Produce MP3 files from a CD with Windows Media Player?Dave, I've read your articles about how to transfer MP3 music files to a Sony PSP and other MP3 device, but what baffles me is that when I insert music CDs into my PC, it produces "WMA" files, not "MP3" files. How do I fix this, or is Windows Media Player incapable of producing MP3s? This is a very common question, so let me step through it in great detail. First off, though, rest assured that while it's definitely not recommended by Microsoft (for obvious reasons), the Windows Media Player can most definitely produce high-quality MP3 audio files from your favorite music CDs. (there are also audio file conversion tools worth mentioning, notably Smart Audio Converter) The first step is to launch Windows Media Player. For this article, I'll show Media Player 10 (WMP10, as Windows folk say). Start it up, click on the "Rip" tab, and here's what you'll see:  Of importance here is the last text line in the main window area; it tells you where the MP3 files will be saved once the CD is "ripped" (a fancy word for 'copied onto the computer'). Insert a music CD, however, and nothing happens, even though the "Insert an audio CD" prompt suggests that somehow WMP should automatically detect and scan it. Maybe that works on your computer, but for me, I have to explicitly tell the Media Player to scan a specific hardware device to find the music CD. This is done by right-clicking on the word "Rip" then selecting the right menu item:  Please click on the image for a full-size version Yeah, it's a bit ugly, but select it and a second or two later the program queries an online CD information database to figure out album and track information, then all is good:  You can see that my test CD is the jazz album Philly Style by jazz music Jeff Lorber, and that WMP is showing every track by name, length of the track in minutes and seconds, artist, etc. Also note that every track is automatically checked. To copy all the music onto your computer, click on Rip Music along the top bar. But that's not quite right, actually, because you'll end up with more Windows Media Audio format music (files with ".WMA" which won't work with MP3 players including both the iPod and Sony PSP). What you need to do is change the default settings for ripping audio content within Windows Media Player, which is easily done. Right click on the "Rip" tab along the top again, and this time navigate to Tools --> Settings... and click on the Rip Music tab:  You can see where "Windows Media Audio" is highlighted as the default format in the middle of the window. Click that pop-up menu item and choose MP3 instead, then I suggest you drag the slider along to have either the best quality or just one 'click' down from there. No-one likes crummy quality music files... :-) When you're done, click "OK" and click on the Rip Music link at the top of the main Media Player window again. This time it'll copy the audio CD, but create MP3 files, rather than WMA files. Nice! Pop over to the folder -- probably "My Music" in your "My Documents" folder -- where the music is stored now, and you'll likely see both the old WMA files and the new MP3 files:  You can safely delete any Windows Media Audio files if you also have MP3 versions of the files, by the way. Now, finally, you have the MP3 files that your MP3 player / iPod / Sony PSP likes. Copy these MP3 files onto your player and you'll have just gone bigtime geek, ripping a music CD and copying the songs onto your favorite gadget. Nicely done! Not sure how to copy audio files onto your Sony PSP, by the way? Then please check out: • Download music and photos to a Sony PSP Hope this helps you with your music efforts!
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Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader. how can i change windows media 7.1 music into mp3 music so i can upload it onto my phone Posted by: adam at January 5, 2006 10:52 AMAdam, please see: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/convert_wma_from_windows_media_player_into_mp3_files.html Posted by: Dave Taylor at January 5, 2006 1:49 PMI can't get movies to my psp. i rip them from the dvd and save them to the mrroot/100anv01 if i go on the pc it shows that it is there but it doesn't show on psp. it takes away memory to. Posted by: Tony Sparks at January 11, 2006 8:54 AMTony, I find that it's pretty tricky to work with the PSP, it seems to be very fussy about what media formats it accepts. I've even downloaded two different videos produced by the same program and one works while the other is shown as "unknown data". The error messages are quite unclear (I think deliberately so) too. What to do about it? Keep experimenting with different formats, different output parameters, different filenames etc., and/or just get one of the PSP sync shareware apps for the Mac or PC and let that do the hard work. Posted by: Dave Taylor at January 11, 2006 9:02 AMI have been trying to download music on my little