MP3 Encoding question (1 Viewer)

[Mike LS]

I'm using WinLame to encode MP3's from wav files and have a quick question.

When I create an MP3 with this program and either email it or try to play it on another machine, the file type is not recognized. It displays with the generic white windows icon. If you open the MP3 player and browse for the file (or use the "open with" command) it opens and displays correctly in the future, but not until it's played for the first time.

Any ideas?

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Sounds like file associations on the other machine.

-Vince

 

[Mike LS]

That's what I thought at first, but it happens every time I try to play one of those files on any other machine.
I've tested this with my laptop (correctly set up to play MP3's through MusicMatch) and it still doesn't know what to do with the file.
Again, manually associating the file with the player solves it for that particular file.
It's not that big a deal, but it doesn't seem like it should do that.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

The only way windows keeps track of files is the file type signified by the three character suffix. For mp3 files it is of course .mp3, so a song named "The Song" is actually named "The Song.mp3" - Windows is just set to hide stuff like that out of the box, something I for one change as soon as possible so that the file suffix is always displayed.

On a Windows machine with IE (most of them these days) you can just open My Computer by double-clicking on it, select the Tools menu and the "Folder options" choice there.

Clicking on the tab marked "View" should give a lot of options in the window below about how to show files etc - deselect "hide file extensions for known file types" and if you like you can also select to see all hidden files, ie files that have the "hidden" attribute set.

If your files as ripped seem to have a suffix that is anything execept .mp3 that would explain this behaviour; your first visit to "show with" sets up the operating system to remember to open whatever file type they have with your mp3 player.

 

[Trenton McNeil]

Sounds to me that you may not be naming them with .mp3 extension....or perhaps no extension at all.

 

[Mike LS]

The program adds the file extention. I'm sure it's not something as simple as that. Reason is that my machine (the one that I use for encoding the files) reads the files fine....it's only when I try to use them on other systems.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Yeah, but your machine has already been set up to make the connection that the files with extension "x" should be run with the mp3 player program. That is also what you do at the remote systems the first time you try to play them, after that they remember that extension "x" equals mp3 song to be played by the mp3 player.

You can rename any file and give them an extension of whatever, ".foo" if you wish, and then try to run them. The first time you do, you then set it up so the mp3 player is the player of choice for files with the .foo extension and from then on, every .foo file equals an mp3 file as far as the system knows.

I'll not swear to that being your problem, but it does seem like a highly likely candidate to me.

Out of the box if you try to rename a file and call it "song.mp3" there is a very real possibility its actually called "song.mp3.foo" instead - because windows hides the file extension and won't let you change it, under some circumstances. Viruses use that little feature too to spread - their authors name them "hotsexpic.jpg.scr" and users happily click on the image and wind up running the .scr file (which in Windows is a screensaver file, ie an executable file).

 

[Mike LS]

I suppose that's a possiblity, even though I don't have my system set to hide file extentions.

Again, this is no big deal, I just wondered if there were something about Winlame I didn't know about. I haven't used the program much and don't know it's ways very well.

Too, if I use a program like MusicMatch to rip a track directly to MP3, those seem fine. It's only the ones I use WinLame to convert that I've notice this little quirk with.