[johnfowles]

OK I expect everybody has at one time or another wanted to burn their own favo(u)rite's CD and as far as I know it is perfectly legal to make your own compilation CD from favourite tracks on CDs that you own. but not to then distribute it of course. Now as anybody who has tried to make such a compilation, whether on a CD or a cassette tape, as the redoubtable Sober Rodent once reported on at L E N G T H, knows the problem is totting up the Total Running Time in order to decide which tracks will fit on a chosen tape or nowadays a standard 74 minute blank CD. (In passing note that IF your favourite track is Beethoven's 9th symphony you are in luck because the reason why the length capacity of a CD is 74min is that that is the "outer limit" of the time it takes for an orchestra to play that masterpiece.
at least that is what the Compact Disk Wiki would have you believe!!
I was sure there must be some program to tell you this without having to create a specialised spreadsheet I knew that Nero burning actually helpfully tells you the TRT of a selection as you load it up viz:-

But what I really wanted a method that could be used earlier in the process, besides other burning programs work differently, for example Roxio tells you the remaining time on the CD after you select a group of audio tracks
I frequently googled to find something but the best I found was a Java applet that entailed you you typing in each track time to give you a running value for the Total Runnng Time as it were.
However this was not acceptable to me for two good reasons.[list=1][*]it would be easy to make a typo[*]as I have reported with regard to the Chat Room Java applet my computer and other late model PC browser versions cannot display Java without installing a large Java Runtime program I decided to try another searching approach having recalled the good results I sometimes got by using an earlier version of the ASK search engine which emphasised and encouraged you to enter your search requirement as a colloqial question Therefore I simply googled for this question:- "how do I calculate the total running time of a folder of mp3s" As you can readily see the result was astonishing a veritable bullseye in one Of the possible 166,000 to sift through top of the list was this forum result "Google Answers: utility to calculate total playing time for all ... MP3 file and the total playing time for the entire folder or CD. _MP3INDX.EXE may be run from anywhere, including a CD-ROM. Simply double click it's icon or" at:- http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=295146 which contained links to not one but a pair of free items:- [list=1]

1. MP3INDX.EXE

1. "[_MP3INDX.EXE] Creates an index of all of the .MP3 files in a folder
   or on a CD-ROM including those in all levels of subdirectories. The
   index, when printed out, is handy for use with a portable MP3 CD
   player, especially one which does not have the capability of
   displaying the file names. The index includes the "song length" of
   each .MP3 file and the total playing time for the entire folder or CD.
   
   _MP3INDX.EXE may be run from anywhere, including a CD-ROM. Simply
   double click it's icon or the icon of it's "shortcut".
   
   _MP3INDX.EXE [d:\Folder] [>"d:\Output File Folder\Output File Name"]
   
   In order to include the optional parameters, simply create a text file
   with a ".bat" extension and double click it's icon. Here is an example
   of the contents of such a .bat file:
   
   md "c:\My Music\MP3 CD Indices"
   _MP3INDX.EXE d:\ >"c:\My Music\MP3 CD Indices\SPL-2003.2-1.txt"
   
   Is a very good program for testing MP3 CDs, since it opens and reads
   from every MP3 file on the CD-ROM."
   http://llbest.com/_MP3INDX.htm
   
2. "MP3-Mixer" (Shareware): "You can select and highlight all the MP3 audio files ( or WAVs ) and let the program calculate the total playing time ( taking the mixing length in consideration ) so that you can match the total playing time of 74 minutes allowing you to record it to a CD." http://www.audiotoolsdirect.com/DJ_a...ng/more3.shtml

all I then had to do was download these programs and try them out
the first was a doddle as mp3indx.exe turned out to be a ginormous file of a staggering 64,000 bytes
whereas the mp3-mixwer .exe program was far harder to locate to download and was a very much more complicated program of 2.36MB
thequoted download page as shown above is incorrect but
http://www.audiotoolers.com/
is however worth visiting as it has much info on digitising vinyl albums
but the home page of mp3-mixer is actually at:-
http://www.mmpx.nl/hsoft/
with another link to downlod it
Anyway I had noted in the blurb for mp3indx a reference to creating a batchfile (*.bat). and rather relished the challenge of renewing my handling of such old DOS files since for most of the 10 years that I ran and developed my UK company's accounts department we relied on a very compact and adaptable DOS accounts program and in order to do several tasks I had taught myself a great deal about batch files
However I quickly found that simply pasting the relatively tiny mp3indx.exe file in the same folder as a selected group of mp3s and clicking on it there gave the desired information voila:-

OK enough for you to read today I'll be back ASAP with a further report after I have ripped the existing list, with a guide on how to do so (hint the original free Musicmatch Jukebox not the inferior replacement Yah..bloody..Hoo Jukebox and will have checked its TRT then we can see what room is left.
here endeth today's history and auditory lesson gals and boyos
"Sir" John Fowles BT
I'll be back ASAP with an alternative artwork proposal for the resulting CD front insert , as I too am not very enamoured of "Anything For Love" nor of that particular "Belt and Braces" picture. BTW the Americans rather quaintly call what in the UK are "braces" " suspenders" which to all red blooded Englishmen is an entirely different article of female clothing with pronounced erotic connotations.
OK Ruth you asked for it
found by image googling for
"ladies suspender belt uk"

I originally displayed a picture showing what such an item looks like but have been nicely asked to remove it and instead provide just the link to it which is:-
http://www.enjoy.co.uk/acatalog/12M.jpg
I was going to display a distinctly more erotic picture at:-
http://www.argoth.co.uk/acatalog/hnrh1150.jpg
but then I thought that would offend a few here so I had plumped for the still somewhat erotic pic originallty displayed of an
allegedly "Edible Candy Suspender Belt"
Sorry everybody