Free simple audio editor for Windows Media audio files?

[Jon Silberman]

My Audacity apparently won't work with Windows Media files. What are others using (or what would you recommend)? I don't need anything fancy. I mostly just want to "clip" out selected portions of long recordings to upload to Soundcloud. Thanks.

 

[oldhousescott]

Hey Jon, a quick looksee at the Audacity site references an "FFmpeg" plugin that will allow you to work with AC3, AMR(NB), M4A, MP4 and WMA format files. Have you tried that plugin?

 

[Jon Silberman]

I believe, from my Googling, that FFmpeg is designed to allow one to convert the files into different formals. http://www.wikihow.com/Install-FFmpeg-on-Windows Thanks, I'll look into it.

But for actually editing the Windows Media files themselves, what do you think of Windows Media Encoder 9?

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17792

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Encoder

 

[Unnecessary]

I use Free-Ac Audio Converter and convert stuff to .wav or .mp3, then edit...plus then its compatible with a lot more playback devices, included WMP.

 

[Motterpaul]

I use a program called Goldwave. yes, it has been around forever and it is free, but it does everything I need. A lot of people know, not that many use it.

It is like a 2-trk mastering program, it does everything you need.

 

[-alex]

Another vote to convert to WAV first. WMV is just a container format that is holding lossy compression. Edit in Audacity or any other program. Save to your preferred format - probably some flavor of AAC or MP3.

Last time I used windows media encoder ( a long time ago ) it was kind of clumsy. It was really designed to encode, not edit. You'll probably have difficulty with exact cut/trim points.

Libav is a branch of ffmeg it may or may not be easier for you if you decide to go the command line route.

 

[Fran Guidry]

I believe, from my Googling, that FFmpeg is designed to allow one to convert the files into different formals. http://www.wikihow.com/Install-FFmpeg-on-Windows Thanks, I'll look into it.

But for actually editing the Windows Media files themselves, what do you think of Windows Media Encoder 9?

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17792

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Encoder

Your impression is not correct. FFmpeg _can_ be a standalone program that performs conversion, but it is also available as a suite of libraries that can be used to expand the range of formats a given piece of software can decode. Using these libraries allows Audacity to handle many additional file types without conversion. These same libraries are used by REAPER to decode and encode video.

Fran

 

[Phletch]

I use a program called Goldwave. yes, it has been around forever and it is free, but it does everything I need. A lot of people know, not that many use it.

It is like a 2-trk mastering program, it does everything you need.

Another vote for Goldwave. Somebody turned me on to it over ten years ago, and like you said, it's a great intuitive 2track editing program.

And Jon, it's laid out very similar to Audacity (which is probably why I find Audacity so easy to work with).

 

[dporto]

I use a program called Goldwave. yes, it has been around forever and it is free, but it does everything I need. A lot of people know, not that many use it.
It is like a 2-trk mastering program, it does everything you need.

Actually, it's not "Free"... It's $59.00 if you decide to use it...

 

[Scott Whigham]

My Audacity apparently won't work with Windows Media files. What are others using (or what would you recommend)? I don't need anything fancy. I mostly just want to "clip" out selected portions of long recordings to upload to Soundcloud. Thanks.

What is a "Windows Media File" exactly? That doesn't make sense to me. What's the file extension?

 

[-alex]

What is a "Windows Media File" exactly? That doesn't make sense to me. What's the file extension?

Windows media is a container format designed to hold compressed data and metadata such artist name. Like other some other formats it supports streaming and DRM.

AVI is another common container format as is MP4, DIVX, Flash, OGG and Quicktime. Windows media containing audio usually called a .wma file, and video .wmv

 

[Scott Whigham]

Windows media is a container format designed to hold compressed data and metadata such artist name. Like other some other formats it supports streaming and DRM.

AVI is another common container format as is MP4, DIVX, Flash, OGG and Quicktime. Windows media containing audio usually called a .wma file, and video .wmv

Ahhhh - that's funny, to me, because I use Windows mainly and I quit using Windows Media Player and WMA files so long ago that I totally forgot about them.