp2-format, some do, after renaming the files to .mp3, but not all.
now I bought the dBpowerAmp 11.0 and tried to convert from .mp2 to .mp3, but that is a very time consuming job: with my Intel Pentium 4, 3,0 GHz PC I needed about 30 minutes for about 68 minutes of music. The same files are converted to wave-format within 6 minutes!
I suppose that the mp3-format is rather similar to the mp2-format (otherwise renaming couldn´t work). Is that correct???
If so it should be possible to have a very fast but high quality converter which uses automatically the same bitrate and channel-mode of the original mp2-file. The quality of the mp3-file should be the same as of the mp2-file. I think it cannot be better after any conversion.

In Europe a lot of users would be glad to have such a tool.

[adaywayne]

Re: mp2 to mp3 conversion

I´m living in Germany and here in Europe we have hundreds of satellite-stations sending in DVB-standard (digital video broadcasting). That is not only video, also radio-programs are sent with interesting music. The format is Mpeg 1 layer 2 (mp2). Most stations are using 48000 kHz, 192 kbps, channel-mode Stereo, encoded by Lame. Some are in higher quality with 256 kbps, a few with Joint Stereo.
I´d like to burn this music an CD and play it on DVD-, CD- or mp3-player, connected to my hifi-equipment, but that is not quite simple.
Most players do not accept .mp2-format, some do, after renaming the files to .mp3, but not all.
now I bought the dBpowerAmp 11.0 and tried to convert from .mp2 to .mp3, but that is a very time consuming job: with my Intel Pentium 4, 3,0 GHz PC I needed about 30 minutes for about 68 minutes of music. The same files are converted to wave-format within 6 minutes!
I suppose that the mp3-format is rather similar to the mp2-format (otherwise renaming couldn´t work). Is that correct???
If so it should be possible to have a very fast but high quality converter which uses automatically the same bitrate and channel-mode of the original mp2-file. The quality of the mp3-file should be the same as of the mp2-file. I think it cannot be better after any conversion.

In Europe a lot of users would be glad to have such a tool.

I assume you are talking about a compressed audio stream which requires a receiver or computer with a D/A converter to be able to listen to it. After all, you can't "listen to or hear" compressed audio files. So why not just record it to the format of your choice (even wave) whilst listening to it? There are many such recording programs, including tha "Auxiliary Input" feature of DMC.

[musik]

Re: mp2 to mp3 conversion

I assume you are talking about a compressed audio stream which requires a receiver or computer with a D/A converter to be able to listen to it. After all, you can't "listen to or hear" compressed audio files. So why not just record it to the format of your choice (even wave) whilst listening to it? There are many such recording programs, including tha "Auxiliary Input" feature of DMC.

1. I allready have recorded hundreds of hours on my PC in mp2-format. These files I must convert in order to hear them on a dvd- or mp3-disc-player.

2. The dvb-System allows to record so called Transponder-Stream-Data, that are up to 20 radio-programs simultanously. The program to select one channel after the other writes the output in (original sended) mp2-format (very fast).

So I have the need to convert mp2 to mp3 data a lot of time and would be very very glad if that would work in a few seconds and not in hours. :o

Under http://www.harmoniccycle.com/hc/musi...fo-frauFAQ.htm I have found:
Layer-1, Layer-2, Layer-3
MPEG describes the compression of audio signals using high performance perceptual coding schemes. It specifies a family of three audio coding schemes, simply called Layer-1, Layer-2, and Layer-3. From Layer-1 to Layer-3, encoder complexity and performance (sound quality per bitrate) are increasing. The three codecs are compatible in a hierarchical way, i.e. a Layer-N decoder may be able to decode bitstream data encoded in Layer-N and all Layers below N (e.g., a Layer-3 decoder may accept Layer-1,-2,-3, whereas a Layer-2 decoder may accept only Layer-1 and -2.)

Therefore I hope very much that it should be very easyly possible to modify (f. e. modify the headers etc.) the mp2-file so that it is a real mp3-compatible file instead of reencoding. In addition the result should be in a better quality.

I´m shure many Europeans would like to have this feature. :smile2:
Thanks a lot in advance.

[ChristinaS]

Re: mp2 to mp3 conversion

What have you tried so far from Codec Central?

The .mp3 codec should decode .mp2 (the way I understand it), so you may convert to .mp3 proper, with the specs of your choice. Am I missing something here? I don't have .mp2 files to test this with.

On re-reading your post it seems you want the ability to simply modify the header of an .mp2 file rather than re-encode to .mp3 . Well, in as much as any modification to any portion of a file implies opening it, reading it, making the change and writing it back, I think this would be hardly longer than a re-encoding. But since you're worried over loss of quality, minimal as it may be, I guess the way would be to convert to uncompressed .wav and then to .mp3. Longer, yes, but more importantly, more space consuming if done in large batches especially. In the end any possible quality loss from an .mp2 to .mp3 conversion may be imperceptible.

[musik]

Re: mp2 to mp3 conversion

>>What have you tried so far from Codec Central?
I´m not an expert, so I don't understand this question, sorry

>>On re-reading your post it seems you want the ability to simply modify the header of an .mp2 file rather than re-encode to .mp3 .
That´s correct!

