How to convert WMA to MP3 using VLC instead of MPlayer

I’ve been looking into this for a few days now, frustrated with all the scripts, recipes, methods posted on forums and blogs. It seems that nobody knows how to do this properly! So if you have a music library with many wma files in it, and you want to convert them to mp3, you’ve found the right post.

Method: a bash script will be created for the conversion – this script will convert each individual file one after another, using the VLC media player.

You’ll need:
1-VLC media player (sudo apt-get install vlc [enable extra repos for this]);
2-ffmpeg library (sudo apt-get install ffmpeg [enable extra repos for this]);

Steps:

1-open a terminal command-line, run the command below to generate a script which will convert your files

find -L /path/to/your/mp3/library -iname *.wma -exec echo 'vlc -v  "{}" --sout '\'#transcode{acodec=mp3}:standard\{access=file,dst=\"{}.mp3\",mux=ffmpeg\}\''' \; >> batch_wma2mp3.sh; chmod u+x batch_wma2mp3.sh;

2-check the script for apostrophes or single quotes or double quotes in the names of your files.

gedit batch_wma2mp3.sh

3-run the script with this:

./batch_wma2mp3.sh

NB.: If you have DRM protected files, there will be no way to decrypt them with VLC neither with Mplayer. I didn't add the vlc://quit at the end of each command call coz sometimes it will mess up the playlist and just quit without converting the song, that's why you have to close VLC manually for each song.

Moving to France

After living 4 years in a row in Tampere, 5 years in total, it’s time to change things. I’ve always known I wouldn’t spend my life in Finland – I’m thinking about writing a series of articles on the reasons for that. To be short, I’ll quickly mention the climate, Finnish traditional social coldness, and what I call a “natural incompatibility of cultures”. I’ve nothing against the Finnish ways and I understand it quite well, but there is something missing in it (in my eyes). Have to make it clear here – I’m not just your ordinary foreigner who lived isolated from the Finnish culture, making only foreigner friends, living in a bubble. I don’t fell that I need to disclose all the details of my history with Finland and Finns, I’ll trust that you can take my word on this.

You might know, Finland is number 1 in education. They’re also among the bottom 5 in corruption. Scandinavia is one of the safest areas in the world, the labor market in Finland is just wonderful for engineers (all these years I happily worked for Nokia, under Tieto). If you talk to me about Finland, you’ll notice a peculiar admiration and fascination from my part, and I won’t try to suppress it – it is certainly one of the greatest and best countries in the world to live in. Hard to explain this, hard to put it into words; it’s just a country where things just work. Every time I go to Brazil my blood boils because of the lack of commitment of public workers, companies, service providers in general – things just don’t work. That annoyance is present in other European countries as well, but in a smaller scale, and smaller intensity. Brazil can teach lessons to many European countries in many areas, but it still is far far behind Finland in many aspects: take for example the fact that Finland approved a law to grant broadband Internet access to ALL citizens! Makes me think of the dial-up speed of Brazilian Internet connections… *sigh* Alright I’m not going to start talking about Brazil now. You’ve got the point – Finland kicks ass, but I’m moving away.

So as many other foreigners that come and go, I will too be moving out soon. My new home will be Nice, in the south-east coast of France, by the turquoise-blue Mediterranean bathed beaches. So far it all looks awesome, landscapes are amazing, mild weather even in the winter, excellent traveling connections, what else!? I’ll post back with more info on the job later. For now this is all.