Convert Real Media To Wav Using M Player
This was posted by ShimmyShack? here : http://www.moviecodec.com/topics/6970p1.html Kudos to him. I am just putting it here so if the link dies I still have it, it is not, nor do I claim it to be my work.
.RAM files are (as was previously said) simply text files with the URL of the actual music typed inside. therefore open the RAM file in a text editor, and copy the music URL to the clipboard, the music file ends with .rm this file can be downloaded and later changed to mp3, see below.
if youre on windows or linux a great program to download is mplayer. you can find the windows version here, (linux people will already have this beauty)
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html
get one of the windows releases.
Also download the codecs which will allow you to read almost any music type and convert between them from the same page.
Now unzip mplayer into a directory somewhere, and unzip the contents of the codecs download into the codecs folder which is created when you unzip mplayer.
Now how to get your mp3 from the URL you have in the clipboard.
in windows (xp) open a command window start->run enter cmd and press return
goto the directory where you have unzipped mplayer (say this was called c:\program files\mplayer)
If you dont know how to do this, install the command here powertoy from windows (which can be found using google and downloaded for free from microsft) and then right click on the folder with mplayer.exe in it and select “command window here” from the menu
now the command you use is
mplayer -dumpstream URL
this will download the rm file and save it as the file stream.dump in that folder
now to convert it to an mp3 you first need to convert it to a wav file
mplayer -ao pcm stream.dump
now you will have a file called audiodump.wav in the folder (say this folder is called c:\program files\mplayer)
then download lame.exe or gogo.exe from the net and use them to create your mp3. http://lame.sourceforge.net/links.html#software
(or use one of the many lame based tools out there) http://winlame.sourceforge.net/
gogo is faster but not so powerful.
unzip lame to its own folder, and do the same with gogo, google to find it.
now open a new command window or change into the lame folder and type
lame — preset-standard “c:program files\mplayeraudiodump.wav” “c:program files\mplayersparkly_new.mp3”
all on one line
now watch - you now have a sparkly_new.mp3 in the mplayer folder.
If this sounds hard, then go and buy something.
but I have associated nearly all my music with mplayer, and I cn double click on it to watch avis, raw vob files, to listen to mp3s, wavs, oog format, to save bbc files from the internet, to convert between one format and the other etc. etc. etc.
it is extremely lightweight and runs on very slow machines and old latops.
ps. to convert between wma and mp3, (if you have a load of wmas you want to convert which have NOT been copyprotected with windows DRM) you can convert them with the same command
mplayer -ao pcm old.wma
then use lame as before to convert from audiodump.wav to your new.mp3
lame -b 128 audiodump.wav new.mp3
where "-b 128” means use a bit rate of 128kbps
to find out what bitrate to use on the wma just hover the mouse over it to see what it was originally encoded as.chances its the same for the rest of the files in a folder. (if you encode with double the bitrate your mp3s will be twice the size of the original wmas)
oh and one more thing. goto windows media player if you use that, tools-> options-> rip music tab-> select mp3 on the format drop down, and 86Mb (192Kbps) on the slider
hope this helps someone, check out the sourceforge link above if you havent, theres a lot of other free stuff there.