Splitting a track in iTunes
Have any tracks hanging out in your library that were ripped from CD, and therefore include one song, a few minutes of silence, and then a bonus track afterward? Well, this tip—an oldie but a goodie—will show you how to split the two using nothing but iTunes.
Simply find out the time code for when the hidden song starts, make sure you have the track selected, go to File > Get Info or hit Command-I on the keyboard, go to the Options tab, and then set the Start Time to the start of the hidden track. Hit OK, and then with the song still selected, go to Advanced > Create AAC Version, or select the same option by right-clicking on the track. After a short conversion process, you’ll have two copies of the track, one of which is complete, and one of which contains only the hidden track. You can then go back in, set the Start Time on the original to 0:00 and the Stop Time to the end of the first track, leaving you with both songs intact but none of the silence.
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1
Nice! I wish I knew of this earlier this winter! I had a track I wanted to use in an iPhoto slideshow, but it had a “hidden track” at the end that I did not want as part of the slideshow soundtrack. I ended up using a third-party tool to edit the MP3 file to remove the hidden track. Did not realize that I could’ve just as easily done it in iTunes itself. I’ll remember this trick the next time I need to do this.
Posted by SkiBumMSP on August 9, 2011 at 8:10 AM (PST)
2
Remember, using “Create AAC version” of an already compressed audio track will re-compress the audio again, resulting in further degredation of the audio. Best done from the original CD/uncompressed audio source for the best quality results, or use a program called Fission (Mac only, I believe) which, by some kind of voodoo, re-encodes the audio with NO FURTHER LOSS.
Posted by Nigel on August 9, 2011 at 1:28 PM (PST)
3
To split an mp3 without the need to reencode anything, you could use mp3directcut.
Posted by Bernie on August 9, 2011 at 3:43 PM (PST)
4
I’ve been doing this for years, but always did it when I was importing the CD.
Posted by Galley in Greenville, SC on August 9, 2011 at 3:55 PM (PST)
5
You can also handle this without transcoding, editing, or re-importing the CD. Just make a copy of the native file and re-add it to iTunes as its own track, then in Get Info set its new start time as well as a new track name and number. Of course, you would also set the stop time of the original version.
Posted by rockmyplimsoul on August 9, 2011 at 5:23 PM (PST)