gapless playback on ipod 5g!

[podfreak]

I have got 30gb 5.5g ipod with rockbox installed on it, everything's fine but there seems to be too much of gap between playback. Can u help me with it?

[AlexP]

What format?  How were they encoded?  Details...

[podfreak]

It's in mp3 format. Sorry, but what do u mean by how were they encoded?
 

[AlexP]

What encoder did you use to encode them?  MP3 is not natively gapless, but those encoded by lame with a gapless switch (--no-gap? - not sure) include extra information that lets compatible programs such as rockbox play them back gaplessly.

[podfreak]

I haven't used any encoder! I transferred the mp3 from my computer through itunes.

[AlexP]

The MP3s must have been made somehow in the first place.  Did you rip a CD, or were they downloaded from itunes?  If downloaded from itunes then I don't know how they encode their DRM free files - if they don't use lame to properly gaplessly encode them, then as far as I know they will not be able to playback gaplessly.

[AlexP]

OK.

Lame is a program that encodes MP3s, for instance if you rip music from a physical CD.  As you already have the MP3s but not the source (i.e. the CD), don't worry.  You don't want to re-encode lossy (i.e. MP3) files as the quality will nose-dive.

As I say, I don't know how itunes encode their MP3s.  Do they play anything like gaplessly on your PC, or in the Apple firmware?  Note that many programs will just try to detect and remove silence which isn't proper gapless.

[podfreak]

When i transferred the MP3s to itunes playlist, it was showing "determining gapeless". There was a gapless playback in apple firmware.
 

[AlexP]

I don't own an iPod or use itunes, but I believe what itunes does is when you transfer the music it calculates the silence and writes itunes specific metadata to the MP3 which the Apple firmware then uses to remove the silence.  Rockbox doesn't make use of this non-standard information.

I'm getting into memory territory here, so I may be getting details a bit wrong.

[podfreak]

So is there any solution for this problem? Do i have to encode again? Thanks for the reply anyway!

[AlexP]

I'm not too sure I'm afraid.  You don't want to recode, as not only will it not fix the gapless, it will make the quality terrible.  Hopefully someone else can chip in and see if rockbox can do anything with itunes encoded mp3s

[podfreak]

Anyway, thanks for the reply dude!

[Lear]

Hopefully someone else can chip in and see if rockbox can do anything with itunes encoded mp3s

If the information is stored in ID3V2 tags, and the format used is similar to the one for AAC files, it should be fairly easy, as Rockbox supports the AAC gapless information.

[AlexP]

Well a quick google brings up this which suggests it is in tags:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=48231&view=findpost&p=430981

But I haven't looked long enough to be sure.  If I get time I might look more later, but I don't use itunes or have an iPod so I don't really care.

[soap]

Don't use the -nogap command line switch.
That is a dirty hack for old players, LAME since 3.90 implements gapless in a better fashion, Rockbox (on machines other than the Archos players) doesn't need it (-nogap), and did I mention it is a dirty hack?