[kde-linux] Sound conversion from .rm to.mp3

[Sergey Kulikov]

James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> LM--- wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I have been a plain user of Linux for almost three years now, sporting
>> Debian 4.0 Etch, now with Kernel 2.6.18, KDE 3.5 on a Pentium PC with
>> AMD Athlon1800+, and I'm very satisfied.
>>
>> I was looking for a tool to convert sound, i.e. .rm files to .mp3 files.
>> I was told to try SoundConverter which I found in the Debian repository.
>>
>> Now I realised that the programme is not able to convert .rm files to
>> .mp3 files. Several gstreamer plugins are installed (several of the
>> gstreamer0.10 series AND I installed gstreamer0.8-lame and
>> gstreamer-mad, as I read that they were necessary) and the corresponding
>> libraries libgstreamer0.8 and libgstreamer0.10 but there's nothing to be
>> done. I still can't convert as I wish.
>>
>> Does it have to do with a new built-in limitation (a licencing problem?)
>> or did I miss something?
>>
>> Anybody having help for me?
> 
> First, you need to realize that any GUI application for audio is a front 
> end for an application that can be accessed from the command line.
> 
> So, if I wanted to convert file <x>.rm to Vorbis I could use the command:
> 
> 	mplayer -ao pcm <x>.rm | oggenc -o <x>.ogg -
> 
> {note the "-" at the end; this IS required}
> 
> should convert <x>.rm to <x>.ogg IF, and only if, mplayer can play the file.
> 
> I don't seem to have an <x>.rm file available, so I can't try this.
> 
> IAC, if MPlayer won't do it, there are other Linux players (e.g. Xine & 
> FFMPEG) that might work.  There might be a GUI front end that would do 
> this, I don't really know. Perhaps someone else knows.
> 

I guess mplayer -ao pcm <x>.rm | oggenc -o <x>.ogg - won't work. Because 
you try to perform on-fly encoding from stdout. -ao pcm argument won't 
perform any stdout output and will write audiodump.wav on your hard 
disk. So you can't use this kind of piping. I guess that would be a 
better idea to solve the problem in a single line:

$ mplayer file.rm -ao pcm && lame -m s --cbr -b 320 -s 44.1 
audiodump.wav file.mp3 && rm -f audiodump.wav

Will encode file.rm -> file.mp3 with CBR/320Kbps/44Khz/Stereo

Best wishes,
flux