Those compilation CDs that come free with newspapers can sometimes be a useful source of odd tracks that I want to add to my ipod.

In a few cases I've found that a track shows as being excessively long, eg 11 minutes or even as much 18 minutes. These are not extended versions: the actual song is the normal length of 3 to 5 minutes. The extra time is just silence.

Now I've no idea why this happens, but is there a way to adjust this and get rid of the long gaps? I've tried manually altering the time, but it doesn't seem to have any effect.

Download the free audio editor Audacity. Load the ripped track into that and use it to chop off the silence at the end. If there really is a load of silence on the end (can't think of any reason why) then that will sort it.

Changing the track length might have no effect as all it might be is an information field for the display. The actual player might well ignore that and use the true track length and simply play the whole thing.

But if you physically chop off the silent portion then you know it will only play for 3mins or whatever. Plus it will save a load of wasted storage space.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I would add that if you are going to trim it with audactiy it would be best to rip it to a lossless format, wav being the obvious choice and then save it as mp3.

to avoid transcoding loss.

Thanks, I'll try that.