I have a 93-minute ACC /mp3 file of a musical program that I need to break into 21 separate tracks for rehearsal. Is there a better way to do this on my iMac with the new Music app than the crude way of importing the entire program 21 times and using the option to set the start and stop times for each segment?
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15
Here is a slightly more efficient way: Import the long file. Set Start and Stop times for the first segment, then File > Convert... > Create AAC (or MP3) Version. That will put a short file into your library, which you should re-title to "Segment 1." Back to the long file, set Start and Stopt for the second segment. Again create a new AAC (or MP3) and re-title it to "Segment 2." Repeat 21 times.
It would be better to get an audio editor so you can visually see the segments as you chop them, but the advantage of the procedure above is that it does not require any tool besides iTunes/Music.
Here is a slightly more efficient way: Import the long file. Set Start and Stop times for the first segment, then File > Convert... > Create AAC (or MP3) Version. That will put a short file into your library, which you should re-title to "Segment 1." Back to the long file, set Start and Stopt for the second segment. Again create a new AAC (or MP3) and re-title it to "Segment 2." Repeat 21 times.
It would be better to get an audio editor so you can visually see the segments as you chop them, but the advantage of the procedure above is that it does not require any tool besides iTunes/Music.
Apologies for late reply. Thank you. This is a good solution—in theory. In practice it didn't work very well on my late 2013 iMac running Catalina 10.15.7 with a new app, Music, replacing the similar but much better iTunes. The problem is that, as I got further into the 93-minute program being segmented, the output ACC files cut off increasingly early. To work around this I needed to add extra time (like a few seconds up to a minute, determined by trial and error) to the stop times in order to include the entire desired output segment; then edit that ACC segment to the desired stop time. This seems to be (yet another) problem with the new Music app, which itself seems to be a prematurely released product. I've been working on this now for well over a week and have yet to get a good "album" transferred to my iPhone (although it seems good in my Music library, finally)!
Hi Carl,
Glad the it (mostly) worked. Hadn't heard about the early cut-off problem as you get deeper into the file, but it sounds like a real bug in Music.
Breaking a long program into separate parts
