HydrogenAudio

Lossy Audio Compression => MP3 => MP3 - General => Topic started by: Billytheonion on 2010-09-07 20:20:55

Title: TLEN - XLD
Post by: Billytheonion on 2010-09-07 20:20:55
The latest version of XLD has added a option to the Lame MP3 encoder  "Append a TLEN (track Length) tag" it is turned on by default after some searching i really can't find out what it's for.

Wondering if someone could provide some info on it.

Thanks:)
Title: TLEN - XLD
Post by: dv1989 on 2010-09-07 20:30:38
It appears to be required for Windows/WMP and probably other applications to report the correct track length. Refs from a forum Google search for "MP3 TLEN":
* http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=57142 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=57142)
* http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=56751 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=56751)
Also: According to the ID3v2.4.0 frame reference (http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames), and logically enough, it enables seektables and thus better seeking in VBR files:
Quote
Audio seek point index

  Audio files with variable bit rates are intrinsically difficult to
  deal with in the case of seeking within the file. The ASPI frame
  makes seeking easier by providing a list a seek points within the
  audio file. The seek points are a fractional offset within the audio
  data, providing a starting point from which to find an appropriate
  point to start decoding. The presence of an ASPI frame requires the
  existence of a TLEN frame, indicating the duration of the file in
  milliseconds.
Title: TLEN - XLD
Post by: Billytheonion on 2010-09-08 00:22:20
Thanks.

So it seems it will do no harm leaving it on.