wma->mp3 transcoding issue on sync to SD card
 

Hi, I'm trying to sync several playlists worth of mp3 and wma music to an SD card for use in an in-car MP3 player that only support MP3. WMP11 doesn't seem to transcode files for 'dumb' devices duch as SD cards (if anyone knows differently I'd love to know how to configure it), so I thought I'd take a look at WinAmp.

I've set 'Supported formats' for the USB drive to just 'mp3' but only the MP3's are copied to the SD card and put in the new playlists. No mp3 transcoding of the wma files occur.

This is after a 'quick and dirty clean install' of 5.35 (uninstall,remove directory, reinstall), though interestingly it seemed to remember the playlists I'd asked it to sync.

As a test I managed to get aac transcoding working, by adding aac in supported formats and selecting MP4/aac 1.26, and saw wma files converted to aac so it seems transcoding works, though my car doesn't support aac AFAIK.

Do I need to purchase WinAmp Pro in order to do mp3 transcoding? I was trying to use 'MP3 Encoder 1.34' to do this, but a thread on one of the forums suggested this may only work with Pro so I tried out_lame 1.64 and lame 3.97 from http://out-lame.sourceforge.net/ but couldn't select this for transcoding. I've googled and searched the forums for various terms but I'm not finding where I'm going wrong - does out_lame actually work as a transcoding (enc?) pluglin? Apologies if my terminology is off here - WinAmp's new to me.

Attached is my_plugin_list.txt from my current clean install of WinAmp 5.35 on XP Pro SP2. I'll happily provide any other information people may feel is relevant.

As an aside, my car head unit (RNS-E) has 2 SD slots, ideally I'd like to use 2 cards, and sync different playlists to each card, though on the PC I only have one SD card slot. Is there a way WinAmp can recognise what card is in the G: drive (perhaps by the volume label) and sync different lists accordingly, without me having to change the playlists to be synced manually each time. It looks as though the rename device function would just affect the drive letter rather than recognise the specific card.

The head unit can also only read 512 elements (files and dirs) per SD - is there any way to cap or alert if that limit ould be exceeded? I wouldn't be adverse to purchasing Pro if it made this and the card->playlist mapping a no brainer.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

you need winamp pro to interface with lame_enc.dll.

then you just select the files that you want to transcode --> right click --> send to --> format converter.

this will not work with any drm wma files. (probably any wma file obtained legally over the internet). copy protection doesn't allow for format conversion.

Hi,

okay does winamp pro enable something that allows lame_enc to work - I seem to have lame_enc.dll in my plugins directory. Is there any way to do it with out_lame or other puclically available plugins?


Will that change the originals - I only want the copies that I put on the SD card transcoded. Won't the sync operation do this for me - it seemed to with the aac encoder that I mentioned.

btw, does it keep track of what's been transcoded so it doesn't chew cycles on subsequent sync operations re-transcoding?

I've no drm'd content - all the wma content is stuff that I'd ripped from my own CD's several years ago when I was (even more) ignorant (than I am now) and thought wma was giving me okay quality and saving me space, hence the mix of content today.

Thanks

not using the winamp transcoder


same operation different filetype. only your a little more involved.


if you tell it to do it again then it probably will.(i'm unsure) but you can see what you've done anyway.


quality will be better if you re-rip from originals rather than transcoding at all.

First, thanks for the quick replies.

Sorry to ask for further clarification, but if I purchase WinAmp Pro version, I'm unclear on whether I can keep my library of wma and mp3 on my PC and during the sync operation to the SD card have the the wma tracks automatically transcoded to mp3's on the SD card, retaining the track on the PC in it's original form. I beleive I can, as that's what appeared to happen when I tried the aac transcoder, but can anyone confirm?

I understand that there's a quality hit in transcoding, but re-ripping is too much effort (several hundred CD's) and as long as I'm only taking the quality hit for the quality hit for the music in the car (and not my PC library) then I'm okay with that (I think - I haven't heard it yet!)

Anyone else know whether I'll take the transcoding hit again on subsequent syncs of the card or whether WinAmp will recognise that the transcoded file is already there?
can I cap the number of tracks written to the SD card, and whether 2 SD cards can have different playlists synced to them and winamp retain the settings?

thanks

it won't touch your songs on the pc, unless you name them exactly the same and you save them to the same folder as the original.(i don't know of any reason why you would want to do this)