mp3Extractor download

A major - irritatingly mostly undocumented - change took place in Winamp 5.5 ("multi-user installation" - yes, Winamp has finally arrived in the world of a multi-user Windows!) that causes a problem with the current full release version of mp3Extractor (sorry, from 2004) - see update!

OS compatibility
Mp3Extractor was initially being developed and tested under Windows ME.
All basic features should work under Win 9x, the download client might not work with very old versions like 95 first release.
Windows XP, has long since invadet most Windows systems including that of the developer of this program, and, of course mp3Extractor is running nicely on this in most cases.
However, Nullsoft was sloppy in supporting the multiple user idea (including limited user rights!) of Windows NT based OS until Winamp 5.5. Thus, mp3Extractor has some shortcomings in this respect also, since it made not much sense for an add-on program to support things that the host application does not.

Version History

04.11.18

Bug fix: A funny problem with the joiner. The joiner list would not accept single files for addition while the list is still empty.

04.10.28

Bug fix: MP3's containing junk data before the first valid frame would lead to the faulty diagnosis of "no valid frames found" when trying to start a new project in mp3Extractor. One encoder front end known to possibly produce this error seems to be Winamp's Steamripper. Thanks to Jan Völker for reporting the bug.

04.08.15

Another major new version.

New: Support for mixed bitrate MP3’s (ABR or VBR): extraction, trimming and joining. (This one was really tricky. I had thought it would be impossible to accomplish at all.) Generated files will have proper Xing header. The only downturns are: 1. The input file will have to be scanned completely before each project session. 2. Control of Winamp has to rest exclusively with mp3Extractor. Even focusing Winamp’s interface is therefore not allowed. Don’t try to outsmart the restriction.

New : Support for wave files (standard Windows audio file: *.wav) in extraction and trimming. Thanks to Martin for testing beta versions.

New : The mp3Corrector. A tool for making mp3 files compatible with mp3Extractor. MP3’s will be cleaned from junk. Variable bitrate MP3’s will be supplied with an appropriate Xing header.

Improvement: "Playing to marker” works more reliably now. Higher precision, less stupid pop-ups. Errors are now down to <20 ms (nominally) and thereby beyond the precision of (frame based) extraction. (Frames are about 28 ms in length.)

Bug fix: Compatibility checking procedures were totally screwed in the last two or three releases. They let you work on files that shouldn’t have been allowed. Complete overhaul. Delegation to mp3Corrector, see there. Thanks to Caryn, who had the tremendous patience of giving me feedback to my attempts at coming to terms with this whole complex.

Bug fix: Weird display effects with marker list. In part, they simply disappeared after migration to new development environment (huh, huh, someone else's fault!).

Supsended feature: Due to persisting problems, always-on-top has been de-activated until all related problems are finally solved.

Minor Bugs:
1. Saved default folders couldn't be changed once they got illegal, e.g. by changes in drive letters or deletion. (Pretty annoying, actually.)
2. Changing the marker list into cell celect sometimes took several attempts.
3. Probably lots of other details I forgot about.

04.04.10

Important bug fix: Solved "division by zero" error when extracting from completely scanned files (such where quick scan failed). This bug was introduced with 040322. Unrelated to fix mentioned with 040328.

04.03.30

Bug fix: Removed a bug in scanner unit present ever since 03.09.15. Quick scan would return frame count one too high in case real frame count is a multiple of padding pattern, usually 49 frames, which is unlikely, but includes the trivial case of no padding at all (which means the padding pattern has length 1!). This error, in turn, would cause an i/o error on trying to extract a file up to the very end, a scenario that also occurs when joining files and trimming left.

04.03.28

Bug fix: Dealt with possible division by zero when scanning MP3 while Winamp is synchronized.

04.03.22

Generally: Lots of new features and custom windows, less pop-ups that have in part been replaced by custom forms.

New and important: Mp3Extractor checks Winamp's output plugin settings to avoid misleading fade in/ fade out effects that can obscure true marker positions.

New: Trimmer routine. Trims input file according to first and last markers.

New: Splitter Wizard. Automatically creates markers for splitting files into equal parts.

New/ Changed: Random Skip, formally known as random play, now with all parameters tweakable. A function that now and then automatically and randomly triggers fast forward.

New: Web Links. Associate Web-Pages to substrings in project names. Then bring up that page by Project-> Link-> Browse [Ctrl B] whenever working on a matching project.

Changed/ added: Pre- and post-extraction windows. All extraction options have moved to a window that appears prior to extraction.

Changed: CleanupExpert window instead of trasher routine. While processing, shows status window when moving large files across volumes.

