Split MP3 files automatically

Question

I have a few large MP3 files (some 7 hours, some 25 hours) and, sadly my player (car-hardware), does not scan well. So, if I listen up to the 3 hour point and I turn off my car, I must scan back to the 3 hour point (and this actually can take 10 minutes).

I am looking for a tool which can run on Windows, ideally free (but I would pay if necessary), with a graphical interface. The tool should take an MP3 file and a target length (say 10 minutes) and automatically split the one large MP3 into multiple smaller MP3.

I have tried Slice and found it to be quite unreliable (it regularly fails on the 25 hour MP3 file). I have tried Audacity but I have to manually mark each spot I want to split (a 25 hour audio will have 150 10-minue marks).

I looked at this answer on a related question and tried Sox. Unfortunately, I do not see a way for Sox to split, only to combine.

Mp3splt looks useful but it's command line. Is there a Windows GUI for it?

The GUI could be simple or complex. The goal is simply to avoid having to re-learn parameters every time my needs change by having a somewhat friendly UI.

Is there anything out there which will do this?

Answer 1

There is a GUI for Mp3splt. And its dead easy

Mp3splt-gtk is a utility to split MP3, OGG Vorbis and native FLAC files without any change in quality. Just select begin and an end positions to cut out unwanted audio data and space, or to split entire albums to obtain the original tracks.

• Download, extract & start the software
• Select Batch & automatic split mode, add as many files as you want
• Choose Time as split mode and e.g 600 seconds
• Press Batch split ! and mp3splt will create subfolders for every input file where your output files are stored in

Answer 2

I have used mp3DirectCut for years. It is distributed as "freeware", is a Windows program, although I've discovered it behaves well running under Wine on Ubuntu. The longest MP3 file I've used it with was a 2hr 45min recording of Bach's St Matthew Passion -- it handled that very nicely.

The feature set includes:

• Using Cue sheets, pause detection or Auto cue you can easily divide long files.
• Track splitting with filename and tag creation

It works "natively" on the MP3, that is, it doesn't decode/re-encode. As I say, I haven't done much with splitting (I use it for other kinds of editing), but the process looks fairly simple:

(The file loaded for this "demo shot" is a 45-minute BBC Radio 4 podcast.)

You can set split points manually by clicking on the time-scale where you want your split (see cursor position in screen capture, above), then clicking the little "scissors" icon in the lower-left panel. Set cut points, then to split the track select File > Save split.

You can also set an "Auto-cue" with Special > Auto Cue..., then fill in the boxes:

It's a handy tool. It will do this job, although it will be interesting to see what other suggestions arrive.

Answer 3

I use a program called Movie Splitter from Movie Toolbox for large .mp3 files and it is very easy and extremely fast. It works on both movie files and audio files to split them into equal parts. You browse for the mp3 file and select the number of parts you want to split it into and then specify an output folder where you want to put the split files. I split an mp3 audio book file that was 7 hours long into 8 parts and it took only 2 seconds to complete this task. It actually worked so fast that at first I didn't think it had done anything but when I checked the output folder it had already completed the splitting process. The price is $19.

Movie Splitter Website