brothers psp for 3 hours now. I have read all of the other comments and followed them.But when i download it to his psp it never comes up in the music file. Posted by: regis at April 8, 2006 6:22 PMI have recieved a new computer with windows media 10 but i dont have the choice to rip the audio files to mp3 format...it confuses me because every where i go it says that WMP 10 comes with an mp3 encoder but i dont have it...Pleas help! Posted by: Dan at April 12, 2006 8:13 PMwhen my PSP folder comes up, it only says SAVEDATA, so I can't out it into MUSIC!!! i have no clue where to put my mp3 formatted songs.... Posted by: matt at April 13, 2006 3:20 PMI'm really confused. Your guide is amazing but I'm not quite with it today. I have a new 'supportplus mp3 player' and have followed your steps on the WMP and have ripped a CD. But I'm at a loss for what to do next. Any help please? as it seems i have the same problem as all others. the music seems to have taken up some memory but it cant be found on the psp, on my windows media the word rip does not appear Using media player 9 (can't get any later version because of company network restrictions)once I copy a CD I can't recopy it again no matter what I try. Ex:Copied a CD in wrong bitrate so deleted it tried to recopy in diffrent bitrate & it wouldn't. I tried deleting the folder from the recycle bin, recopying in same bitrate, clearing cookies, history & CD/DVD. Copy protection isn't on. Nothing works, any suggestions. Posted by: dal at September 3, 2006 5:57 AMI have a similar problem with Dan (posted April 12, 2006 8:13 PM). I downloaded WMP10 on this new laptop and tried ripping from my CD into mp3, but this error message keeps appearing: Recopy tip to nik, or to anybody visiting this page: Just select and check the checkbox on each item in the list which you want to recopy with different settings (bit rate etc.) :( very logical Posted by: mediaplayer at October 5, 2006 2:54 AMMr. Taylor- I am a college student just taking a CIS 115 course. We explore HTML + XHTML tags, and how to assemble a web page. The question I am pondering is one related to a specific tag situation. This is in no way a school related assignment-but I am looking to add a song to a webpage (I E) myspace-now I know to select the MP3 and get it into an HTML text by selecting my web browser. Either I can't find out what tag to use-to properly code the situation so the music will play-or I have no idea how to take the file from my computer-and put it on the myspace profile. all I am looking for is the basic code to insert the audio file from my computer into the myspace profile. Could you help me with this? My book does not give good refernces to how to insert tags such as video, or audio files. I am hoping I don't have to make a mock website-use smart HTP,host it-just to reference the site for my profile. Can you tell me of another way? Posted by: Mark R. at October 7, 2006 7:22 PMI riped my cd. and put in my memory stick but it dose not show any data. Posted by: tyler at December 26, 2006 9:50 AMis there a site where you can upload music from the internet to windows media player??? Posted by: gregg at February 26, 2007 7:38 PMhow do i change my mp3 songs into an html code that plays using windows media player?! Posted by: Andrew at March 4, 2007 12:09 PMHey,Dave. Thanks Posted by: Lee at March 5, 2007 12:08 PMhi dave, i have downloaded mp3 files to play on a car mp3 player but i'm having difficulty copying them from my computer to disc, wot do i need to do?? i have nero and windows cd creator, just a typical girl ..... Posted by: Jenny at March 10, 2007 9:39 AMHave media player 10, hate it! Thank you have the best solution to evry thing Posted by: giancarlo at March 16, 2007 9:23 PMI have a Sony MD recorder. I am trying to transfer the files from the mini-disc to my MAC. Can't find instructions on how to do it. Posted by: Connie at March 23, 2007 9:02 AMyou don`t understand,i have old computer at home i got some music on it,i want to put it this computer Posted by: kermit spurlock at April 14, 2007 3:41 PMHELP!!! Have been trying to burn Mp3 to CD-R using both WMP V.11 and Nero. After the burn finishes the cd pops out but when i go to view the files there is nothing there. Can anyone help? Posted by: Scott at April 17, 2007 12:27 AMHave media player and Windows XP. Want to do a simple convert from mp3 to audio cd and it doesn't seem to want to do it right. Burn, converting, burning, then says closing disk. I am using Roxio 7.0, burning music from wav. to mp3. Music will play on computer, but no where else. I've tried in the car, 3 different CD players. Solution? Posted by: Dee at April 30, 2007 3:58 PMHi Dave, HOW DO I CHANGE A MUSIC FILE THAT IS SAVED IN nml, nmx or m3u into an mp3 file, can you help me please... so that i can uploaded into a web page, because they only take mp3 files, please help Posted by: JULIO at May 23, 2007 11:05 PMi have a psp but wen i put it in and then i put usb connection and then it