[MPlayer-users] mpa audio format - conversion to mp3

[Corey Hickey]

Nick Rout wrote:
> I was trying to help someone who wants to convert an mpa file to mp3 so
> that he can play it in some portable device. 
> 
> I thought it would be easy, but I don't seem to be able to find much on
> what an mpa file actually is! wikipedia doesn't tell me, and "every file
> format in the world" at whatis.techtarget.com tells me "MPEG-related
> file (MIME type 'mpeg')"

I don't know if I've ever run across such a file, but some other sources 
say MPA is an MPEG audio file. Anyway, the name doesn't matter; if 
mplayer can play it, then you can re-encode the audio however you choose.

> Before I go tell him something wrong and feel like an idiot,
> would/should  something like this work?
> 
> mencoder file.mpa -oac mp3lame -o file.mp3

No, that would just give you an error, and even if it worked you'd end 
up with an avi file named file.mp3. The right way to do it is to use 
mplayer to output a wav file and lame (or something) to encode to mp3.

$ mplayer file.mpa -ao pcm:fast -vc null -vo null -benchmark
$ lame <your lame options here> audiodump.wav file.mp3

-Corey