can someone tell me a good program for converting RealPlayer files into Windows Media files?
Thanx
Chris W
IIRC Realplayer is/was a real bear to convert. I tried once a year ago but didn’t find any tools. I wound up setting my Sound Blaster Live bundled wav file editing applet to capture the streaming output as it played through the system and was outputting as a wav file while it played. I think a generic wav recorder is bundled with Windows.
It worked fine. Make sure you set the quality level appropriate to what you want. Once it’s captured as an uncompressed .wav file you can then convert it to a windows media format file with Musicmatch http://www.musicmatch.com or a similar program…
I’ve run across two seperate issues trying to convert RealAudio files. The first is the one astro addresses in the previous post: taking a RealAudio file you have on your computer, and converting it into a WAV file. I came across this problem when I wanted my computer to play a particular song at bootup (as Windows will only play a WAV file at startup), and the only versions I could find at the time to download of it were RealAudio files (this was the Time Before Napster).
I tried using the sound editing software I had (but never used much - it was SoundForge, by the way) and found that while it would convert a large number of files into a large number of different formats (including converting a sound file INTO RealAudio format), it would not open a RealAudio file. Bummer. I also could not use SoundForge to record the sound file while it played in RealPlayer, as I could record a song from a CD playing, for example. When I tried to record it from SoundForge I got an error message saying “The ‘Microsoft Sound Mapper’ recording device is in use by another application.” Not being any kind of hacker or programmer, I figured the RealAudio people have purposely fixed it so you couldn’t do this (those bastards!) and instead found some other song to use. I don’t really understand why astro was able to do this; did I just need a Sound Blaster Live program instead of whatever I had?
Ever since then, any time I find myself wandering the software isles in Staples or CompUSA, I look at the plethora of sound editing software available, but just like SoundForge, they will all be able to export RealAudio files, but none of them are able to IMPORT a RealAudio file (this seems to be true even of the boxed version of RealAudio you can buy in the store, although I have only the description on the box to go by).
Then I ran across a second (related) problem. I found a song satire site with some RealAudio songs I wanted to play back for others in a different setting, but I couldn’t because they gave no way to save the realAudio file! It would only play as it streamed, and right clicking/save as… was disabled.
That was when I became motivated enough to search for some kind of hacker/fixit/utility software I figured HAD to be available SOMEWHERE.
And find it I did. It is called Total Recorder, and it changes your system configuration such that IT becomes the sound driver of your computer. Once installed, it will allow you to play any sound file through the normal means just like before, but since that sound file is now playing through itself instead of your previous windows sound driver, it will also allow you to record whatever it is playing (even a RealAudio file) and save the recording as a WAV file. After that, any sound editing program will be able to open a WAV file, and I’m sure most (if not all) will then allow you to save the opened file as a Windows Media file or any other format (like MP3).This solves both problems. It may not be as simple as you were looking for, to just automatically convert a RealAudio file into a Windows Media file with a single click, but at least it allows you to do it. If anyone is interested, Total Recorder can be found at http://www.highcriteria.com and although the free demo version limits you to only a 30 second recording (at least it did several years ago), the full version with unlimited recording time only costs $12.
By the way… as long as we are talking about this, I would be interested in being able to save streaming RealAudio Video or QuickTime files the same way, if the files themselves cannot be downloaded. Anyone know how to do that? How about saving a GIF or JPEG when right clicking/save image as… saves only an HTML file instead of a graphic file? (How do they set it to do that, anyway?) Just thought I’d ask! Thanks.