Audio format

  • Thread starter Thread starter Greg Unger
  • Start date Start date
G

Greg Unger

Both MM2 and Audacity tell me something like that my .cda audio file (from a
CD) "is not an audio CD file. Try ripping it to a native audio format that
Audacity can import."

How can I learn how to work with audio files so I can import them into a MM2
project?

(I've actually done it before, but it must have been by accident, because I
can't for the life of me remember how!)

Thanks if you can help..... Greg
 
Copy it to your hard drive with WindowsMediaPlayer where it will be
'captured' as a WMA file which MovieMaker will like.
 
Hi Greg,

A cda file is a sound file. But it is not used by anything other than music
CD playing software.

Before such a file can be used it needs to be "ripped" to your hard drive.
Ripping simply creates a file of a user chosen format out of the files on
an Audio CD. You can use Windows Media Player to create a WMA file or
something like MusicMatch to create an MP3 or WAV file.

The most common and perhaps the original audio format is WAV. WAV files are
accepted by a very wide range of audio software. If you think of a DV-AVI
file as being the best you can get on your computer for a vidio file, you
can also think of a WAV file as being the best format for audio. In both
cases and because the compression, used if any at all, is so light, you get
very large files. Because of that first MP3 then WMA and now MP3Pro formats
are available that compress the data into ever diminishing file sizes. With
the exception of very trivial compression, you always loose a little of the
quality when you do a compress. But as the human ear is in any case not
that good it is usual that you will not be able to tell the difference.

To sum up....

Convert to either WAV or MP3 for the greatest flexibility
Convert to MP3 or WMA for good reduction in size, but with a smaller range
of packages that can use it (More WMA than MP3)
Convert to MP3Pro for very small files but a small range of programs will
be able to use it.

Good software for ripping in no particular order...WinAmp, MusicMatch (the
one I use) and Windows Media Player
 
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