Cannot load MP3 audio in Photostory

Gerard-McCabe wrote on 10/25/2022, 1:37 PM

I have used Photostory for slideshows before and was able to simply drag and drop the MP3 file into the audio track, but when I tried recently to add music to some family photos, the audio file refused to fill in the track. I can move the generic music that comes with the software, but not an MP3 file that had worked in a previous slideshow. I am using a very old version of Photostory (15 yrs old?) with Windows 10. The picture files drag and drop as expected but the audio files will not

Comments

emmrecs wrote on 10/25/2022, 1:53 PM

@Gerard-McCabe

Welcome to the Magix user to user forums.

I am unsure whether the age of the version of PS you are using could be a factor in your problem but I suspect it is more likely to be caused by the fact that not all mp3s are created equal! They can be created using a range of sample rates and bit depths, mono or stereo etc.

So, I think we need to see a file analysis of the troublesome mp3, please. MediaInfo, although designed for video files, will also analyse purely audio files. If you're not sure what this is please read and follow the guidance in this tutorial to download, install and use it.

Please post the results of the Options>Text view here.

Jeff
Forum Moderator

Gerard-McCabe wrote on 10/26/2022, 7:12 AM

This is the result of the MediaInfo analysis.I could swear this same MP3 file worked previously under XP.

General
Complete name : C:\Program Files\MAGIX\PhotoStory_on_CD_DVD_5\My Audio Video\My music\02-Young At Heart.mp3
Format : MPEG Audio
File size : 1.71 MiB
Duration : 2 min 51 s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 83.7 kb/s
Album : Ernie & Betty Soundtrack
Track name : Young At Heart
Track name/Position : 2
Track name/Total : 10
Encoded by : Encoded with FreeRIP
Writing library : LAME3.97
MCDI : Yes

Audio
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Format settings : Joint stereo / MS Stereo
Duration : 2 min 51 s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 83.7 kb/s
Minimum bit rate : 32.0 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate : 38.281 FPS (1152 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 1.71 MiB (100%)
Writing library : LAME3.97
Encoding settings : -m j -V 5 -q 2 -lowpass 16 --vbr-new -b 32

emmrecs wrote on 10/26/2022, 8:23 AM

@Gerard-McCabe

Thank you for the MediaInfo data.

Although I'm unsure exactly how much these factors could be the source of your problem I notice the following:

Overall bit rate, 83.7kbps, is (I would consider) very low. I would expect a stereo music .mp3 to be at least 192kbps.
The file encoding was done by the LAME encoder so this is not a "standard" mp3, which would have used the Frauenhofer encoder.
The 44.1kHz Sampling Rate. I suspect your version of PS may be expecting 48kHz. For this you could convert the rate to 48kHz and see if that helps (assuming you have suitable software to do this? If you do not, since this is clearly a very small file, if you wished to post it to a file-sharing site and post here the link for others to download it, I'd be happy to convert it for you. However, you do need to be aware that the software I use for this would first convert it to wav, then change the sample rate and then re-encode to mp3, with a consequent loss of some audio quality. If you wished, I could happily upload for you the .wav version of the file, so avoiding that extra mp3 conversion/compression.)

Hopefully, other users who make more use of mp3s than I do will also see this thread and offer their thoughts to you!