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Here is a Linux audio MP3 puzzle that has been bugging me for awhile:

How to trim the beginning few seconds off an MP3 audio file? (I can't get ffmpeg -ss to work with either 00:01 or 1.000 format)

So far, to do what I want, I resort doing it in a GUI manner which is maybe slower for a single file, and definitely slower for a batch of files.

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An update. Later, I stumbled upon the fact that ffmpeg is very picky about the --ss time format, and I was able to most easily trim off the first 9 seconds for instance by specifying -ss 00:00:09 (note that it needs all 3 numbers in hh:mm:ss format) The version I was using may be old... FFmpeg version SVN-r18709, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al. – Mark Hudson Jun 29 '12 at 6:02

2 Answers

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For editing mp3's under linux, I'd recommend sox. It has a simple to use trim effect that will do what you ask for (see man sox for datails - search (press/) for "trim start").

You didn't mention it, but if your aim is just to remove the silence at the beginning of files, you will find silence effect much more useful (man sox, search for "above-periods")

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Thanks, awesome: it worked. I ended up using the trim for simplicity. The only downer was sox FAIL formats: can't open output file 'blah.mp3': SoX was compiled without MP3 encoding support --so, re-enter ffmpeg :/ – Mark Hudson Aug 5 '11 at 19:27
That seems unusual. On my computer, it works without a problem with mp3s. It is a matter of build-time configuration. How did you install it? – rozcietrzewiacz Aug 5 '11 at 23:03
up vote 2 down vote

You could try using mp3splt, which can split MP3 and Ogg files and has the advantage that it does not re-encode the file, thereby avoiding quality loss.

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I like it; thanks. It is simple, and yet has plenty of options... For example: here is the command I just used, which adds the split times to the filename: mp3splt "$file" 4.12 27.55.7 ... It allows custom output name formatting and multiple split points. – Peter.O Dec 20 '11 at 8:05

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