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Converting WMA to MP3

Introduction

To convert WMA format (thanks Microsoft) to MP3 format, you will need "lame", "mplayer", and "perl". You must have the unofficial package repositories configured in Debian to install lame.

Installation

To install everything once you have the unofficial package repositories configured:

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apt-get install lame mplayer perl

Then create a file named convert.pl and insert these lines:

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#! /usr/bin/perl
### WMA TO MP3 CONVERTER
###
$dir=`pwd`;
chop($dir);
opendir(checkdir,"$dir");

while ($file=readdir(checkdir)) {
$orig_file=$file;

if ($orig_file !~ /\.wma$/i) {next};

print "Conversion in progress: $orig_file\n";

$new_wav_file=$orig_file;$new_wav_file=~s/\.wma/\.wav/;
$new_mp3_file=$orig_file;$new_mp3_file=~s/\.wma/\.mp3/;

$convert_to_wav="mplayer \"./$orig_file\" -ao pcm -aofile \"./$new_wav_file\"";
$convert_to_mp3="lame -h \"./$new_wav_file\" \"./$new_mp3_file\"";
$remove_wav="rm -rf \"./$new_wav_file\"";

print "EXEC 1: $convert_to_wav\n";
$cmd=`$convert_to_wav`;
print "EXEC 2: $convert_to_mp3\n";
$cmd=`$convert_to_mp3`;
print "REMOVE WAV: $remove_wav\n";
$cmd=`$remove_wav`;
print "\n\n";

}

print "Done....";

Then set the appropriate permissions:

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chmod 755 convert.pl

Execute it in the folder containing your WMA files:

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./convert.pl