MP3 Bounce "realtime" in DP 8.03?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Maybe I missed the memo on this, and I've been in Finale for the last couple of weeks, but tonight I just did my first bounce to disk as an MP3 and it is bouncing in realtime. OK, maybe slightly faster but not by much.

The bounce in question is two MP3 that I output from Finale and captured via Audio Hijack, then imported to DP. Stitched them together and went to bounce the 75 minute piece to MP3 for the soloist to hear a mockup.

To my amazement, the BTD was basically showing a realtime elapse time. Kind of disappointing.

[jbyerly1]

Looks real time to my eyes

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Now here's something odd... I also had to bounce the same selection to a quicktime movie for the soloist and is bounced the entire 75 minutes in about 2 minutes. So I'm guessing that the slowdown is happening at the part when the MP3 is being compressed.

I just did a test an Snapper converts the same file to an MP3 in about 4 minutes. So clearly, DP 8.03's MP3 conversion, while convenient in that it is included in the app install, is slow as that which shall not be mentioned. Oh poo!

[Gravity Jim]

You might want to do some testing on how the bounce setting affect time. I've been bouncing VBR files at max quality, and it is as slow as real-time, if not slower. But I haven't tried lesser quality or constant bit rate bounces to see if they're faster. I would bet they are.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I finally got to look into this a little more last night. A six minute MP3 bounce of a single stereo track took close to ten minutes. The same file in iTunes converted to MP3 in about half a minute. Exporting in
DP from bwav to bwav was nearly instantaneous.

So I'm left wondering about MOTU's new paradigm of "including" the MP3 processing software within DP. Essentially it removes MP3 export as a useful feature and places it along side DP's CD burning feature: dead appendages that contribute to program bloat.

Sigh...

[cloudsplitter]

Hmmm......I bounce bwave files at 48/32 to mp3s' quite often and they bounce quite fast...say a five minute song takes roughly 20 seconds. I do use constant bit rate and bounce to mid quality 256. This is also converting software instruments to audio at the same time of course. I am using the version of Mp3 that came with the current version of Dp. I've always had good results with mp3 conversion.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I'll try that. Thanks.

[Shooshie]

Something changed. I'm using the same mp3 setup I've always used, other than how it was altered by the latest DP install. It's SLOOOWWWWWWWWWW. Takes 3 to 5 times longer than it used to. I use Variable Bit Rate. Otherwise there is no point in going directly to mp3 in DP.

Further, for some reason when I'm doing an mp3 bounce, I get a gap about 4 seconds in. Just a blank spot. I tried moving the music down past the 4 second mark, but it still happened. I had to record it in realtime. Conversion to mp3 in iTunes then took about 1 second. Literally. But I still had to keep iTunes open, which I hate to do when working in DP. iTunes is an unpredictable app that can cause cross-purposes with the audio hardware. Some versions of it have been pretty much impossible to leave open while running DP, because of the problems induced into the audio hardware and drivers.

Anyway, something's really Effed up in DP's mp3 bounce here at my studio. If anyone knows any magic fixes, I'd be much obliged.

Shooshie