Encoding a track
After starting SecondSpin you will see the SecondSpin window. If you have not
already done so, insert the Audio CD you wish to convert into your CD Drive.
SecondSpin should automatically detect the presence of a suitable CD and list
the tracks in it's window, I.E:
#001: Unknown title ........................... (00:02:11)
#002: Unknown title ........................... (00:04:24)
.....(etc).....
The list contains the following information.
o The track no (I.E #001)
o The name of the track (If you have the suitable CDDB file available, or
SecondSpin has been able to download the relevent CDDB file from www.freedb.org)
o The track length (HH:MM:SS)
At this stage, none of the tracks have been selected. To select a track, click
on it with the mouse. A selected track will have a ">" on the left hand side
of it, I.E:
>#002: Unknown title ........................... (00:04:24)
You can also select "All" or "None" of the tracks by clicking on the "All" or
"None" button.
When you have selected all of the tracks you wish to encode, select the way in
which you want SecondSpin to work. SecondSpin can either Transfer the tracks only
and save them as AIFF files and then possibly later convert them as MPEG with
Convert already transfered tracks ("Offline" mode) or decode existing MPEG files
and save them as AIFF files.
Encoding files
Select "Input file selection" from the menu and select the files you'd like to
handle. Currently supported fileformats are:
- Standard AIFF and WAV soundfiles.
Stereo / mono, preferably 48/44.1/32/22.05/16/11.025 kHz for good quality,
but others will be resampled to nearest value.
- Protracker, MED1-3, XM, S3M and MTM
YES, you can convert these moduleformats to all the supported output formats
of SecondSpin.
- SID tunes
- MIDI songs
Requires installed and configured Timidity++ MIDI engine. It's available from the
net. Try links on SecondSpin www pages.
- MPEG Layer 1-3 Audio
SecondSpin can be used to decode mp1/mp2/mp3 files to AIFF or re-encode them to a
different bitrate, eg. converting 128kbps j-stereo mp3 to 24kbps mono mp3.
- All the files can be XPK or PP packed if suitable packages have been installed.
If a selected file will not appear on the listview, the fileformat isn't supported!
The following sections apply for both cd mode and file mode.
Description of GUI selections
You can choose to keep the "temporary" AIFF files as well by selected "don't
delete samples" from the cycle gadget. Unless you have a desire to fill up your
HD with 40Mb+ AIFF files, leave this set to the default "delete temporary sampless".
This delete selection only affects to the AIFFs created by SecondSpin. It will NEVER
delete any input etc. AIFFs.
You can also select the bitrate you wish to encode the track at. Leave this at
the default 192 kpbs unless you have a genuine reason to use a different bitrate.
Greater value means better quality, some guide-default values have been given
at the end of this page.
If you wish, you can change the audio mode that the final MPEG will be encoded
with. This will either be mono, stereo, or j-stereo. In most cases you will use
stereo, or j-stereo. If you don't know what the difference is, try experimenting
with both, and decide which you prefer. J-Stereo is a special trick to only create
a one mono stream and adding the stereo data to the sound by only describing the
differences of the Left/Right channels to the mono core. This mode is usually much
better with lower bitrate stereo encodings, like 128kbps. J-Stereo will give better
quality with lower bitrates, but it also is much slower than stereo!
The MPEG Layer can either be layer 1, layer 2, layer 3 or the special layer 3
(fast) mode. There's also a HiFi layer 3 which gives slightly better audio quality
but is about 20% slower than normal layer 3. Avoid layer 1 unless you want to
really know what mangled Audio sounds like (This isn't SecondSpins fault, layer 1
really sounds that bad). layer 2 and layer 3 are perfectly good choices, but
these day's most MPEG's are encoded with layer 3. Read the following comparision
for more information on these two modes. Layer 3 (NCoder) uses inferior to LAME encoding
program called NCode to mpeg encoding. NCodeR is commercial program.
The VRB (Variable Bit Rate) is a special trick to make better quality streams.
If the data won't fit to the specific bitrate, SecondSpin won't try to force it,
but gives extra bits to the frame instead and thus producing better quality. Files
might come much larger though, so experiment with the VBR value, 0-9, where 0
means best quality possible. The VBR option is a bit hard to master. When using
VBR, the bitrate selection indicates the lowest allowed bitrate! Maximum will
currently always be 320kbps!
A direct quote from LAME USAGE-textfile:
>>Note: VBR is currently under heavy development. Right now it can often result
in too much compression. I would recommend using VBR with a minimum bitrate of
112kbs. This will let LAME increase the bitrate for difficult-to-encode frames,
but prevent LAME from being too aggressive for simple frames:>>
Layer 3 (fast) mode is a special mode developed for SecondSpin. Basically, it is
about 2 times faster than encoding in normal layer 3 mode. It does produce
slightly larger files (only in the region of tens of k, however), and your
results may very. However, layer 3 (fast) produces results which are sometimes
just as good as the normal layer 3 mode under many circumstances. Test it out
and if it produces lousy results, use normal modes instead.. But if you value
very good quality, leave fast mode alone and use Normal/HiFi!
Once you have selected the encoding options you wish to use, click the "start
process" button, or select "Start Process" from the "Project" menu. You can
cancel the encoding process at any time by clicking the "stop encoding" button
or by quiting SecondSpin, but you cannot abort other functions!
Some guidance default values
Normal quality (fast) ....: Layer 3 (fast), 128kbs, j-stereo
Normal quality ...........: Layer 3, 128kbs, j-stereo
Medium quality ...........: Layer 3, 160kbs, j-stereo/stereo
HiFi quality .............: Layer 3 (HiFi), 192kbs, stereo
Best possible quality ....: Layer 3, 320kbs, stereo
If you're going to use bitrates < 112kbps, use mono. If you're going to
use bitrates >128kbps, use normal stereo instead of j-stereo.
Suggested notes conserning encoding speed
- It's actually a good idea to use 192kbps stereo mode with normal or HiFi
setting - it gives very good results and actually very fast!
- VBR slows down encoding.
- j-stereo slows down encoding.
Good tips
#1: Turn the VBR off if you're going to make small files. The VBR is meant
to preserve audio quality in cases where the bitrate setting would
cause the audio quality to drop dramatically. It's not a good idea to
use vbr with standard mp3 files like 128kbps stereo / 64 or 32kbps
mono. Use VRB off instead. However, if you wish to preserve the original
quality, you should use VBR or atleast stereo 192kbps fixed bitrate.
#2: About requester shows some extra information, like the current LAME core
engine in use.
#3: Edit external_commands/encode.script or external_commands/cddaread.script
to suit your system better (ONLY IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!)
If you'd like to use other LAME options than the gui allows, you can
edit SecondSpin:external_commands/encode.script and add the necessary
options to there. But don't do it if you aren't absolutely sure
what you're doing nor what the heck I'm talking about!
The default priority (-3) can be changed if it causes problems. Eg. with
ppc cpus priority 1 could be better.
#4: You can also repack mp3 files with secondspin to another bitrate. Just
select the settings and choose the mp3 like you would choose other
input files.
#5: If cdda program won't work with your cd-rom drive, you can always edit
cddaread.script to support other cdda readers. It'd be great if MakeCD
had an arexx port, but...
More to come...
AG2HTML v2 (c) Lauri Ahonen & Michael Ranner 1996-2000