This afternoon I had a wired dream. I was coming back home from work and had a rich dinner and laid on the couch and watched TV, a boring German soap call ‘Gute Zeiten Schlecht Zeiten’ the crappiest thing ever.

Today, I was downloading ‘Pauls infinity mix’, a huge 3 hour trance mix (thanks for that!), and I wondereing all day how I can split this huge MP3 file into pieces so I don’t have such a huge thing to listen on the EMPEG, since I know I will loose track and don’t know where was what song in that huge track.

So anyways, I was falling into sleep watching that soap. I started heavily dreaming. I was talking to Hugo from EMPEG on the phone about this huge track. I could see him, though, even though he was somewhere else. He was a tall guy with grey skin (don’t take that personal..!). Actually, all was grey except the EXTRAMENU!

He was saying that they had implemented a script language called ‘EMPROG’ in the latest release to solve my issue. There was a piece of code in the empeg called ‘EMPINT’ which is the EMPROC interpreter. The way it worked was that with each MP3 file there was a hidden text-file stored with a similar format like the QUE files you use for CD-Burning programs like DAO or such. Like this:

Track 01
Sub01
Time 00:00:00
Track 01
Sub02
Time 00:05:15
Track 02
Sub01
Time 00:07:10

And so on. He said, I can just set ‘breakpoint’ using the SUB tag, so I can set like sub-tracks in a song without splitting the file into two pices. Cool! Then he said, there are more options. I could also set something to assign sound settings. And that there is more, but he wont tell anyone since it’s for their own use.

He said I could see those files using the EXTRAMENU in the PC software which was all grey. There was a menu entry called ‘EXTRAMENU’ in the ‘View’ menu which had a fluro green background. When this was switched on, all the hidden files appeared, also in fluro green color. Then they could be edited with notepad. What a mess.

I kept asking about those other features again and again and he got upset.

Then my girlfriend woke me up. I was just sleeping for 5 minutes! That was cool, and I wasn’t on drugs or such! It was funny I remembered exactly the names and the file format – could be since I was doing a lots of CUE files lately. Also I think I know why I ‘thought’ about those extra files – I own the Yamakawa player and there you can have additional files stored on the CD to display text info on the TV screen.

Silly…

J.

JFranke said:

He was saying that they had implemented a script language called ‘EMPROG’ in the latest release to solve my issue. There was a piece of code in the empeg called ‘EMPINT’ which is the EMPROC interpreter. The way it worked was that with each MP3 file there was a hidden text-file stored with a similar format like the QUE files you use for CD-Burning programs like DAO or such.

Or, perhaps, something like the ID3v2 tags? ID3v1 is only able to inhabit the last 128 bytes of an MP3 file; ID3v2 is designed to be distributed throughout the MP3 file. You could even embed lyrics. There are definitely tags in the standard that allow you to specify subsections and stuff like that. I'm hoping that, when the ID3v2 standard solidifies, there'll be a whole range of programs that will allow you to put in all that stuff, including a playback device that allows you to insert, say, track listings when the song changes occur.

By the way, the Infinity Mix is 4 hours, not three, now that it's finally been completed :-) Anyone wanting a copy of it can mail me.

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