Unable to convert .aup to mp3 - lame issue.

[miko]

Hello, I am looking for some assistance in order to convert a recorded audacity file to mp3 using lame. I have used audacity 1.2.6 on windows vista for some time, but since upgrading to windows 7 on a new laptop and installing 1.3.12 beta I can no longer create mp3's.

I have read every forum and tried unistalling and reinstalling audacity. I have also tried installing (and uninstalling) lame 3.98.4, 3.98.3 and 3.98.2 (standard, zip file and without manifest.) I have also tried to creating a wav file and that does not work either. Audacity is telling me, in preferences - that it is able to locate the lame_enc.dll file, but when I attempt to convert, a .10 file is created instead of a mp3, which is only seems to be compatable with windows media player.

I read something about a audacity.cfg file, where certain text should be removed in notepad, although even after showing hidden folders with windows 7, I can not locate this file. Could this be the problem? Any help would really be appreciated.

Thanks.

[steve]

I have read every forum and tried unistalling and reinstalling audacity.

Then you will know that un-installing and re-installing never makes any difference.

I have also tried to creating a wav file and that does not work either.

That would indicate that there is a more general computer problem that has nothing to do with Lame (Lame is not used for WAV export).

a .10 file is created instead of a mp3

What's a ".10" file? I've never heard of such a thing - but you say that it plays in Windows Media Player?
Could you Export a short section of audio and make one of these ".10" files, then upload it to sendspace.com or some other file sharing site and post a link to it. I'm intrigued as to what this file could be.

Have you run a full virus scan recently? If not, I'd suggest that you do - it sounds like something really weird is going on.

[miko]

I have read every forum and tried unistalling and reinstalling audacity.

Then you will know that un-installing and re-installing never makes any difference.

I have also tried to creating a wav file and that does not work either.

That would indicate that there is a more general computer problem that has nothing to do with Lame (Lame is not used for WAV export).

a .10 file is created instead of a mp3

What's a ".10" file? I've never heard of such a thing - but you say that it plays in Windows Media Player?
Could you Export a short section of audio and make one of these ".10" files, then upload it to sendspace.com or some other file sharing site and post a link to it. I'm intrigued as to what this file could be.

Have you run a full virus scan recently? If not, I'd suggest that you do - it sounds like something really weird is going on.

I reinstalled audacity once over incase there was a problem the first time and I only attempted to export it to a wav format because I was having no luck with exporting it to mp3.
I have ran a virus scan with no issues. It is a brand new machine.
I have never heard of a .10 file either. After the apparent mp3 file has saved, it appears in my music folder with the WMP symbol. After I right click-properties, file of file: 10 File (.10) is shown. I attempted to burn it to CD as it would play in WMP, but it would not playback in any CD player - only in WMP. I tried to upload it to soundcloud and sendspace, and it was not a known file type. I'm seriously confused.

[steve]

Do you have a program that can make .ZIP archives? If not you can get Izarc free from here: http://www.izarc.org/
If you "archive" the .10 file as a zip file, then you should be able to upload it.

Try this and see what happens:
(ensure that Windows is set to show all file extensions http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=193 )

1) open Audacity
2) Generate menu > Tone - generate a 30 second tone with the default settings.
3) File menu > Export - Export as a 16 bit WAV file.
Use ONLY the letters a-z and numbers 0-9 in the file name.
5) Try to play the exported WAV file in your usual media player.
6) Try Importing the file into Audacity and play it in Audacity.

[miko]

It worked - thank you. The generate tone save as a wav format worked, so I tried exporting the file as a wav - but only naming the file a-z & 0-9 (I did have the file saved in date format previously), and it was sucessful. I'm still intreged to know why it was exporting as a .10 file though. no other program recongised it bar WMP. I made a zip copy and am currently uploading it to sendspace.

Thanks again.

[steve]

Ah ha - it all comes clear now.
I bet that you've only ever used Windows computers - Windows has a habit of making things "easy" for users. One thing that it does is to automatically add a file extension and hide it from the user. In itself that would probably not be too much of a problem, but as Windows relies on the file extension rather than looking at the actual contents of the file, if it gets the extension wrong then it completely messes up and the poor user can't even see what the problem is.

Audacity is a cross-platform program (it runs on Mac and Linux as well as on Windows). As such it is less rigid than many Windows only programs and will allow you to use almost any file extension that you like. Again, that would not be a problem in itself, except that Windows throws a fit when it sees a dot in a file name and assumes that the last letter after the dot are the file extension. What this means is that if you enter the name "myfile-13.9.10", then Windows assumes that ".10" is the file extension.
Audacity 1.3.12 should issue a warning about this, but perhaps you missed it or cancelled it.

If you really want to use dots in a file name, be sure to manually add the correct file extension to the name, so if it is a WAV file, add ".wav" to the end of the name. Better still, avoid such problems entirely by using only a-z, 0-9, hyphen and underscore in file names. These characters are universally accepted (except that Windows does not accept certain combinations of all upper case letters, so to be really safe use lower case, or at least mixed case, but not all upper case).

I'm expecting that you may still have a problem with Lame - is that the case?

[miko]

That is the exact problem. It never clicked with me, as when I was running the previous version of audacity on windows vista - i always named the files after the date i.e 13.09.10 and it worked everytime. Never had this problem until I started running windows 7. It seems so obvious now, but for the past while it was frustrating to me as I thought I had tried every possible solution.

No there is no issue with lame now either. I assumed from the beginning that there was, as audacity was working.

Thank you so much for your help.

[steve]

Terrific
Thanks for letting us know.