How do I cut up a very large music file?

section8joe · Aug 16, 2005

i have a music file that is too big to put on one music cd. How can I cut it up so I can burn them onto a few cd's? What application do I use and how to I go about doing it?

Thanks
Joe

inflexion · Aug 16, 2005

stuffit lets you split files up into custom sizes so try that

trpnmonkey41 · Aug 16, 2005

In iTunes

Ctrl click on the song, set the end time so that it fits on a CD, click ok
Ctrl click on Song and Convert to MP3 (or AAC whatever you are using)
This will create another file in iTunes that will fit on a cd. Now set the start time on the large file to the end time of the first small one you made, change the end time if you have to and convert it again...you will now have two (or more) smaller files

section8joe · Aug 16, 2005

How do you "set end time so that it fits on a CD?

UncSki1218 · Aug 16, 2005

i think hes say that u can change the length of the song by control clicking on it in itunes. then if u convert it to an mp3 in itunes it cuts it to the time you said. then u can burn the mp3 u created to a cd,... then change the start time on the oringal to where u left off and convert that to mp3 and burn it to another cd

walkerj · Aug 16, 2005

section8joe said:
i have a music file that is too big to put on one music cd. How can I cut it up so I can burn them onto a few cd's? What application do I use and how to I go about doing it?

Thanks
Joe

This is an interesting question, since it would mean that you have a .wav or .aiff (or whatever Mac's uncompressed sound format...I forget) that is greater than 650-700 megabytes, or more than 80 minutes. I would imagine that this would be something like a concert, or perhaps a speech by some congressman. Alternatively, it could also mean that you might have a song or concert of speech that was longer than the 12 hours or so that a 128kbps mp3 would be able to present on one 650 megabyte CD disc. This would be an unusual thing indeed, perhaps consisting of audio of say, the Nixon tapes (with "The missing tapes") or something of that nature. This would be quite unusual indeed, but not outside of the realm of possibility.

Anyway from a technical standpoint, and not one that is necessarily a pure Mac solution would be to use the free program Audacity to break this large file up into CD burnable sized ones. This program allows you to copy/cut paste sound much like Garageband, with the caveat that I haven't bothered to learn how to use garageband since I know how to use Audacity. It's very good for say, taking something that was recorded from ...oh, I don't know, the radio or something like that and busting up the long recording into individual songs. Then saving it to the digital music format of your choice. This program is, of course, available for MacOS X.

Keep in mind that the knowledge of being able to use this program, and possibly the program itself might be illegal as far as the Recording Industry Association of America is concerned, since they don't think it is possible to record anything that you can hear. They also think that it is possible to make it impossible to record anything that you can hear. However keep in mind that just because the Recording Industry Association of America thinks something is illegal, it does not necessarily make it so since they are not a legislative or judicial branch of any country's government. They merely think they can convince you that they are.

TTheInfamous1 · Aug 18, 2005

walkerj said:
This is an interesting question, since it would mean that you have a .wav or .aiff (or whatever Mac's uncompressed sound format...I forget) that is greater than 650-700 megabytes, or more than 80 minutes. I would imagine that this would be something like a concert, or perhaps a speech by some congressman. Alternatively, it could also mean that you might have a song or concert of speech that was longer than the 12 hours or so that a 128kbps mp3 would be able to present on one 650 megabyte CD disc. This would be an unusual thing indeed, perhaps consisting of audio of say, the Nixon tapes (with "The missing tapes") or something of that nature. This would be quite unusual indeed, but not outside of the realm of possibility.

Anyway from a technical standpoint, and not one that is necessarily a pure Mac solution would be to use the free program Audacity to break this large file up into CD burnable sized ones. This program allows you to copy/cut paste sound much like Garageband, with the caveat that I haven't bothered to learn how to use garageband since I know how to use Audacity. It's very good for say, taking something that was recorded from ...oh, I don't know, the radio or something like that and busting up the long recording into individual songs. Then saving it to the digital music format of your choice. This program is, of course, available for MacOS X.

Keep in mind that the knowledge of being able to use this program, and possibly the program itself might be illegal as far as the Recording Industry Association of America is concerned, since they don't think it is possible to record anything that you can hear. They also think that it is possible to make it impossible to record anything that you can hear. However keep in mind that just because the Recording Industry Association of America thinks something is illegal, it does not necessarily make it so since they are not a legislative or judicial branch of any country's government. They merely think they can convince you that they are.

