mp3 music file wont play

[Ryoshu]

ok ive ever had this issue before until now. ive searched the forums and foud one similar thread but their issue was their files werent ogg or mp3. in my case my files are already in mp3 format. its odd because other files work its just only these 2 music files wont. anyone know why?

 

[_Shadow_]

Assuming mp3 is playable on a media player:

I can't be sure but mp3s come with a variety of bit rate (44100 is the default).

Imagine bit rate as what resolution is for a picture.

Now some of them have dynamic bit rate, not static. This is done so some parts have higher bit rate than others, because of different sound quality needs on the same song.

Thus high quality is obtained in  less space, in an optimal way.

This needs a special decoder of course.

If such encoding was used, you should recode them to static encoding bit rate 44100, for the whole length of the song.

Question: Why not ogg?

 

[Ryoshu]

didnt have a converter for it and i have troub le trusting free online converters

 

[_Shadow_]

Oh. Try converting the non working mp3 to simple mp3 at 44100

By the way....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacity_(audio_editor)

 

[Solo]

Hm, so does VXA not support VBR MP3s?

 

[Diretooth]

Audacity is a good free audio editor. All you have to do is label the sections where the music would loop, make sure that the timer at the bottom of the screen is set to 'samples', and when you go to export it, you'd have to add an extra row and label both rows at the bottom as 'Loopstart' and 'Looplength'. (Then, you'd input the nine numbers for where the loop starts, and the numbers for the loop length.)

If you're in a hurry, I could do this for you. I'd need the file to do it, though.

 

[_Shadow_]

Hm, so does VXA not support VBR MP3s?

I am not sure. I just suggest solutions.

Never tried VBR and only once imported mp3.

And then I decided that ogg is my way.

What I am sure about is that VX Ace works with standard mp3.

That's what I suggest here.

 

[Shaz]

Converting to ogg would be better anyway, because even if you get your mp3 to play, it's larger and it won't loop properly.

 

[Andar]

Just as general info:


MP3 is not a single audio format, it's a family of audio codecs. And in the quest for smaller download sizes there have been a lot of different audio compression codecs been added to the MP3 family. The different bitrate option mentioned above are only one of several possible differences between MP3-Files.


But because of the different codecs, it is not guaranteed that any computer can play any MP3-File - and especially older programs can have problems with playing files that use newer codecs.


The only possible solution in such a case is to recode the MP3 into a different (and hopefully compatible) compression codec.


Usually that is to recode into an ogg file instead of mp3 file, because ogg has fewer compatibility problems, but you can try to recode into a different MP3 instead of ogg. However, you still need a program to recode audio to do this. Audacity is one of the better free programs to do this.

 

[_Shadow_]

Converting to ogg would be better anyway, because even if you get your mp3 to play, it's larger and it won't loop properly.

This is absolutely true.

Just as general info:

MP3 is not a single audio format, it's a family of audio codecs. And in the quest for smaller download sizes there have been a lot of different audio compression codecs been added to the MP3 family. The different bitrate option mentioned above are only one of several possible differences between MP3-Files.

But because of the different codecs, it is not guaranteed that any computer can play any MP3-File - and especially older programs can have problems with playing files that use newer codecs.

The only possible solution in such a case is to recode the MP3 into a different (and hopefully compatible) compression codec.

Usually that is to recode into an ogg file instead of mp3 file, because ogg has fewer compatibility problems, but you can try to recode into a different MP3 instead of ogg. However, you still need a program to recode audio to do this. Audacity is one of the better free programs to do this.

@Andar I actually wonder why mp3 became the standard for every music playing device instead of ogg. I mean ogg files are well compressed having VERY satisfying quality. If you are looking for HI-FI sound you don't use mp3 anyway, you go straight to FLAC right? So what's the big deal about mp3? Ogg is better and works really sweet with VX Ace, while it saves a lot of disk space. 

 

[Maliki79]

I don't know why MP3 is the standard from a technological perspective, but I suspect it may have some reason from a financial one.

Just like the whole VHS/Beta thing.

Beta video cassettes were cheaper and recorded higher quality video than VHS but those in charge decided to make VHS the standard anyway.

Talking about it makes me wanna go look it up!

Might do some hunting later.

#End Rant



Edit:  Okay.  Turned out it was mostly VHS' superior recording time paired with it's slightly cheaper hardware that made the difference.

 

[Andar]

MP3 was developed earlier, OGG came later - a lot later. By the time OGG was a valid alternative, too many solutions (the DVD format for example) were set to MP3.

 

[Galenmereth]

By the way, Ace has built-in support to play .ogg files; it does not have built-in support for the .mp3 format. This means that if a user doesn't have an mp3 codec installed on their computer, the audio either won't play, or the game will crash. For example, I had one player testing my game that had it crash a lot at two places. Nobody else could reproduce it, including me. So I got him to give me his Window's crash log, and lo and behold: ffdshow (one possible decoder for the format) crashed when the game tried to play a .mp3 sound effect. I converted it to .ogg, and the problem was solved.

tl;dr: Don't use .mp3 in your games.

 

[Solo]

What about WMA? Is that better and less crash-prone than MP3?

 

[Galenmereth]

Hmm, it seems I might be wrong here. Ace uses DirectShow to play .mp3 files (and .wma) files, but this can fail on Windows 8 from what I understand. But in my case, the problem might've been the user having set another decoder than default in windows environment to deal with the .mp3 format, and this decoder crashed.

Even so, .ogg is the safest format as it doesn't rely on an external codec to play these off

 

[_Shadow_]

MP3 was developed earlier, OGG came later - a lot later. By the time OGG was a valid alternative, too many solutions (the DVD format for example) were set to MP3.

That makes sense. Still ogg is been out there for a while. It is time to ogg the world I guess!

Good thing VX Ace supports it.  

 

[Ryoshu]

Hm, so does VXA not support VBR MP3s?

it does support mp3 files but just somehow something prevents these 2 files from working. i have many other mp3 files that work fine

 

[Ryoshu]

ok converting it into ogg did solve the problem thanks guys.