Hi Guys As a newbie I keep a low profile, but I really need some help here please. I had downloaded Audacity to make some ring tones. Recently I transferred my music CD's to an external drive to save room on my PC. After the transfer I went to play one of my songs which was on MP3 format and Audacity came up with the following error message. WMA file. Importers supporting such files are FFmpeg-compatible files, but none of them understood this file format. Can someone explain this in simple terms that I can understand? Did I mess up all my library, or is there someway I can recover these songs and get them to play? Thanks in advance for any help you can give me. Al
Nah it would require conversion of all songs surely,right clicking on any song then hit properties should give you the info as to whether it's mp3 or not,however mediainfo would be a quicker way,then all you do is right click audio file then hit mediainfo. Me thinks try another media player like vlc or perhaps xion
Scorp is correct that a copy will not change the file format. Audacity ought to be able to read an mp3 file unless you confused it by giving miss information. It is possible you corrupted some of your music when you copied it. This is more easily done if the connection was a USB drive and not a eSATA connection. Data must be converted to USB information in your CPU then the process is reversed before it can be saved while eSATA connections do no converting. I suggest you open the top post browse to the 3 post the audio utilities post. Download the mp3-library. Catalog a folder containing the 'problem' music. I find it does best with folders having less than 100g of music. See what it thinks about the quality. If there is corruption the utility may let you remove the problem. You can remove corrupted meta data (tags) as well as corrupted frames. Although many fools firmly believe they can hear 1 bit out of place, I have removed 4 contiguous 2-K frames without being able to detect the difference. Try using a read audio jukebox/audio management system like Media Monkey or Win Amp. Links for free versions of these can also be found in the top post. You are the first person I have heard of that uses audacity to play music. mp3-library will also play music. I wouldn't empty your trash can until you resolve this issue if you haven't already. Recovering the music back to C: then copying the music with teracopy is the best way to solve your problem. Teracopy will warn you when a file did not copy perfectly. Do the copy while your computer isn't doing much. I only use internal harddisks but inside good boxes like Nextstars. A Nextstar will handle up to a 2t GREEN drive. Their power ratings are all for black drives that use much more power. Greens are cheaper and are ideal for external drives because they use less power and run much cooler. Why go to the bother and expense? My friend burned out 5 X-HDs none lasted a year till I bullied him into a quality setup. He is a believer. Get the boxes with the eSATA connection. I use the eSATA connection to load the disks. That is faster and less likely to corrupt. Once filled then the USB connection can be used. Since it is so easy to swap drives in and out of the box, you can back up to a drive then remove it from the box and put it in storage.
Audacity will neither open nor convert to .wma unless the FFMPEG library has been installed (Edit > Preferences > Libraries) and you would have to specify wma when exporting the selection.
Thanks for your quick reply. After trying out what you said some of the songs had WMA file. All I did was transfer MP3's to an external drive, that's it. Now why it said that I had to open it with Audacity is hard to follow. The files were in my PC in the Microsoft Media Player library. I noticed that I am allow to change how it opens with. I must admit that I don't have a player installed on my external drive. Could that be the problem? I don't use Audacity for playbacks, only to make ring tones. I need a player that I can burn my CD's to. Please make a suggestion. Thanks again.
Thanks for your input. As a newbie I really don't know anything about this FFMPEG being installed. I for sure did not do it. All I did was transfer my MP3's from the Microsoft Media Player library to an external hard drive.
Thanks for your reply. When I transferred the music I was using a USB connection. Perhaps you are right that it got corrupted. I don't use Audacity to play my music, I only use it to make ring tones. How the format got change is beyond me. I found that some of the files would open up with Winamp which I have on my PC and I was able to play them and also to change how they open up with. Now since I use Microsoft Media Player on my PC and I don't have a player on my external drive could that have been the problem? Can you suggest a player that will allow me to burn songs to a disk to download to my external drive? You have been a great help, thanks.
What extension is showing on the original set of files that were ripped direct from cd & are on computer edit if they're wma:- Start from scratch,delete all then re rip the cd's to FLAC then create ring tones from the flac files,before doing so i'd go into settings of ALL media players & DESELECT file associations,drop n drag whatever files to external manually this will not cause any conversion.FFMPEG most probably got installed with audacity however this should not be an issue as i have it with klite,test run one batch of flac & transfer to external,using mediainfo it should still show the extension .FLAC,use either EAC or Audiocoder or freemakeaudio to rip to flac then create a set of mp3's from the flac,then try to drop n drag to external & see if mp3 extension is still there,or just set external as destination in ripping,by the way you can use any media player to find where to cut by using the play time thingy,i found it easier to do it that way than use that graph audacity uses ps:i think audacity can create flac all that's needed is the lame plugin
Media Monkey is my favorite with Winamp as my next favorite. As I said before, copying could not change the format but corruption could confuse the player. I would try to recover your music on your C:. If you emptied your trash can, try an undelete utility. I use ntfsundelete for ntfs drives modern M$ format. External and Mac use FAT. Recovering, will be much easier than any other way to fix the problem. Re-ripping with a better ripper like dbPowerAmp or EAC would be the best solution.
Thanks for being patient with me. Newbies make a lot of mistakes. My error was that I had not installed a player in my external box, so of course the music had nowhere to open to. I installed Media Monkey, and the problem is solved. I no longer get Audacity to try to open the music and give me error messages. Thanks for the help and your suggestions.
Sorry I took so long getting back to you. I solved the problem, by installing a player to the external box. Like I said before, newbies make dumb mistakes, but that's how you learn. Thanks for the help and your suggestions.
That wasn't dumb or ignorant it should have worked fine as it was and I am not sure how that helped. Even though the player is installed on the external, it is still in RAM memory just like it was if it was on C: when it is playing a tune. I would be very careful to back up what ever you have on that external drive. Something isn't right with it. Most persons play as I do from a USB connection. I only load disks with a eSATA connection since I have 1 eSATA connection and 3 external boxes.
