Protecting silent track from Autotrim

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chrisjj
Posts: 115
Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:38 pm

Protecting silent track from Autotrim

Post by chrisjj »

Is there any trick to automatically protect entirely silent tracks from Autotrim?

I have large batches of tracks some of which contain signal with 1-2s of start and end silence, and others which are entirely silent, of varying duration from 10s upward. I have a batch process using Autotrim to trim the start and end silence, but currently it unwantedly trims the entire silence tracks also.

Thanks.
Gord
Posts: 391
Joined: Thu May 21, 2009 4:26 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Protecting silent track from Autotrim

Post by Gord »

It seems a bit strange that you want to batch process files containing complete silence. I can only guess that they are "spacer" files that File Merger will "glue together" with other files later on.

Do you have a way of identifying the silent files? Can you move them to a separate folder, AutoTrim the files with actual content, and then move the silent files back into the main folder for further processing?
chrisjj
Posts: 115
Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:38 pm

Re: Protecting silent track from Autotrim

Post by chrisjj »

Gord wrote:It seems a bit strange that you want to batch process files containing complete silence. I can only guess that they are "spacer" files
They are.
Gord wrote:that File Merger will "glue together" with other files later on.
The destination platform will glue them together later on, but it is not GW File Merger.
Gord wrote:Do you have a way of identifying the silent files?
Any additional way, you mean? :) Sadly not.
Gord wrote:Can you move them to a separate folder, AutoTrim the files with actual content, and then move the silent files back into the main folder for further processing?
Not easily.

GW can distinguish a silent file by e.g. the fact that only it is reduced to zero length by AutoTrim.

But I've not found any trick to make processing (in or outside GW) conditional on this, short of custom code. If only GW had a %duration% variable that could be placed in the output path...
Gord
Posts: 391
Joined: Thu May 21, 2009 4:26 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Protecting silent track from Autotrim

Post by Gord »

Are they plain old PCM WAVE (.WAV) files?
chrisjj
Posts: 115
Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:38 pm

Re: Protecting silent track from Autotrim

Post by chrisjj »

Gord wrote:Are they plain old PCM WAVE (.WAV) files?
No. WMAs and FLACs.
DewDude420
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Re: Protecting silent track from Autotrim

Post by DewDude420 »

The only thing I can recommend is somehow exclude the silent tracks from processing. If they're FLAC; they should be a lot smaller than a file containing audio due to how the FLAC codec works (continual silence is compressed to a 4kbps stream).

The WMA files may do the same; but they may not. I haven't played around with WMA in quite some time to know what it's VBR scheme does.
chrisjj
Posts: 115
Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:38 pm

Re: Protecting silent track from Autotrim

Post by chrisjj »

DewDude420 wrote:The only thing I can recommend is somehow exclude the silent tracks from processing. If they're FLAC; they should be a lot smaller
Good idea. GW BP doesn't have a size filter .... but CMD does, and rather than move the files out of the source folder I can give GW an M3U and exclude them from that.

Thanks DD!
Last edited by chrisjj on Sat Jan 11, 2014 9:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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