NAudio to split mp3 file

Question

I am very new to audio or mp3 stuff, was looking for a way to have a feature to split an mp3 file in C#, asp.net. After googling for a good 3-day without much of a great help, I am hoping that somebody here can point me to a right direction.

Can I use NAudio to accomplish this? Is there any sample code for that? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

An MP3 File is made up of a sequence of MP3 frames (plus often ID3 tags on the beginning and end). The cleanest way to split an MP3 file then is to copy a certain number of frames into a new file (and optionally bring the ID3 tags along too if that is important).

NAudio's MP3FileReader class features a ReadNextFrame method. This returns an MP3Frame class, which contains the raw data as a byte array in the RawData property. It also includes a SampleCount property which you can use to accurately measure the duration of each MP3 Frame.

Answer 2

My final solution to split mp3 file in c# is to use NAudio. Here is a sample script for that, hope it helps someone in the community:

string strMP3Folder = "<YOUR FOLDER PATH>";
string strMP3SourceFilename = "<YOUR SOURCE MP3 FILENAMe>";
string strMP3OutputFilename = "<YOUR OUTPUT MP3 FILENAME>";

using (Mp3FileReader reader = new Mp3FileReader(strMP3Folder + strMP3SourceFilename))
{
    int count = 1;
    Mp3Frame mp3Frame = reader.ReadNextFrame();
    System.IO.FileStream _fs = new System.IO.FileStream(strMP3Folder + strMP3OutputFilename, System.IO.FileMode.Create, System.IO.FileAccess.Write);

    while (mp3Frame != null)
    {
        if (count > 500) //retrieve a sample of 500 frames
            return;

        _fs.Write(mp3Frame.RawData, 0, mp3Frame.RawData.Length);
        count = count + 1;
        mp3Frame = reader.ReadNextFrame();
     }

     _fs.Close();
}

Thanks to Mark Heath's suggestion for this.

The namespace required is NAudio.Wave.

Answer 3

The previous answers helped me get started. NAudio is the way to go.

For my PodcastTool I needed to to split podcasts at 2 minute intervals to make seeking to a specific place faster.

Here's the code to split an mp3 every N seconds:

    var mp3Path = @"C:\Users\ronnie\Desktop\mp3\dotnetrocks_0717_alan_dahl_imagethink.mp3";
    int splitLength = 120; // seconds

    var mp3Dir = Path.GetDirectoryName(mp3Path);
    var mp3File = Path.GetFileName(mp3Path);
    var splitDir = Path.Combine(mp3Dir,Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(mp3Path));
    Directory.CreateDirectory(splitDir);

    int splitI = 0;
    int secsOffset = 0;

    using (var reader = new Mp3FileReader(mp3Path))
    {   
        FileStream writer = null;       
        Action createWriter = new Action(() => {
            writer = File.Create(Path.Combine(splitDir,Path.ChangeExtension(mp3File,(++splitI).ToString("D4") + ".mp3")));
        });

        Mp3Frame frame;
        while ((frame = reader.ReadNextFrame()) != null)
        {           
            if (writer == null) createWriter();

            if ((int)reader.CurrentTime.TotalSeconds - secsOffset >= splitLength)
            {   
                // time for a new file
                writer.Dispose();
                createWriter();
                secsOffset = (int)reader.CurrentTime.TotalSeconds;              
            }

            writer.Write(frame.RawData, 0, frame.RawData.Length);
        }

        if(writer != null) writer.Dispose();
    }

Answer 4

these would be helpful Alvas Audio (commercial) and ffmpeg