VBR mp3

[Millwood]

Is there any way to correctly position VBR mp3 streams short of reading from the beginning. I ask because it appears the SB doesn't get it really right. 7.4 seems better, but that may be a superstition.

So my question is - what should I expect here?

I do note that VBR files are reported as CBR in more info.

My sources of VBR files are Winamp CD rip and lame.

[andyg]

Do you mean seeking in VBR? 7.4 should indeed be better. Please file a bug and attach a file if you feel it's not working. Of course, they must be encoded with LAME for anything to work properly.

[Millwood]

Thanks Andy. My real, poorly stated question was - should I expect it to work in 7.4, and how well.

I think you've said that it should, so I'll keep using it and open a bug if I have a problem.

The thing that I was seeing in 7.3 was that I'd play maybe an hour into a long track, and when I paused, it would restart nowhere near were it had paused. And when I tried to find a spot whose time I knew (say 1 hour into a 2 hour track) I would wind up someplace else. I have not seen that in 7.4, but that's very preliminary.

(These long tracks, if you're curious, are ripped from a good rtsp stream from WBAA and converted to mp3 by lame.)

And finally - they do show up in more info as CBR. Does that mean I'm messing up generating a good header?

[andyg]

Pausing and then resuming playback should never change the position in the stream. And if you have a VBR file that is reported as CBR that is probably a bug.

[Millwood]

My bad - I was stripping first few frames from the lame output for reasons not worth going into - and loosing the VBR header. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

[andyg]

Ah yep, those are very important bits. :)