>>Well, in as much as any modification to any portion of a file implies opening it, reading it, making the change and writing it back, I think this would be hardly longer than a re-encoding.

I completely disagree: As I wrote in my first post 68 minutes music need 30 minutes to CONVERT from mp2 to mp3, to convert to WAVE only 6 minutes. Both conversions need the complete I/O-Process - and wave a lot of more writing! I suppose that the selection "convert from mp2 to mp3" first decodes to wave or similar and than encodes to mp3, what´s needing a lot of CPU-Power (even on my Intel Pentium 4 3,0 GHz). In this process the quality will not become better, may be not really worse. But I´m sure that a modification from mp2 to mp3 would run within less than 1 minute if the sound-data is compatible.

Are the sound data of mp2 completely upward compatible with mp3?
What are the differences between mp2 and mp3?

[ChristinaS]

Re: mp2 to mp3 conversion

I don't know. I only offered a possible solution.

[adaywayne]

Re: mp2 to mp3 conversion

I´m living in Germany and here in Europe we have hundreds of satellite-stations sending in DVB-standard (digital video broadcasting). That is not only video, also radio-programs are sent with interesting music. The format is Mpeg 1 layer 2 (mp2). Most stations are using 48000 kHz, 192 kbps, channel-mode Stereo, encoded by Lame. Some are in higher quality with 256 kbps, a few with Joint Stereo.
I´d like to burn this music an CD and play it on DVD-, CD- or mp3-player, connected to my hifi-equipment, but that is not quite simple.
Most players do not accept .mp2-format, some do, after renaming the files to .mp3, but not all.
now I bought the dBpowerAmp 11.0 and tried to convert from .mp2 to .mp3, but that is a very time consuming job: with my Intel Pentium 4, 3,0 GHz PC I needed about 30 minutes for about 68 minutes of music. The same files are converted to wave-format within 6 minutes!
I suppose that the mp3-format is rather similar to the mp2-format (otherwise renaming couldn´t work). Is that correct???
If so it should be possible to have a very fast but high quality converter which uses automatically the same bitrate and channel-mode of the original mp2-file. The quality of the mp3-file should be the same as of the mp2-file. I think it cannot be better after any conversion.

In Europe a lot of users would be glad to have such a tool.

Starting from a 3:04-minute wave file, I converted it using DMC to mp2, 44100Hz, 192Kbps. Then, again using DMC, I converted that file from mp2 to mp3 with the same frequency and bitrate. This mp2 to mp3 convertion took 14 seconds on my 2.8GGHz Pentium 4 computer.

May I suggest you uninstall the mp2 and mp3 DMC codecs (from Control Panel>Add/Remove programs). Then reboot . Now go back to Codec Central and download the Lame mp3 codec and the mp2 encoder and reinstall as prompted by the install wizard.
Arnie

[musik]

Re: mp2 to mp3 conversion

May I suggest you uninstall the mp2 and mp3 DMC codecs (from Control Panel>Add/Remove programs). Then reboot . Now go back to Codec Central and download the Lame mp3 codec and the mp2 encoder and reinstall as prompted by the install wizard.
Arnie

I´d like to follow your suggestion, but I´m not an expert. Sorry to ask you again for help. Shall I uninstall the complete dMC-System (there is an uninstall-command under Start>all programs>dBpowerAMP MusicConverter)?
Under system>software I can delete programs, but only the complete dBpowerAMP MusicConverter. Where is it possible to uninstall only the mp2 and mp3 DMC codecs? Which control panel do you mean?

First I had downloaded the free test-version, than I paid and downloaded again without deleting the free version. Could that be the reason for the slow conversion?

Thanks a lot for your help in advance.

[ChristinaS]

Re: mp2 to mp3 conversion

I´d like to follow your suggestion, but I´m not an expert. Sorry to ask you again for help. Shall I uninstall the complete dMC-System (there is an uninstall-command under Start>all programs>dBpowerAMP MusicConverter)?
Under system>software I can delete programs, but only the complete dBpowerAMP MusicConverter. Where is it possible to uninstall only the mp2 and mp3 DMC codecs? Which control panel do you mean?

First I had downloaded the free test-version, than I paid and downloaded again without deleting the free version. Could that be the reason for the slow conversion?

Thanks a lot for your help in advance.

It would be in Start > Control panel > Add/Remove programs. You look for individual enties there prefixed by dBpowerAMP and suggesting the particular codec or program you want to uninstall.

[adaywayne]

Re: mp2 to mp3 conversion

It would be in Start > Control panel > Add/Remove programs. You look for individual enties there prefixed by dBpowerAMP and suggesting the particular codec or program you want to uninstall.

Thank you Christina. And Musik, if that doesn't solve your problem, only then should you do a complete uninstall of dBPowerAmp programs and codecs (again through Start>Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs).Reboot (restart) your computer and reinstall the whole dBPA programs and codecs again. It sounds like a big hassle but should take no more than 15 minutes.
Good luck!