Yrurtj

I don't know any solution to my problem. I don't even know the cause and have a hard time trying to find it.

I am ripping my Audio CDs using abcde, which is, basically, working well. It is configured to create both FLAC and MP3 output files as I want to have a lossless archive of my CDs in case they get damaged or lost. The MP3 files are for daily use.

Now to the problem: While the FLAC files get the correct play times written in their metadata, all of my MP3 files get wrong durations written in their tags.

Here is an example exiftool reading (while it's basically for image files, it works with pretty much metadata formats, and yes, ID3 tag readers show the same results):

$ exiftool -Duration *

======== 01 - Rock or Bust.flac

Duration                        : 0:03:03

======== 01 - Rock or Bust.mp3

Duration                        : 0:25:02 (approx)

======== 02 - Play Ball.flac

Duration                        : 0:02:47

======== 02 - Play Ball.mp3

Duration                        : 0:02:15 (approx)

======== 03 - Rock the Blues Away.flac

Duration                        : 0:03:24

======== 03 - Rock the Blues Away.mp3

Duration                        : 0:02:45 (approx)

======== 04 - Miss Adventure.flac

Duration                        : 0:02:57

======== 04 - Miss Adventure.mp3

Duration                        : 0:23:18 (approx)

======== 05 - Dogs of War.flac

Duration                        : 0:03:35

======== 05 - Dogs of War.mp3

Duration                        : 0:29:40 (approx)

======== 06 - Got Some Rock & Roll Thunder.flac

Duration                        : 0:03:22

======== 06 - Got Some Rock & Roll Thunder.mp3

Duration                        : 0:02:42 (approx)

======== 07 - Hard Times.flac

Duration                        : 0:02:44

======== 07 - Hard Times.mp3

Duration                        : 0:02:14 (approx)

======== 08 - Baptism by Fire.flac

Duration                        : 0:03:30

======== 08 - Baptism by Fire.mp3

Duration                        : 0:27:25 (approx)

======== 09 - Rock the House.flac

Duration                        : 0:02:42

======== 09 - Rock the House.mp3

Duration                        : 0:02:44 (approx)

======== 10 - Sweet Candy.flac

Duration                        : 0:03:09

======== 10 - Sweet Candy.mp3

Duration                        : 0:25:18 (approx)

======== 11 - Emission Control.flac

Duration                        : 0:03:41

======== 11 - Emission Control.mp3

Duration                        : 0:30:57 (approx)

   22 image files read

I just don't get the clue, why this is happening. Does anyone know a solution to this?

Solution

Thanks to Phreds hint on missing VBR headers, I discovered the reason for this to happen.

As it turns out, lame's --nogap option was activated in .abcde.conf. It's mentioned neither in the lame manpage nor in the .abcde.conf comments (my version, at least), that enabling this option disables the Xing header. In the abcde manpage, however, this behaviour is mentioned regarding the -g flag.
Corresponding variable in .abcde.conf is NOGAP

I was having a very similar problem (except that I wasn't using FLAC - the original rip was to WAV instead, I believe). I used a program called mp3diags (running on Ubuntu 14.04) to track it down.

Turns out in my case the problem was that the encoder had written the mp3 files without a "Xing header" (whatever that might be). mp3diags claimed that VBR without the Xing header would confuse some players. There is an option in mp3diags to "Repair VBR Data". I used this option on the affected mp3 files and they now display correct times in Clementine (audio player).