Split3PM

split3pm is a tool to extract music segments from a larger MP3 file. For example, you might have a long radio capture in MP3 format and you want to cut out a piece of music from it. Before split3pm you would have had to convert the file to Wave and edit it there; now, you can just tell split3pm the time and duration of one or more audio segments and it will extract the files for you.

split3pm has been tested with very large MP3 files (up to 8 hours long), and is much faster for its purpose than any Waveeditor out there. split3pm is Open Source freeware and is available for both Win32 and Linux.

Usage

You use split3pm at the command line by specifiying one or more scripts. Example:

c:\> split3pm radio1.scr radio2.scr

There is no builtin limit on the number of scripts you can specify at the command line. The contents of the scripts are explained below.

Alternatively, you can specify the following options directly

/S<source> ... Name of an existing MP3 file that is to be splitted
/T<Target> ... Name of the MP3 file to be created
/F<Time> ..... Time range, in the format [HH:]MM:SS-[HH:]MM:SS

Finally, you can just give .mp3 filenames and split3pm will dump you information on the length of the file.

split3pm Scripts

This is an example split3pm script:

; this is a sample Split3PM script
Source=d:\mp3\huge-radio-capture.mp3
      
; parts to extract:
33:20-39:00,d:\f0.mp3
1:00:00-1:02:00,d:\f0.mp3
3:00:00-3:49:00,+

As you can see, you can specify multiple segments in one script. There is no built-in limitation on the number of segments. For Linux, the filenames will look different, of course. Comments can be added by the semicolon prefix. You have to specify the time in the format

The "+" in the last file spec tells you that the last two file segments are to be joined. (i.e. both will be written to d:\f0.mp3).

[HH:]MM:SS

Please note that currently the syntax does not allow whitespaces.

Download

The current version number is 1.5. split3pm is released as freeware, without any license attached. Use at own risk.

You can download the binary for Win32 here (6.844 bytes) and the complete sourcecode here (11.455 bytes).
Note: The Linux version is still 1.2. You can download the binary for Linux here (46.615 bytes) and the complete sourcecode here (8.147 bytes).
If you want to compile the project under linux, you'll probably need pmakex, too (106.701 bytes).
A history of older split3pm versions is provided here.

Limitations and future plans

Currently, the time-resolution accuracy is somewhat lacking. That is, it might be off by +/- 5 seconds or so. I will call this a fault of the strange MP3 file format (if you look carefully, you'll find similar problems in Winamp, you know).
Currently there is no support for VBR (Variable Bit-Rate) encoded files.