Amazing what you can do in a productive day…
Workout Music Studio 1.7 can now be downloaded and includes:
1. Saving the original file meta tags (music description) to the newly created files.
2. Support for iTunes files (m4a)
3. Bug fixes
If you’ve already purchased Workout Music Studio 1.6, upgrading is highly recommended.
Have a great week !
A new version of Workout Music Studio should be released in about a week. The main new features will be:
1. Support for iTunes files (m4a).
2. Support for 64-bit Windows.
3. Retain original file description tags in new processed files.
Of course, upgrading from previous versions is free 
Repacer has been renamed to Workout Music Studio. This has been done with the addition of a new feature for interval training. Now you can add any cues at specified intervals to create your interval training music.
Anyone who has purchased Repacer can upgrade to Workout Music Studio free of charge. Hope you like it
Its been a very long time since my last post, and I admit that not much work has been done on Repacer or BeatScanner for years. However, due to a challenging request I’ve received (and implemented) for Repacer, it is coming back as a new version with a new name, and I think it will interest almost everyone who works out to music. More about the feature and release dates soon…
A few more hours of work yielded support for LAME MP3 encoder in Repacer. In addition to adding the option to use this encoder in Repacer (which is considered to be the best MP3 encoder), it also enables saving your converted workout songs in the MP3 format on Windows Vista (as the original MP3 encoder that came with Windows Media Player was removed in Windows Vista due to patent issues). In order to enable this option on your system you need to download and install the software below.
http://www.elecard.com/ftp/pub/directshow/lame_dshow.zip
Standard disclaimer: Note that the above software installs an mp3 encoder functionality on your system, which in many countries is covered by patents and requires paying license fees to the patent holder. I’m not sure whether this applies to private use though…
New versions of BeatScanner and Repacer have been released that address problems running these programs on Windows Vista systems.
If you are running Windows Vista and wish to install BeatScanner, please download the latest version (1.41)
from here.
If you want to install Repacer on windows Vista, just download the latest version from here . Note that on Windows Vista, there is no option in Repacer to save the converted files in the mp3 format. This is because the built in operating system mp3 encoding seems to have been removed in Windows Vista. I’m still looking for a workaround, but in the meantime if you have to save your files as mp3, one option is to save them as WAV files with Repacer and then convert them to MP3 files using a a utility that converts WAV to MP3 files (there are many low cost utilities that do this - just make sure that utility works on Windows Vista before purchasing it…)
A version of BeatScanner will soon be released that solves the problem where the music BPM could not be detected in Windows Vista. This version will also solve the problematic uploads of workout music and workout playlists.
As for Repacer, it is still aimed only at Windows XP and lower versions of Windows. If you absolutely require Repacer for Windows Vista, there is a solution but it requires installing additional software on your PC. Please send an email if you wish to get Repacer for a Windows Vista system
Work for BeatScanner Pro has begun. Try and guess what it will be capable of
It looks like Repacer and BeatScanner have some problems when installed on Windows Vista. After investigating this issue, it has become apparent that Microsoft had changed the way media files formats (among them MP3) are handled and this will require making some code modifications in both Repacer and BeatScanner so that they can work with Windows Vista. This will probably take several weeks to complete.
The issue with people having problems submitting their playlists with BeatScanner still persists - this seems to be an issue with the hosting company. Within the next couple of weeks I will try to find an alternative location to submit the workout playlists to in order to solve this problem.
Sorry for the inconvenience…
Its been a while - other issues required attention, but I’m back on track now.
I’d like to send my thanks to all those who have used BeatScanner to submit the information on the beats per minute of the songs they scanned, and special thanks to those who also created workout playlists and submitted them. The database is gradually growing larger and will benefit all in the near future when it is integrated with the existing song database.
One more thing that is planned to be released within a few weeks is BeatScanner Pro - I’ll soon announce the list of new features it will support.
Apparently the Repacer software and this site have been mentioned on the WSJ on Tuesday in an article titled “Finding Good Workout Music”