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Cleanup Invalid MP3 Files

  1. Install mp3check
    1. Probably already available in your distro. Example: sudo apt install mp3check
  2. Scan a directory of MP3 files with: mp3check -erBR3 "SOME_DIR"
    1. This only scans files and reports issues, it does not make any changes
    2. This is recursive. Remove the lowercase -r to not dive into subdirectories
    3. -B causes it to allow variable bitrate files. If your player doesn't support VBR, remove this flag to identify files that are VBR. Note: mp3check cannot convert VBR to CBR, you need tore-encode for that.
  3. Fix files with command: mp3check -r3 --cut-junk-start --cut-junk-end "SOME_DIR"
    1. This will write changes to the files stripping out the invalid chunks. The file modified time will be updated

Notes:

  • The recursive option does not appear to work properly and only seems to go 1 directory deep
  • The Dirname handling seems unusual. You may need to use a /* at the end for it to scan the entire dirĀ 

Example cleanup output:

image.png