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TUAW Tip: Trimming tracks in iTunes

by Victor Agreda, Jr. Jan 28th 2006 at 11:00AM

itunes trim audioEver had a song that had blank space at the beginning or end, just enough to annoy you? Sure, those "bonus tracks" on CD's are cute with their 5 minutes of dead air before the last song, but not when your iPod is on shuffle.

Luckily, you can trim off the beginning or end of any song in iTunes right within the app. Go to a song, Ctrl-click on it (that's a right-click for you Mighty Mousers), and go to Get Info. A dialog box will open, with several choices at the top. You'll want to go to Options, and you'll see a Start Time and Stop Time well where you can specify when the song should start or stop.

It's that easy!

As you can also see, there are controls for the star rating, volume and EQ adjustments, and two handy items involving playback... "Remember playback position" makes any song like an audiobook or podcast, allowing you to jump back to the time you left off when you stopped playing that song. "Skip when shuffling" is good for those old iTrip's with the FM bleeps on them (or any other items you don't want interrupting your workout).

Lots of other wacky tidbits on this Apple page.

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Ever had a song that had blank space at the beginning or end, just enough to annoy you? Sure, those "bonus tracks" on CD's are...
 

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16 Comments

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Doug Adams

"Is there any way to activate "Remember Playback Position" on all of your songs at once?"

Yes: The AppleScript "Selected Tracks Bookmarkable" (http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=selectedtracksbookmarkable) sets the "Remember playback position" for all selected tracks.

January 30 2006 at 7:52 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bill

Does setting the stop time cause a track to stop at the set time when burning to audio CD?

January 29 2006 at 12:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

#9 - Unfortunately the 'Get Info' dialog you get for multiple tracks is missing some features - start and stop time being amongst them. Volume adjustment is there, but 'skip when shuffling' isn't either. I'm hoping a trip to doug's applescripts will provide a solution.

January 29 2006 at 4:43 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Flyboybob

Is there any way to activate "Remember Playback Position" on all of your songs at once?

January 28 2006 at 5:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DF

"Along the lines of comment #4, if you set a start and stop time, you can do Advanced (or right-click) > Convert to AAC (Or MP3) - it will use current import settings and make a new track cropped to your spec."

One problem with doing this to an existing iTunes track is that you're "double-ripping," resulting in lower sound quality. As Hubkap pointed out, if you care about sound quality, use this trick during the import/rip process -- you get a single rip with the desired track-trim.

January 28 2006 at 5:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
chip

for those tracks with "bonus" songs or material at the end i just make a duplicate of the track and set the in and out points on each track. this way i can listen to the bonus track without having to listen to 30 minutes of blankness. after that i convert both of them to aac to make my changes permanent and then i have two greats tracks. :)

January 28 2006 at 4:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kevin Ashworth

Mathew's right. This technique is quite safe and doesn't delete any of the mp3.

January 28 2006 at 4:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mathew

I smell a prank a-brewin from this tip.


Select all - Get info

Stop playback at 3 seconds.

Save.


Watch user go mad trying to figure out why all his songs aren't playing.

As it doesn't "delete" the extra - just sets it so it doesn't play back any futher - correct?

January 28 2006 at 3:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Derek

Wow, using the stop/start times to rip ringtones is a GREAT idea. I downloaded a horrible trial-version 3rd party program to trim stuff in to ringtones, and it was a real hassle.

The "skip when shuffling" option is great for leaving audiobooks/spoken word stuff out of your "shuffle songs" mix. Great for fans of audiobooks and Henry Rollins like me!

January 28 2006 at 3:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kevin Ashworth

This Applescript can make it easier:
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=playposstartstop

January 28 2006 at 2:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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