Ableton Forum

Hi,

I've got about 20 mp3s in a Live layout and just yesterday Live decided to re analyse all my songs which took more than 10 minutes before I was able to use it ... I know this mp3 support is basically converting mp3s to wav and storing them in a special folder but why did Live deleted the re analysed tracks and recreated... what if I have 50 mp3s in my next project... I wouldn't want to go through the same process.. did this happen with anyone else?

thanks
Ash

you sure it was actually analyzing them and not just converting them to .wav?

had you cleared out your decoding cache between sessions?

i just opened a set of .mp3's that had their associating .wav's in the decoding cache still and it did not have to re-decode all the .mp3 clips.

the amount of time it takes to decode depends on your processor power,
but on my G4 1.5ghz on average, it takes Live about 3 seconds to decode .mp3 to .wav per 1 minute of audio. a 5 minute track will take 15 seconds, and if you have 20 of them... that would take my computer about 5 minutes to decode it all.

what cpu do you have?

also, while yea it takes some time to decode, the good news is you can start playback of tracks before they are finished decoding. (so long as they've already been warped and have an associative .asd file for the clip). You can play back the sections of the file that have been decoded. And Live will decode the clips you click on first, so if you just can't wait to start your set while decoding is in action click on the clips you want to decode first and start their playback. The rest will decode in the background during playback.
I've done this during gigs and haven't had any stability issues related to playback while decoding.

15 seconds ??? most of my tracks will take around 2 minutes (9 min songs)
and my laptop is quite fast i thought .. 1.83ghz P-M .. 512mb ram 80gb 5400 RPM .. i think i might need a bit more memory, is it a good idea ??

Hi neodjandre,

If this occurs in version 5.0.1 then maybe this is the problem (or the solution).

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25938

...
Change log Live 5.0.1 - 5.0.2b1

...
[12] Bug: Re-Decoding mp3 files
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Platform: All

Mp3 files with modifications dates in the future (however created) would be re-decoded each time when drop in.

Status: Fixed

>>>

So check it out with the newest beta.

Cheers palmer

i think if the cached mp3 goes in the wav format and when u exit delete cache wav and when u restart live the program will recache the mp3 in wav and reanalysed teh song...and change the warp

maybe i'm wrong...
that's what i find myself

in preferences at misc
in decoding cahe minimum free space..by default 500 MB
and down the maximum cache size...

maybe that's the solution...
but i'll go for wave direct, it's more eficient and safe i think
i don's want to rewarp 20-30 song every day

jaxxtwo wrote:i think if the cached mp3 goes in the wav format and when u exit delete cache wav and when u restart live the program will recache the mp3 in wav and reanalysed teh song...and change the warp

My experience is, if I delete the cache, the mp3s will converted again to wav but the analyzing and the warping didn´t get lost, cause they are written in the .asd files in the neighbourhood of the mp3s.

So I think the problem maybe depends on the issue described above (in my last post).

but
maybe I am completely wrong and it´s something completely other

who knows

cheers palmer