If your MP3 player doesn’t support bookmarks, its very time consuming to fast forward or rewind to a favorite part or to where you remember you last left off listening to your podcast. Imagine in a 1 hour 30 minute podcast, your into it 50 minutes then you want to rewind back 20 minutes, you will not hear the end of it from your aching thumb!
By splitting the podcasts you can jump between tracks and then fast forward or rewind for a few seconds to where you want to go!
A bonus with this method is if you want to split podcasts to listen to in your car! You can split the tracks into 79 minute increments and burn the CD’s onto some high speed CD-RW’s if your burner supports them 
This way you have podcasts on the go and don’t waste CD’s :).
The program to help us with the podcast splitting is mp3DirectCut. Its made by Martin Pesch and its small and freeware! The interface can be daunting but don’t worry, my video tutorial will guide you through!
Downloads Needed:
INSTRUCTIONS
- Download and Install mp3DirectCut.
- Run mp3DirectCut and choose your language.
- Take your podcast you want to split and drag it into mp3DirectCut.
- In the menu select Special>Auto Cue> Now select the amount of minutes for each split podcast, for example if you want 5 minutes each split mp3, then input: 5:00; Now select OK. Now you should see separated rectangular lines in the graph that represents your split podcast into 5 minute increments.
- Now select File>Save Split> Now you can type in how you want your files to be named, keep in mind the symbols that show things such as track numbers for the podcasts. For example I input: %N-trk, the %N is the symbol for track number.%N -Trk will name and number the split podcasts as 01-trk.mp3, 02-trk.mp3, and so forth in succession until all the split mp3s are created.
- Now you can keep the folder to save to as is, or you can create a folder to save the split podcasts into. Then select OK.
- What I do is create a folder with the podcast name, then put all the split podcasts in that folder and then drag to my MP3 player.
VIDEO TUTORIAL [Please View Fullscreen]
More information:
Bookmark Compatible Mp3 Player:
Creative Zen V Plus 2 GB Portable Media Player
Words From mp3DirectCut Creator Martin Pesch:
mp3DirectCut is a fast and extensive audio editor and recorder for compressed mp3. You can directly cut, copy, paste or change the volume with no need to decompress your files for audio editing. This saves encoding time and preserves the original quality, because nothing will be re-encoded. The built in recorder creates mp3 on the fly from your audio input. Using Cue sheets, pause detection or Auto cue you can easily divide long files.
Features:
- Non-destructive cut, copy, paste
- Volume change, fade, normalize, pause detection
- mp3 recording with ACM or Lame encoder
- Fast mp3 visualisation and easy navigation
- Supports Layer 2 (dvd/dvb audio)
- ID3v1.1 tag editor · ID3v2 tag keeping
- Cue Sheet support
- Auto cue (track dividing by time values)
- Track splitting with filename and tag creation
- Trim · Crop · Fast play · Loop play
- VU meter, bitrate visualisation
- High speed recorder · Command line usage
System Requirements:
- 300 MHz CPU Windows or Linux with Wine
- mp3 ACM codec (present in XP/Vista) or mpglib.dll
- For mp3 recording: encoding ACM or Lame encoder DLL, >500MHz
You can find more information about mp3DirectCut at http://mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html
Why Should I Split My Podcasts?
- If your MP3 player doesn’t support bookmarks, its more time consuming to fast forward or rewind to where you last left off listening to your podcast, especially of your were doing something not paying attention to the podcast and want to go back to where you remember you left off from.
- If you want to fast forward or rewind to a part of your podcast you want to listen to again, its time consuming to hold those buttons down for a LONG period of time, with the podcast split up its easier to jump tracks to a specific part and then rewind or fast forward less time to find where you were last at.
- To play a podcast in your car on CD if it doesn’t support mp3 CD’s or input from your MP3 player such as an Apple Ipod.
What Is A Podcast?
A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds such as RSS, to portable media players and personal computers. Though the same content may also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from other digital-media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added. In laymen terms it’s a audio talkshow.
Like the term broadcast, podcast can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
The term is a mashup of the words “iPod” and “broadcast”,the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed. Such scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred from a personal computer to a mobile device after they are downloaded. As more devices other than iPods became able to synchronize with podcast feeds, the term was redefined by some parties as a backronym for “Personal On Demand broadCASTING“.
What Is A MP3?
MP3 is a compressed audio format that allows for smaller file sizes with similar sound quality to PCM WAV format, the format found on normal music CDs you would buy in a store. Thompson and Fraunhofer helped develop the coding algorithm, or system of rules and processes, that encoded audio to this incredible format.
Why Is MP3 So Popular?
The popularity of MP3 comes from its practical uses. Music tracks in WAV format are extremely large in file size, averaging around 50MB in size. Since it is so large, it is not practical to send WAV files through email or offer them for download on the Internet. MP3, however, compresses WAV audio on average of 10 to 12 times smaller than the original size. The result is audio tracks around 3 to 4 MB in size, perfect for downloading and sending through the Internet. Thus, custom MP3 format CDs can be created with 10 to 12 times the amount of tracks of a normal 12-15 track audio CD, producing CDs with over 100 tracks easily. The format is also popular for turning your PC into a jukebox of hundreds or thousands of songs or loading them into a portable mp3 player and taking your music collection wherever you want.
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Thanks dude, i hate having no bookmarks on my mp3 player.
Your post is very good thanks, if interested in learning thai visit please Learn Thai Podcast
One can also click Special > Pause Detection… to try and avoid those annoying pops that happen when a track ends and the other starts. It’s a hit and miss, and it creates quite a lot of tracks, but I’m cool with that.
@chelu671: Thanks for the tip and comment! I appreciate it
If only more than 41 people could read about this..