does not come up to create a file it comes up like what do u want to do play music from cd view slideshow and other things but i do not want to format my memory card how would i do this? Posted by: boo at June 1, 2007 10:26 PMhello there Mr. Dave... Is there a way to convert a song that is mp3 into a html code? How can I convert WAV format music files to mp3 or mp4 so they can fit on my Ipod? Posted by: Dan at June 29, 2007 10:00 AMDave I need some help! I have limewire and i got alot of songs i want to burn onto a cd & it says they are mp3 files. How do i change them from mp3 files to where they will burn on my cd? Plz Help A.S.A.P!!! -Lauren xoxo Posted by: Lauren at June 29, 2007 5:19 PMDave Taylor, well done. After hours of frustration with my new MP3 your blog sorted me in a few minutes. Thanks Posted by: John at July 15, 2007 1:01 PMHi Dave, Am using windows xp with windows media player. Am rather green at all this stuff but my problem is this. Have been downloading music from a certain site in mp3 form but want to record it at cd form. Pleeze elp. Cheers Steve. Posted by: Steve at July 25, 2007 12:30 AMCan u help me Plz, how to make mp3 folder from cd. my computer allow me to write mp3 from other mp3, it doesn't allow me to make mp3 folder from cd. Posted by: vuyisa at July 26, 2007 4:25 AMDAVE, HOW CAN I CHANGE FROM MP3 TO AUDIO USING WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER Posted by: CUBBY at August 9, 2007 12:48 PMHi Dave, I've read some of your articles on how to burn music with windows media player, but I need your assistance on the problem I am having on my media player. The first problem is that when I am burning music maybe 15 music tracks, media player will only burn 6 tracks, and leave remaining 9 tracks unburned before closing the disc. Secondly when I click on media player, it displays memory is full. Kindly profer me with solutions to this problems. Thanks Posted by: Sean at August 10, 2007 1:02 PMI got the following error comment which stopped my copying music mp3 files to my CD. "Windows Media Player cannot copy the files because there is not enough free disk space to store the temporary files. Delete some unneeded files on your hard disk, and then try again." What Can be done to alleviate this problem. Please help me with your wide experience. Thanks Ram thank you very much! I am trying to put photos in my psp i done like you said, connected psp to the computer duble clicked on psp icon made 2 folders one called music the other called Photos i draged the music and droped it in the music folder done the same with photos drag and droped photos in folder called Photos. My music played fine but when i tried photos it said There are no images what did i do wrong Posted by: James Higgins at August 28, 2007 8:19 PMhow do i change and mp3 to where it will play in a car cd player Posted by: lisag at August 29, 2007 3:21 PMHow do I get a windows media player to play on Myspace? ty, gt Posted by: gary tourtillott at October 18, 2007 5:34 PMhey dave, i was wondering when i'm burning a cd using windows media player do i put it on highmat audio or audio cd? Posted by: jocey at October 18, 2007 6:30 PMThank-you so much!! I now know how to RIP music! I was trying to transfer CD music onto a background menu for my slideshow and had to convert it to a Windows Media usable version. Helped so much!! Thank-you!!!!! Posted by: Shannon Smith at November 6, 2007 6:17 PMHowdy, hi dave, Thank you so much for your information on converting wav files to MP3's using Windows Media. It is a simple thing, but for those of us who arn't geniuses at computer stuff a big thumbs up is given! Posted by: Jamie at December 2, 2007 10:54 PMcheers for da advice dave u a legand i have a ZEN mp3 player. I just downloaded over 300 songs to it from personal cd's. Most of the music is in hebrew. The music came imported all shuffled from how it was copied to the mp3 player. Even the englished music is shuffled. Why would this happen and..can it be corrected without redoing all of it? Posted by: sandi west at December 24, 2007 5:00 AMdave need help The file>cd and devices option does not show up on my windows media player. I am using windows vista which has wmp version 11.0.6. Even on clicking the rip tab it does not the songs. the songs are stored in a folder on the root of the audio cd. is that a problem ?pl help Posted by: snehal at January 8, 2008 9:09 AMDave, you are a genius. I can now play my music on my mp3 player. I thought the player would automatically save the tracks as mp3 files - little did I know. Many thanx for the ripping info. Posted by: Norma at April 16, 2008 9:17 AMYou are a genious! VERY good and detailed explanation, and with pictures!!!! i want to know how do i burn an MP3 disc but with different files within the disc? like lets it would mark...file 2 song 1 Posted by: david at May 1, 2008 10:31 AMHi Dave, hope you can help. I recently purchased a Philips mp3 for my wife to put her cds on. I ripped them to WMP then