kituneswin: Chopping a track into smaller pieces using iTunes

Sometimes you might want to break single tracks in your iTunes library into smaller tracks. For example, you might have imported a CD with a hidden bonus track at the end, where a long period of silence connects the bonus track to the last song on the CD. The last song, the silence and the bonus track show up in your library as a single track ... but you might prefer to have the songs as individual tracks and lose the silence altogether.

Here's how you can do that using iTunes. (Note that this technique will not work with Protected AAC format tracks bought from the iTunes Music Store.)

Basic Technique

In your main library window, right-click the track you want to chop up, and select "Get info".

Go to the "Options" tab. Set "Start Time" and "Stop Time", corresponding to the start and finish of the chunk of song you want to chop out. Click "OK".

Right-click on the track again in the main library window and select "Convert selection to XXX". (The XXX will be whatever file format you happen to have set in your iTunes Importing preferences at the time.)

After a little while, iTunes will spit out a second, smaller copy of the track, containing just the music between the Start and Stop times you set in the original track. Rename the new track as you please.

To chop out another different chunk, go back to the original track again, reset the Start and Stop times again, and "Convert selection to XXX" again.

If you want to keep the big original track in your library, and you want it to play normally, just go back into the "Options" tab again, uncheck the boxes next to "Start Time" and "Stop Time", and click OK. This will return the Start and Stop times of the big original track back to their default settings.

Tweaks to the Technique

if you want to cut down on the possibility of audio quality loss, import the track (that you want to chop up) into your iTunes library in one of the lossless formats (WAV, Apple Lossless or AIFF), and then change your importing preferences to a compressed format (AAC or mp3) prior to doing the chopping.

Additional resources

How to convert a song to a different file format

iTunes: About import settings and hard disk space

iTunes 6: How to Choose Import Options