How to create a 30 second audio preview

Question

I'm not sure this is the right thread to post this question.
We have over a thousand audio files (narration) in mp3.
We now want to make copies of the first 30 seconds of each file to put onto the web as a preview.
We were looking at AppleScript solutions to automate this but did not find the possibility to use QT Pro to select the first 30 seconds en crop the file.
Does anyone know a simple and fast solution for this ?
PowerBook G4, Dual 2.7, Quad,...   Mac OS X (10.4.3)  

Answer 1

You posted in the iTunes forum, so I'll give an iTunes solution.
I don't have a one way solution, but a few steps will do the trick.
First, put all files in a playlist.
Select all files in the playlist.
Run this script:
tell application "iTunes"
if selection is not {} then
set sel to selection
repeat with this_track in selection
try
set finish of this_track to 30
end try
end repeat
display dialog "Done!" buttons {"Thanks"} default button 1 giving up after 5
end if
end tell
All tracks will now stop playing at 30 sec.
Next, convert the songs. It's no problem to convert them in the same format they are already in. The copies all will be 30 sec.
After conversion, you can easily differentiate the converted shortened copies from the originals by date added or play time.
I don't know a command to reset the finish times, but you can run the same script as above and replace '30' by the play time in seconds, the longest track has. E.g. if your longest track is 45 minutes, the number would be 2700.
All tracks will be reset to their original play time (not 2700 sec.)
Hope this helps.
M
17' iMac fp 800 MHz 768 MB RAM   Mac OS X (10.4.6)   Several ext. HD (backup and data)