I have a data CD with wma’s on it. How can I get these into ardour? I’d like them as copies but when I try to import the tracks it doesn’t work…
WMA is a proprietary audio format by Microsoft. Ardour doesn’t support WMA files in any way (and probably never will). You can read more about WMA from wikipedia:
You can use mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu) to decode the files into .wav files:
mplayer -ao pcm:file=[outputfilename].wav [inputfilename].wma
You can use the same command for any type of input file mplayer supports.
PS. You will probably need the codecs on the download page.
Thank you for the reply. what about mp3? will ardour ever support that?
Currently I’m using a small bit of code to create both an mp3 and a wav dump of my wma file. it follows:
#!/bin/bash
#set wmafile to first parameter
wmafile=$1
#the output raw wav file
wavfile=$(echo $wmafile | sed -e s/wma/wav/)
#the final mp3 file
mp3file=$(echo $wmafile | sed -e s/wma/mp3/)
#use mplayer to play raw data from wma file outputing to wavfile
mplayer -ao pcm:file="$wavfile" “$wmafile”
#use lame to encode wav file to mp3
lame “$wavfile” “$mp3file”
you can put this code in any text file and change its permissions to include executable. then you can call it with # nameOfNewTextFile nameOfSong
MP3 is a non-fee proprietary format. The IP rights of the technology is owned by Fraunhofer. Thus, supporting MP3’s is very problematic.
On the other hand, Apple has bought rights to the MP3 technology from Fraunhofer. Because of this Ardour 2.0 on OSX will be able to use MP3’s because we can use CoreAudio to load sound files off the disk.
Btw. Your script has a bug: If you would use the script to process a file called “wowman.wma”, your wavfile and mp3file would end up being wowavn.wma and womp3n.wma . You should use either “basename” or use $ (end-of-line) in the sed expression: s/wma$/wav/ . The reason why the wowman.wma would become wowavn.wma is that without the “g” flag, sed will replace only the first match.
hi, sorry if I’m ignorant (I’m far from a developer), but would it not be quite a small task to “support” mp3 by making mplayer (or other conversion program) a dependency (or option), and then launch a similar script as the one above to convert the mp3 to wav, copy it to the project directory and then load it?
Gorgon actually has a VERY good question. Audacity is open source and they support exporting / saving to MP3 if you have the LAME codec. Why can Ardour not follow a similar route to provide MP3 support?
Hello guys,
sorry for being rude, but ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND !?!?!?!
Do you THINK that somebody cares if this is a free format or not? Wake up, EVERY sound is in mp3 format today!! So, even if you have to reverse engineer it, JUST SUPPORT IT !! No other way !!
WAKE UP !!! Is this the way how you are supposed to beat Microsoft? Sorry, but we don’t support mp3… This is really ridiculous!! Just find a way!! Whoever wants to do something, just does it, who doesn’t want to, tries to find some apology…
EVERY SINGLE SONG that I have is in mp3… What do you think??
If you are willing to slap the money down to use MP3s, by all means. I don’t think the Ardour community would be so inclined.
xeno: Again, Audacity is open source and they support exporting / saving to MP3 if you have the LAME codec. LAME is already out there. It’s open source. All we need is a developer to create a similar pathway to LAME the way Audacity did. No need to be “willing to slap the money down”. It’s free to use if we can find a developer to make it happen. I really don’t understand why you guys are taking such a strong stand against what has become (by far) the most popular codec for audio.