Sound Forge 7.0 - MP 2 Plug-in

[J. Silva]

Hi, everybody, is there a way for me to make Sound Forge 7.0 read and edit MP 2 (audio) files ? Sony itself has one, but it costs $29,95 !

Thanks,

J.Silva

[edDV]

MP3 you mean?

No, buy the plug-in or use Audacity + Lame MP3 freeware

PS: For Sound Forge, it may be better to upgrade. I think the new one includes MP3 and as many other improvements.

[thomseye]

Hmm...

Regardless of whether it could open them or not, it would simply decompress the mp2 anyway... you can do this yourself in winamp (output to wav). Then bring the wav file back into Soundforge and do your editting.

There are tools out there (toolame) that will encode your wav files back to mp2.

Personally, I use wavelab from Steinberg. It opens mp2's and saves to mp2s.

Keep in mind that reencoding to a compressed format will degrade the quality of the resulting audio file. I suggest using the highest bitrate available to offset some of the degradation.

thomseye

[J. Silva]

No, my audio files have the extension .m2a, which i think are MP 2, right ?

J. Silva

[thomseye]

that's mp2 audio... (which program is doing the encoding??)

[J. Silva]

I don't encode these files. I have this satellite pc card that allows me to tune in international radio stations and allows me, too, to record the broadcasts. The files come as .m2a files. It's not worthwhile to encode these files to a better audio format such as .wav because i won't get any improvement when it comes to sound quality, since the "source" is MP 2, right ? On the contrary, in the process of encoding and decoding you always loose some quality, right ? So, there's no point to encode these files. That's why i wanted to know if there's some way for me to edit these files at Cool Edit 2000, which doesn't support MP 2 files, or Sound Forge 7, that needs a plug-in (costs $ 29,95) or any other software that you all may know. I really hope you can help me out.

Thanks,

J.Silva

[edDV]

Sorry for the MP3 confusion
The $29.95 MPeg2 option for SoundForge (mainconcept encoder) is mainly targeted for encoding DV-AVI video/audio streams to DVD or SVCD standard.
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/Products/ShowProduct.asp?PID=614
http://download.sonypictures.com/whitepapers/mpeg_overview.pdf

If all you need to do is convert *.m2a to wav for editing in SoundForge, or to edit *.m2a directly, I don't think this plug-in is what you want. You need a *.m2a editor.

I don't have an immediate solution in mind.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aoffi...r.&btnG=Search

[thomseye]

you must understand that you can not edit any compressed audio file without decompressing it first. this includes mp2, mp3, etc.

there are some applications that will allow you to trim the beginnings or ends of files, but once you try to edit a compressed file there is no way around decompressing it first.

even if soundforge could open mp2 files directly, it would still decompress it to a wav first then allow you to edit the wav file and you'd still have to recompress it to whatever format you'd like.

it seems you want to be able to edit the compressed audio without having to recompress it. there is no such way to do this.

so you're stuck with the mp2 file as it is unless you want to decompress/edit/recompress it no matter what audio editor or plugins you have.

thomseye

[thomseye]

hey eddv... what is a m2a editor? never heard of one. can you give some examples?

[edDV]

hey eddv... what is a m2a editor? never heard of one. can you give some examples?

An audio editor that imports a m2a file. And it would decompress the file.
I never directly edited one either. It was left as an exercise.

My point to J. Silva was that spending the $29.95 on the Mainconcept MPeg2 video/audio encoder option would not allow him to edit m2a in Sound Forge.

[thomseye]

this is the only thing I can think of that might help solve your dilemma.

decompress your mp2's with winamp (output to wav)

edit the file however you'd like with whatever editor you'd like.

compress the resulting wav file to a lossless audio format (do a search for more info... i prefer FLAC).

unless you (for whatever reason) need the final audio file to be mp2, then the flac file should work just fine for you. it's about 50% smaller than the uncompressed wav file.

if file size doesn't matter to you, then just save the edited file to wav and be done with it.

or (again) recompress the wav file to mp3 or mp2... if you use a high bitrate you probably wouldn't notice any quality loss anyway.

i'm done now.

[thomseye]

hey eddv... what is a m2a editor? never heard of one. can you give some examples?

An audio editor that imports a m2a file. And it would decompress the file.
I never directly edited one either. It was left as an exercise.

My point to J. Silva was that spending the $29.95 on the Mainconcept MPeg2 video/audio encoder option would not allow him to edit m2a in Sound Forge.

he wouldn't need to spend money on a program to decompress the mp2 files if he used the "output to wav" function in winamp (which is the same thing as what a plugin for an audio editor would do). he would then import the wav file into soundforge without problems.

[J. Silva]

thomseye and edDV thanks for your kind help.
I thought that it was possible to edit compressed audio file without decompressing it first. Please, just look at thread:https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=193049&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
(see last posts). Anyway, if i can't edit compressed audio file without decompressing it first, i'll have to do as you say (that's what i was doing, actually). The problem here is that i won't get any improvement in sound quality by encoding the files to .wav format, will i ? I mean, since the source is MP2, a lossy format. On the contrary, don't you think i'll loose some quality in the process of decoding and encoding (that's why i wanted to stick with the "original" format - MP 2)? "Space" is not the most important thing to me. Soud quality is. But if the source is a lossy format, what's the point to encode it to a "better" audio format ? Do you know what i mean ? I mean you won't get better quality, will you ? By the way, my files bitrate range from 192 kbs to 256 kbs, depending on the radio stations. So, if you agree that i won't get any improvements in sound quality by decompressing and recompressing again, i would like to have the better quality possible in the minimum "space" possible.

J. Silva

[thomseye]

lets say that the quality of your mp2 files are an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10... (mp2 is a relatively small file size)

now you can leave them that way and they will still be an 8 (and still be relatively small).

if you want to edit them...

you must decompress them which will not affect the quality what-so-ever, so they are still identical and an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.

now you can edit the files...

now you must save your edited file.

if you save as a wav or to a lossless audio file, your files will still be of identical quality. they are still an 8. (wavs are about 7-8x larger than your original mp2, lossless like flac would be about 3-4 times larger than your original mp2)

if you save as a high bitrate mp3 or mp2 the quality might go down to a 6 or a 7. (size would be nearly identical to your original mp2)

the only place you lose quality is when you re-save to a lossy format. as long as you save to a lossless format, no quality is lost *unless you do something funky when editing them or save to a lower sampling rate of something.

the only reason we are even talking about re-encoding them is because you want to edit the mp2's. we need to be able to save the edited file... it's your choice if you want to save to a lossless or lossy format after editing. it's just that if you re-save to an mp3 or mp2 the edited file will sound a bit worse than the original mp2 file (a higher bitrate would sound "less worse"... the lower the bit rate the "more worse")

[J. Silva]

thomseye, just can't thank you enough.
I'll do as you told me. I'll decompress the files to .wav format. Then, edit them with Cool Edit 2000. Then leave the files in .wav format as they'll keep the same quality as the original files. My point was that the files are mainly classical music. And, as you know, it is a kind of music where you can tell much easier the loss of quality. I mean if it were rock and roll music you probably wouldn't notice the difference, when it comes to sound quality, so easy, would you ? I want to store the files in DVD's because it takes so much more files (some are really huge, about 1 Gb, like "operas"). I already have a "DVD Authoring" software program that lets me save the files in a way that makes the dvd's playable in an ordinary DVD player. It is Ulead Burn.Now.

Thank you and edDv for all your help,

J.Silva