Wow... Thanks for this. So with Audasity I can cut up, say a DJ set and put breaks into the tracks and they will in turn be individual tracks? Like Track 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on? Just want to be sure because this is exactly what I need for my DJ sets when I want to put them on CDs to promote. I don't like giving out CDs with the set being only 1 track and 40 to 80 minutes long. I'd like to make it possible for people to pick and choose from what track they want to hear instead of pressing the search button to find the song/track they really want to hear.

I have WireTap Pro, but not sure I can do what I want to do with what Audasity can do. I think anyway.

walkerj · Aug 18, 2005

TTheInfamous1 said:
Wow... Thanks for this. So with Audasity I can cut up, say a DJ set and put breaks into the tracks and they will in turn be individual tracks? Like Track 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on? Just want to be sure because this is exactly what I need for my DJ sets when I want to put them on CDs to promote. I don't like giving out CDs with the set being only 1 track and 40 to 80 minutes long. I'd like to make it possible for people to pick and choose from what track they want to hear instead of pressing the search button to find the song/track they really want to hear.

I have WireTap Pro, but not sure I can do what I want to do with what Audasity can do. I think anyway.

If by a "DJ set" you mean a long recording of what a DJ would play continuously during a party, then take that recording and break out a collection of songs, to save to individual sound files, then yes that's exactly what this will let you do. I use it to break out songs that I record off of iTunes streaming radio. I'll record (with Audacity) the stream for an hour or so then save the resultant .wav (I usually use a Windows machine to do this, since my work supplied laptop is actually a little more powerful than my Mac, plus I have it with me during times I'd be recording; you can do the same thing with the Mac version saving to .aiff) into a large file. Then I'll load up that file back into audacity later and edit it into individual song files (simple copy/paste...copy a selection of music from the main track exactly where you want it, create new stereo track and paste that into the new track, then save that track to a new .wav file.) You can also convert it to .mp3 or other format either while you're doing it or later on (though iTunes is actually better at that for me.) Continue doing this throughout the main track for each song or set of songs you want to pull out. You can also mix/match, insert gaps, fade in/fade out (I use this a lot to make the songs sound less like they were pulled from a stream since Internet DJ's like to fade one song into another) amplify and all that other cool audio editing stuff. I've also been able to stitch together the times when iTunes radio is rebuffering the stream.

It's also a pretty good multitrack editor which for being completely free is not too bad.

TTheInfamous1 · Aug 19, 2005

Thanks for the info. I gave it a try but I cant get it to work properly. When I open a track in it and press play, it runs through the track in less then a second and sounds like a really fast screech. Kinda strange. Or is that how its supposed to work? Maybe I have the settings wrong? Their web help is that helpful either.

walkerj · Aug 19, 2005

TTheInfamous1 said:
Thanks for the info. I gave it a try but I cant get it to work properly. When I open a track in it and press play, it runs through the track in less then a second and sounds like a really fast screech. Kinda strange. Or is that how its supposed to work? Maybe I have the settings wrong? Their web help is that helpful either.

On the one hand, I want to say this is odd. It works fine with my Mac when I opened an AIFF file (and sounded great!) On the other hand, I seem to recall this exact same behavior when I was using it in the Linux version. I also recall fixing it. I will search around a bit because I wouldn't want to be accused of providing frustrating information

It's actually a pretty good program.

TTheInfamous1 · Aug 19, 2005

Great, thanks.

Maybe Im installing it wrong. How would I install this disk image? When I click the down loaded .dmg file I get that icon that kind of looks like a disk drive. When I click on that nothing installs. Should I drag whats in the disk image to a folder this way it copies to the hard drive?

I havent been having much luck with .dmg files lately. How should I install it?

walkerj · Aug 19, 2005

TTheInfamous1 said:
Great, thanks.

Maybe Im installing it wrong. How would I install this disk image? When I click the down loaded .dmg file I get that icon that kind of looks like a disk drive. When I click on that nothing installs. Should I drag whats in the disk image to a folder this way it copies to the hard drive?

I havent been having much luck with .dmg files lately. How should I install it?

Okay, going back to download the .dmg file, this is one of those where you open up the disk image file, and drag the program to your Applications folder. Then toss the disk drive icon into the trash (eject). Run the Audacity application from where you dragged it. So far the only bugs I've found are those that MIGHT have something to do with using a Griffin iMic. I don't think that's the problem though.

TTheInfamous1 · Aug 19, 2005

Thanks. I'll give it a shot after I finish eating and I'll let you know how it goes. Hopefully it'll work out. I really could use this program. And since its free and I dont have to spend money on a decent music editing software makes it so much more better.

I'll post up shortly.

How do I cut up a very large music file?

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