Ram to Mp3 etc...

[cowboy]

Have some Ram .ra files I'd like to convert to mp3.
Is Audacity capable of doing this ??

[kozikowski]

Audacity is a terrible converter. If it doesn't understand a format, it tries to guess at it and sometimes makes a mess of the show. Flee, flee.

If you decide to try anyway, I'd use Audacity 1.3, not 1.2.

Audacity 1.2 is very old and no longer supported,
patched, corrected, or updated. Audacity 1.2 can
be unstable on newer computers.

Download and install the latest Audacity 1.3 from here...

http://audacityteam.org/download/

You can install both audacity 1.2 and Audacity 1.3 on
the same computer, but only use one at a time.

Audacity 1.2 will not open projects made on Audacity 1.3.

If you use MP3 or some of the more modern audio
compression formats, get Lame and FFMpeg software
from the same web site. Do not use older software
or software from other web sites, even though they
may have the same names.


Koz

[steve]

Audacity does not support "Real Audio" format.

Is there a hidden question in there, such as "How do I play Real Audio files without installing evil software?"

[cowboy]

No evil question.....

Not looking to play .ra files just get them converted, I see there are a lot
of converters you can get, but I figured if Audacity could do it why go through
the trouble of sorting through all of them to try to find a good one.

Anyone have one they can recommend ?

[steve]

I believe that RealPlayer allows you to burn Real Audio files to CD. You can then rip the CD to WAv, MP3 or whatever you like with your favourite CD ripper.
(I stopped using RealPlayer years ago because it was trying to take over as the default player for every media type, was constantly nagging me to register and upgrade, was forcefully advertising content that I did not want and was a pain to fully uninstall).

If your computer can record from "Stereo Mix", then you could play the files with "Real Alternative" and record them with Audacity.

See here for recording sounds playing on your computer (Stereo Mix) http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Recor ... e_computer
Note that not all computers can do this.

[cowboy]

Any updates since the last post ?

If not can anyone recommend a converter ?

[cowboy]

Audacity is a terrible converter. If it doesn't understand a format, it tries to guess at it and sometimes makes a mess of the show. Flee, flee.

If you decide to try anyway, I'd use Audacity 1.3, not 1.2.

Audacity 1.2 is very old and no longer supported,
patched, corrected, or updated. Audacity 1.2 can
be unstable on newer computers.

Download and install the latest Audacity 1.3 from here...

http://audacityteam.org/download/

You can install both audacity 1.2 and Audacity 1.3 on
the same computer, but only use one at a time.

Audacity 1.2 will not open projects made on Audacity 1.3.

If you use MP3 or some of the more modern audio
compression formats, get Lame and FFMpeg software
from the same web site. Do not use older software
or software from other web sites, even though they
may have the same names.


Koz

Per the info at the link I updated to 1.3 and got he Lame and ffmpeg.

I did load some xxxx.ra files and them exported as xxxx.mp3 worked fine....

Murphy's law kicked in though.....

I had done bout 10 of them and then the rest I was working on wouldn't load
has a msg saying it's a "proprietary format"...

I got these files a while ago, as far as I remember they were from the same place.

So the question is this, are there different versions/types of .ra files ? ?
Don't know why some would work and others won't.

[steve]

As of FFMpeg version 0.6, RealAudio 1.0 is supported.
http://ffmpeg.org/changelog.html

[cowboy]

As of FFMpeg version 0.6, RealAudio 1.0 is supported.
http://ffmpeg.org/changelog.html

Hello Steve, per the ealier post, I updated the lame and ffmpeg ,(ffmpeg_FFmpeg_v0.6.2_for_Audacity_on_Windows)
and Audacity did/does pull in some on my .ra files which I then exported to mp3, worked great.

But then others it wouldn''t load ? got the msg can run or whatevever because it is "proprietary format"...
Not sure what that means; maybe it has a built in lock ?? or it's a different version of .ra file that won't work ??
p.s. I don't think it's an Audacity problem, as I tried running converting with another program and that didn't work either.

p.p.s.
any education or guidence you can give me concering ffmpeg would be great....
since I first heard of it a few days ago I've looked into it and found tons of references to it and tons of programs/applications that use it. I guess ... from what I gather it is some core code that a lot of programs use.

I've tried a couple, Winff which worked fine except for the above, and then one called Super8 which was way to cumbersome.
Any others you might suggest ? again what I'm trying to do is very simple, just grab a .ra file and convert it to mp3

Thanks

[steve]

FFMpeg is a free, open source, cross-platform media codec library that supports encoding/decoding of a huge range of media formats.
You can find out more about FFMpeg from their web site: http://ffmpeg.org/

"proprietary format" usually means that someone is claiming ownership of the format and they will sue anyone that supports it without paying them.