Sync'ed them fine. However on play back they appeared not as albums but in track order, ie all the track 1's played first etc. What have I done wrong, and how can I fix this?? I go through 4 or 5 CD's that get ruined before one of them finally burns part of the songs or some of the pictures I wanted to burn. I was wondering how I could fix that problem. Posted by: Raquel at June 3, 2008 11:36 AMhi dave i need help with my rca mp3 player i go through limewire and i dont know how to send my music to my windows media player11 or how to sync it to my device dont know much about computers please help send some pictures of how to work it if you can thanks alot Hi - I have bought my young grandson an MP3 player and I have no idea how to put his favourite music onto it. Where can I get instructions that are easy to understand, so that I can help him put his music onto the player? Posted by: Valda Connelly at August 2, 2008 11:54 PMBurning an MP3 disk on Windows Media Player as opposed to a regular Audio disk is as easy as selecting the 'Burn a data disk' option in the burn Menu. I have searched the web for this solution and everyone is overcomplicating the problem. Posted by: Paul Ogryzek at August 6, 2008 7:30 PMI HAVE DOWNLOADED MUSIC FROM LIMEWIRE AND SAVED THEM TO THE COMPUTER. I TRIED TO BURN SOME TO A CD BUT THEY WONT PLAY IN MY CAR STEREO AND THEY ARE MP3 FORMATE. HOW DO I FORMAT THEM TO REGULAR MUSIC CD. Posted by: cathy at September 10, 2008 10:49 AMJust came across your site whilst tearing my hair out doing a project... and wow, now I'm the happy orchestrator of an mp3 conversion and life is good again. Thank you soooo much!! Posted by: Jenn at September 14, 2008 11:42 AMok... thanks but how do you do it if you have already downloaded them as wma files... Posted by: Jessika at September 27, 2008 10:39 AMHi Guru Dave! My son downloaded music from an MP3 site to Windows Media Player (ver 9), they appear as MP3 format, and then tried to burn them to a CD which didn't work for him. However, beside each track it says 'cannot copy'. I tried the 'burn to data CD' route and this has not worked - HELP PLEASE! Posted by: Heather at October 16, 2008 10:12 AMThanks Dave! Your the greatest! Posted by: philip at October 22, 2008 10:11 AMAfter you save the MP3 file - how do you upload it onto a website? Thank you! Posted by: Laurie at November 20, 2008 11:08 PMI am using Roxio to create cd's but they are not burning to the disk correctly. The first song always starts somewhere in the middle of the song and when i skip to the next song it starts it the middle of that song and so forth. Its like the spaces in between the songs are not right. I dont know if that is something you can even change. Please help me!! Posted by: Ashley at November 23, 2008 9:31 PMI wrote you the previous post about about the roxio cd's not burning correctly.....I'm not sure if you have responded back yet because I was having problems with my e-mail....My e-mail is fixed now...So if you dont mind sending your response, I would be very grateful. So sorry if any inconveince. Thank you! Posted by: Ashley at December 1, 2008 8:17 AMmy mp3 player has blank spots on it why and how can i get rid of them? Posted by: tammy at December 2, 2008 2:53 PMHI, I bought an MP3 from ebay but am not sure how to put music on it. I tried to rip the cds into media player but i have no luck. I am not familiar with PC so my navigation on them is rather poor. any suggestions? D Posted by: danielle at December 5, 2008 1:52 PMHi, Great website. I want to conver online songs to MP3 files. I am using Laptop with Windows. MAC provides "audio hijack" only for MAC PC/Laptop. I am looking for a similar application (Free) in other PC/Laptop environment. Thanks Hi dave v_idoko@yahoo.com thanks, Why can I burn CD's in iTunes but not Windows Media Player? I dont wish to use iTunes to burn, I am more comfortable with Media Player. I have verison 11. how do i fix that? Posted by: Shivana at December 17, 2008 9:36 PMYou saved my life. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!! Posted by: Jaqe Harding at January 1, 2009 9:44 AMi have windows media player, and i want to import songs that i have legally downloaded from a different website but on my media player it doesnt give me an option to import and songs, there is no file button on my media player. any suggestions>? Posted by: Danny at January 12, 2009 10:32 PMHey! I've a question that keeps bugging me. How do I insert a video into a ZEN? What type of file can ZEN read? Posted by: Edna at February 4, 2009 12:23 AMHey Dave, I had a question about how can i turn the videos that i transfered from my digital camera to computer to window media player so i could burn it on cd? how do i create and burn kar, or mp3+g I seem to have a hard time trying to burn a cd tht will play in my karaoke machine and show the lyrics too Posted by: diana at March 10, 2009 9:00 PMDave, Hi dave, Thanks for your help. I will follow your directions for converting via