New: Save button that is enabled when project has changed / not saved when not using auto save.

New features with the MarkerList:
1. Double-clicking the headers will optimize column width.
2. Pop-up menues for copy& paste appear when right clicking on times (for entire row) or cells.

Changes to proceedings when opening project:
1. Relative path relations considered in file lookup.
2. Frame bytes for update checks instead of fileage => no nags when input file tags have changed.
3. When QuickScan fails on input MP3 at open, full scan has become obligatory and is started automatically. No potentially confusing pop-ups.

Changes to processing procedures:
Extractor checks files to be over-written during extraction to find out if theryre being blocked by Winamp.
No synchronization pop-up reminders while processing.

Bug fix: Changed add to playlist. Winamp crash problem finally solved. (Does this work with older vers of WAmp?)

Bug fix with marker list: Finally noticed that other column entries were making funny shifts to the right in case Artist column was empty. Without more words.

Bug fix: Solved, hopefully, in rare cases occuring umotivated "cannot write to disk" error when saving MLF.

Bug fix: Solved problem with initially disabled marker bar after starting new project without save. Other marker bar update issues dealt with.

04.01.11

Important Bugfix: A tiny bug that was "introduced" with main window resizing capability (03.11.14) could lead to weird display effects on systems with certain ratios of screen resolution and Windows system font sizes (large fonts).
New: More options on how to deal with MLFcreation in new projects. See manual section "general project options" for details.

03.12.04

Bugfix: + changed behavior in tagging: Extraction failed on writing empty V2 tags with message "cannot write to file..." - that is, when writing V2 tags had been activated (as is the default) but no tag information had been supplied for any one track.
Now, tracks with no tag information will not be tagged at all - no empty V1 tag will be added either. (No reminders.)
Thanks again to Svein from Norway. If YOU want to get mentioned here, just tell me about the bug you've found. ;o)

03.12.02

Just a little Bugfix: Program was crying for lame_enc.dll which, in fact, it doesn't need. Some dead code that was left over from something i tried out, sorry! Thanks to the folks that reported this.

03.11.14

1. New feature: Added a MP3 joiner utility. Can read tags from source files and tag joined file. Will copy only valid frames from source files: utility can therefore also be used as a MP3 cleaner.
2. New feature: Mp3Extractor's main window can finally be resized...
3. Internal change: Full frame scan (if necessary) now runs much faster by allocating memory in larger chunks.

03.10.11

1. New feature: The marker bar. A graphical representation of marker positions and parts marked for extraction on a time scale. This marker bar also allows for user interaction and offers a new way of browsing input files.
2. Straightened documentation. A new Getting started step by step guide in English within the manual.
3. Bug fix: Solved a compatibility problem with Netscape 6 and 7 in displaying context sensitive help.

03.09.15

0.General comment:
This is the most worked over and modified version since the initial release.
The scan and cutter engine has been fundamentally redesigned.
Project management policies have been changed and the implementation worked over and changed accordingly.
Lots of bugs were fixed. (Hopefully more than have grown elsewhere.)

1. New features:
Whereas all the old scan unit did was to count frames and record their position in the file, the new QuickScan unit takes a more analytical approach. After having looked at the first couple of hundred frames in a file, QuickScan tries to project the findings on the rest of the file and checks if the predictions made there upon actually turn out to be true.
The QuickScan is now applied to every MP3 that is opened in mp3Extractor for the first time, where, obviously, the main objective is to detect variable bit rate MP3's and other unsupported formats. Input files found absolutely incompatible will be rejected.
QuickScan will also fail on all other illegal data, like just a single broken frame, and a full scan is proposed, just to make sure.
Before extraction, if QuickScan was successful, and data is still in memory, only a quick random frame check of the entire file is done, to make sure all the consistencies are not pure coincidence.
If QuickScan failed, a full read out will be performed, in the old fashioned way. But in this case, as, obviously offensive data has been found in the file, extraction will, unlike earlier versions, be done frame by frame - junk will not be carried along. (You can use this to clean an MP3!)

2. Bug fix: As is almost needless to say after the above, a bug in the cutter that would in most cases break the last frame extracted with every track got thrown out with all the old code. (This problem was detected with the new scan engine.)

2a. Bug fix: If the tag entry for Title was longer than 30 characters, in the case of ID3V1 tags, these surplus characters would "leak" into the Artist field.

3. New feature / removed bug: Support for MP3 version 2 layer 3, such as produced by the "MP3 Pro" encoder that comes with Nero Burning Rom.

