[wellylug] Converting WMA to MP3

[Gerald Roehrbein]

Hello Steve,

I do not have a solution for, what you call, idiots. I have only a
knowledge of SuSE and RedHat Linux. Probably you have to download from
rpmseek some additional packages.


The complexity depends on what you have already installed:

Check the following:

[root at orac01 ~]# which mplayer
[root at orac01 ~]# which lame

If you have both you are ready to run the script at the end of this
answer. You must not read all the other stuff. If not you have to
download some sources and to build them. This sounds difficult but it is
not! I try to explain all the details you need.


BUNZIP required?
================

First check for BUNZIP. You need it to extract MPLAYER.

[root at orac01 ~]# which bunzip2

You should have a bunzip2 at your UBUNTU installation disk. Install it
if needed. 



MPLAYER download and install
=============================

ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/unix/X11/multimedia/MPlayer/
(There is no mirror in NZ or Australia)


You have to build the mplayer executable before you can use it. The
installation procedure of open source source tarballs should be always: 

download,extract,configure, make, make install.

Example:
[root at orac01 ~]# cd <to download dir>
[root at orac01 ~]# bunzip2 MPlayer-1.0pre8.tar.bz2
[root at orac01 ~]# tar -xvf MPlayer-1.0pre8.tar
[root at orac01 ~]# cd MPlayer-1.0pre8
[root at orac01 ~]# configure
[root at orac01 ~]# make
[root at orac01 ~]# make install


LAME download and install
=========================


If you do not have lame download it from http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/.
LAME installation is just the same as for MPLAYER.


Example:
[root at orac01 ~]# cd <to download dir>
[root at orac01 ~]# gunzip lame-3.97b3.tar.gz
[root at orac01 ~]# tar -xvf lame-3.97b3.tar
[root at orac01 ~]# cd lame-3.97b3
[root at orac01 ~]# configure
[root at orac01 ~]# make
[root at orac01 ~]# make install



Doing conversion with MPLAYER and LAME
======================================


After you've installed all that stuff successful you will be able to use
a simple script like the one I provide here to do the whole job:


The following script will do the conversion of all WMA Files in a
directory:


#!/bin/bash 

# -------------------------------------------------------------
# WMA to MP3
# by Gerald R.
# Just the easy way without pipes.
# -------------------------------------------------------------

for i in *.wma; do 
 newname=`echo "$i"|sed -e 's/wma$/wav/'`; 
 echo "$i -> $newname"; 
 mplayer -ao pcm "$i";
 lame -h audiodump.wav $newname;
 rm audiodump.wav;
done



EOS(tory)
============


I've not tested this script. It's just an idea how to solve your
problem. But I think it will work. If not ask.


If this conversion work you can add some parameters to this script. Than
add the script to the desktop and use it to convert your files via drag
and drop. 

So you have a much better solution as you could get using Windows. 

Probably there is one tool which can do it in a better way. It would be
nice to know.





kind regards
Gerald Roehrbein 






Am Sonntag, den 10.09.2006, 19:14 +1200 schrieb Steve Macdonald:
> I am finding I am having to go to a windows computer to convert my wma
> files to mp3 (I made the mistake of not converting them all to mp3
> before getting rid of windows completely and now I am stuck with
> thousands of wma files needing to be converted.
> 
> I have tried Amarok using the transkoda? scrift but the problem here
> is that it does not copy the id3 tags or file names over. Can anyone
> advise me of a program for idiots that will work with kubuntu.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Send instant messages to your online friends
> http://au.messenger.yahoo.com 
>