Audacity Forum

Hi,

I exported a 4min30sec, 30MB, flac file to a 320 bit rate mp3, it took about 1h30m. My processor runs at 3GHz and I have 2GB RAM, 1.5GB unused.
I expected it to take maximum 10 minutes.

Step to reproduce :
-Run on windows xp SP3
-Install audacity 1.2.6
-Install Lame v3.98.3 for Audacity on Windows
-In audacity, go Edit>Preference>MP3 Export Setup, set Bit Rate to 320
-File>open the flac file
-File>Export As MP3

Just tried it here following your exact steps and it took about 30 seconds to export.
Where are you exporting it to and with what file name?

I exported it to the same directory my source file was, on my internal hard drive. I named it "01 - Box Car Racer - I Feel So.mp3"

I have some more information.
-I reproduced the steps on another windows XP PC, with the same flac to encode, and the result was the same; it took way too long.
-The file is part of a cd, some of the songs on it took less than a minute to export and were 20-25MB in size so I think the file is the problem.
-Importing the flac in audacity would take 20-25 sec, I could see a correlation between import time and export time; a file that took 3 sec to import would take 30 sec to export, one that took 30 sec to import would take 30 min to export.

I uploaded a file that takes, in my case, 30+ min to export so you can try it. http://www.mediafire.com/?fy4dc2b5qy96930

I'm on Linux at the moment and it took 18 seconds to export as "01 - Box Car Racer - I Feel So.mp3" 320MBPS stereo to my Desktop using Audacity 1.3.14 alpha with Lame 3.98.4. I'm not able to test it on a Windows computer at the moment, but there does not appear to be anything wrong with the file.

Perhaps you could try installing Audacity 1.3.13 and see if that behaves any better (that's the version that I usually use on Windows, and it's vastly superior to the old 1.2.6 version). You can get it here: http://audacityteam.org/download/
You can have both 1.2 and 1.3 installed at the same time. You can't run them simultaneously. Audacity 1.3 can open projects created by 1.2, but not the other way round.

Unistalled 1.2 and installed 1.3. Encoding took about 15 sec too.

Thank you, but still, I wonder if anyone else have this bug with 1.2

We're doing our best to talk people away from 1.2 onto 1.3.13.
Audacity 1.2. is pretty old now and has not been updated in years (all development work is on the 1.3 series, working toward the new Audacity 2.0 release). Audacity 1.2. has been a great version for a long time, but IMHO it's just too old now and ready for retirement.

What software and hardware player are you making these MP3s for. Som e player s/w can also do the conversions/compressions.

iTunes for example (I use this on XP) is a bout twice as fast at making AACs than Audacity (I export WAVs and uses iTunes to do the AAC conversion) - I don't have data on how long iTunes' MP3 conversions take, but I do know you can do this in iTunes.

WC