4. Bug fix: Drag & drop now also works with Win XP.

5. Bug fix: "Always On Top" should, finally, work reliably. |o)

6. Bug fix: Requesting another Play to Marker while, as a result of a previous call to Play To Marker, playback is pausing at marker time, (then and only then) caused a lock-up of a couple of seconds in length - which in turn (after a time out) would result in the other call to be ignored.
Play To Marker is now more consequently terminated on user intervention. The track bar should run more smoothly.

7. Changed Policies:
a. mp3Extractor does, by default, no longer assume that every project should be saved in an MLF. To stick with the behavior known from former versions, make the Option under Options -> Projects.
b. Then, however, new MLF's are now created as soon as they are defined, that is, even before any markers have been set. Selection of a folder can be cut short, if a default directory is set and the corresponding option is set to save MLF in default folder (w/o prompt).
c. But: Any MP3 opened is written straight to history, even if no MLF is saved. This, obviously, goes hand in hand with the fact that MP3's are now scanned before the first (and only the first if scanning was successful) session.
d. If an MLF was created/ opened, with every new session auto save is turned on - unless suppressed by the option under Options -> Projects. Then it will never again turn itself on and you will never again see an auto save reminder.

8. Bug fix: A serious glitch has surfaced: On prompting for a new MLF's location, the program did not enforce the restriction that the MLF have the same name as the MP3. I don't even want to try out what complications could arise from this later (e.g. on trying to re-open the project) if the user had changed the MLF's name - which I'm sure, someone tried. Urgh.
And something in the same league: If a project was initially not saved, but saved later and an MLF of the same name already existed in the folder of choice, the latter would have been overwritten without explicit notice. Shame over me.

9. New feature: The marker list now remembers column widths on exit. Yes, the column widths can be changed by dragging the separators up in the first (fixed) row.

10. Minor new/ changed features:
a. Context sensitive button below counter now offers "Catch from Winamp" if no project is open and Winamp is playing. If in history, a project will be re-opened, else a new project is started.
b. Short cuts for volume.
c. Short cuts for Play, Pause, Stop changed.
d. Extract button.
e. While the mark list is in cell edit mode, the keyboard short cuts for simple Step Back/ Forward change from Home to Shift+ Home and End to Shift+ End, respectively, thereby freeing these two keys that now have their usual effect in editing text cells.

03.08.01

1. Bug fix: Extraction routine locked user interface for far too long while writing id3v2 tags to large output files without giving appropriate feedback to user. (Seemed like a dead lock.) Now, tag is written before audio data is copied out of input file - the former now happens in almost no time.:o)

03.07.31

1. New feature: Support for ID3V2 mp3 tags. Writing any or both tag versions now optional. Limit on length of tag entries removed.

2. New feature: Context sensitive pop-up menu (right click) for marker type.

3. New feature: Installer registers .mlf file extension automatically. Un-installing improved.

4. Bug fix: Play to marker routine now automatically exits when user interferes (e.g. by ordering a jump) - avoiding senseless error messages and wrong offset corrections.

5. Bug fix: Program occasionally could not determine state of ctrl, alt, and shift keys correctly, assumed they were pushed while they weren't. (Messy code got thrown out, now using Win API directly.)

03.07.25

1. New feature: Parameters of Play To Marker (size of step back, pause time, required precision) can be changed by user (Options window).

2. Bug fix: In always on top mode, modal pop-up windows would sometimes (esp. in Win XP) end up BELOW main window instead of on top, thereby hidden and out of mouse access, resulting in an apparent program dead lock (that could only be resolved by closing modal window with help of keyboard, in blind flight, so to say). Though seemingly a minor problem, took quite an effort to solve, changes effect most every part of program, new problems (including such that result in crashes) might surface in certain situations.

03.07.23

0. General comment: First version tested on a Win XP system. Some issues were resolved that are known to apply to all Win NT based OS's (2000, XP, see below).

1. New feature: Playback of synchronized project mp3's resumes at last known position (tape like behavior).

2. New/Changed feature: Winamp detection, localization process reconceived. Added ability to detect Winamp path under NT-based OS's.

3. Changed GUI: Flat icon buttons on main form. Fixed controls' colors for independence from system settings (e.g. under XP counter was black on black). Several minor changes on options form.

03.07.09

1. Changed main form: Play, stop, pause buttons with icons. Made main application window smaller.

2. Bug fix: Project would not open without specifying mlf.

3. Bug fix: Marker list did default to cell select on opening project, initially causing some weird behavior of the string grid.

4. Changed feature: Random play now turns off when Winamp loses synchronization.

1.	While mp3Extractor is running, Winamp sometimes just stops playing on changing items in play list. This happens under remote control from mp3Extractor as well as under direct control.