Windows Media Player, my WMA files to MP3 so I can send my own CD music over the internet, especially to my own web site. Up to this point, my producers did this for me, but now I can do it myself, thanks to you!! Posted by: Cathy Gulden at April 25, 2009 4:36 PMWell, this doesn't help me at all. This is but a basic "user manual " advise of how to use what's already there, not how to get around not having the mp3 option in the rip tab at all. i have windows media player and i tunes. its been a long time that i havent burned a cd. I normally burned them in windows media player but now it dosent let me. In i tunes it detects the blank cd and tells me to burn it there but i would rather burn it in windows media player so what can i do Posted by: enrique Saldana at May 25, 2009 5:10 PMQuestion.Any idea Dave why my downloaded karaoke videos show green audio details at the top of the screen. Mostly they were downloaded from utube using real player downloads? Thanks.Peter. Posted by: peter.bush at June 16, 2009 8:49 AMHi Dave, I am unable to select mp3 in the tools - options - copy music settings. I have an older version of windows media player and was wondering if you could help me. Posted by: Jason at September 16, 2009 10:22 AMDave , I have 2 questions. Thank you for your help! Posted by: Elena at November 10, 2009 4:35 PMHi Dave, For the past week I'm unable to rip CD's to my computer. WMA says, Windows Media Player cannot rip one or more tracks from the CD. Before this, I never had any trouble. Can you help me? Thanks Hi Dave- hey dave, thanks alot :) Hi there, My laptop seems to have a mind of its own--though my desktop was starting to do this as well, as it drew close to the time to make the switch over: When I download personal audiobooks onto my computer with windows media player 11--to make travelling back and forth to uni easier--95% of the files end up in a properly named folder (i.e. Agatha Cristy, subfolder "and then there were none disc 1" etc.) 4 percent of the files end up in the unknown artist folder, and 1% of the files ends up in a folder called Bob Dylan, with a subfolder of unknown album. I have no Bob Dylan music on my computer, and no reason for the computer to choose this folder name. Even when I've sorted out the muddle and put all the files back where they belong, they often revert to their original locations, usually after the computer is restarted, though sometimes without any evident provocation at all. Please help! Sue. Posted by: Sue at January 9, 2010 7:18 PMHi Dave,
Carol Posted by: Carol at January 18, 2010 4:19 AMHello, thanks a ton man Posted by: kal at February 1, 2010 10:25 AMI have two MP3 discs and I cannot figure out how to transfer them onto my MP3 player. The discs play fine in my pc, but when I try to transfer them into the player, I get an error mark beside each entry. The "Geek Squad" at Best Buy had never even heard of an MP3 disc. Posted by: Walter at February 7, 2010 9:47 AMGreat article but "ripping" is more than just "a fancy word for 'copied onto the computer'" it's also a conversion, from the CD's native CD-DA format to MP3 or some other audio format. It's both a transfer, and a conversion, of the tracks. Otherwise a very helpful article. Posted by: Jen at February 9, 2010 8:09 AMI have figured out how to rip into mp3 format but was hoping someone could tell me how to eliminate the spaces that occur between songs when the original recording does not have spaces. I am trying to put The Wall on my son's mp3 player without having the momentary spaces between tracks which are not part of the original recording. Thank you. Posted by: Shark at February 13, 2010 10:44 PMI have figured out how to rip into mp3 format but was hoping someone could tell me how to eliminate the spaces that occur between songs when the original recording does not have spaces. I am trying to put The Wall on my son's mp3 player without having the momentary spaces between tracks which are not part of the original recording. Thank you. Posted by: Shark at February 13, 2010 10:58 PMIn the Set Default Programs I checked all the defaults in media player as it only had 3 of 46 or something that close,anyway,then I burned an mp3 file that I already ripped years ago.Now that I have it on cd I changed the name and then deleted it from my saved music folder. I do not see rip in media player Posted by: todd at February 18, 2010 7:36 PMHi Dave, When I have uploaded my cd's to my computor through Windows Media Player and then transferred the music to my MP3 player, I have then removed the CD Music File from my computor, (my USB is not connected at this time). I then connect my USB for my MP3 back to my computor to do more work, but find that after disconnection when I check my MP3 the previous CD has disappeared from my MP3. Does this mean that I have to keep the uploaded CD on my Computor to avoid deleation from MP3? I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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