Encoder free mp3

Giving away music is a timeless promotional strategy. But when you give away a song, shouldn't you get something in return? This article will show you how to transform a free audio file into an effective online promotional tool. It's easy to do and doesn't require fancy programming skills. You just need a little-known feature of Microsoft's Windows Media Encoder (WME): the ability to insert URL scripts into an audio file.

When an audio file contains URL scripts, a browser window opens and a specified Web page appears anytime the song is played on a computer connected to the Internet. That gives. you the power to show photographs, lyrics, band information, and even advertisements each time your song plays. It turns a free song into an effective marketing tool, helping build traffic at your Web site, increasing sales at your e-commerce pages, and forging a direct connection with your listening audience.

WME is cool free software, but it's not the most intuitive or user-friendly concoction ever to come out of Redmond. Therefore, I'll cover in detail the steps required to insert URL scripts into your music. I'll also provide a quick look at some ways of measuring your audience and converting traffic into sales. (If you don't have WME, you can get the latest version at Microsoft's Web site. See the sidebar "Online Resources.")

PREPARATION

To insert URL scripts into your audio files using WME, you must have a Pentium 11/200 MHz with Windows 98 SE, 2000, ME, or NT 4; an Internet connection; one or more songs that you want to (and have the right to) distribute; and a Web site where you would like to increase traffic or build revenue. That could be your own Web site or your pages at an aggregate site such as MP3.com or Vitaminic. With those pieces in place, you are ready to proceed.

Download and install WME and then select the song you wish to encode. (WME accepts WAV, ASF, WMA, and MP3 audio-file formats.) You may need to extract the track from a CD or record it through your sound card and save it as a WAV file. You'll get the best results if you use WAV files as source material; working with previously compressed (ASF, WMA, or MP3) audio files causes a further loss of sound quality.

Choose the Web pages that you want to show your listeners. For your own ease of use, open each target page in a Web browser, click in the browser address field to highlight the URL and then copy (Control + C) and paste (Control + V) each URL into a text document. Save the URL list in a convenient place because you'll need it when you begin encoding.

Take some time when selecting your URLs; you are creating a form of packaging that is as salient as any album cover. Pick pages that won't detract from your music. Band photos, bios, lyrics, news, or commerce pages are naturals (see Fig. 1). Any page that pays you for traffic or listeners is also a good candidate--members of affiliate referral programs or MP3.com's Payback for Playback take note. Don't choose pages that automatically play sound, because they'll interfere with the listening experience.

Once you have finished the preparation work, load WME. Unfortunately, WME is not pre-configured for inserting URLs into audio files, so you must create a new encoding Session and Profile.

CREATING A SESSION

When you launch WME, a Welcome dialog appears. Select Create a Custom Encoding Session by clicking on the second radio button from the top. Click on OK or press the Enter key to exit the Welcome dialog.

The New Session dialog now appears. That dialog includes several tabs; the Sources tab is displayed by default. In the Sources tab at the bottom of the dialog are the "Source types for this session." Deselect Video and then choose Script.

Just above the Source types, click on the New button to open the New Source Group dialog. In the middle of the New Source Group dialog, click on the Audio menu. At the bottom of the Audio menu list, click on "Browse for file." Use the resulting Open-file dialog to locate and select the song you plan to encode. That dialog will close once you select a file, and you will return to the New Source Group dialog.

In the New Source Group dialog, click on OK or press the Enter key to confirm your audio-file choice; then, exit the dialog. You will now be back at the New Session dialog (See Fig. 2). Click on the Display Information tab at the top of the dialog. Type information about your song--title, author, and copyright, for example--in the fields provided. The information will be displayed in the Windows Media Player as your song plays.

Next, click on the Profile tab at the top of the New Session dialog. Click on the Manage button on the right side of the box. You will now see the Manage Profiles dialog, which specifies the output-file attributes. Because none of the factory preset Profiles support Scripts, you must make a custom Profile.

CREATING A PROFILE

Click on the New button on the right side of the Manage Profiles dialog. You now will be in the New Profile dialog. Type a unique name, such as "my custom profile," in the Name of Profile text field.

Choose your source types by deselecting Video and then choosing Script. Compressed is the default Output setting; leave that as is, or you'll end up making a WAY instead of a WMA file.

Click on the Next button or press the Enter key to go to the next page of the New Profile dialog. In the Common Stream Settings page, click on the Audio Format pop-up menu (second from the top) to reveal the format choices. Scroll through the Audio Format menu and select the desired output format (see Fig. 3).

For high-quality music, select one of the 44 or 48 kHz formats. Bit rate (displayed as kbps) determines the sound quality of your output file; higher bit rates sound better than lower rates but result in larger file sizes. If file size is an issue and you don't mind the loss of stereo image, try one of the mono settings that are available at bit rates as fast as 48 kbps.

Click on the Finish button to exit the New Profile dialog. You are now at the Manage Profiles dialog; click on the Close button to exit. You will return to the New Session dialog, and your new Profile should be displayed in the Profile pop-up menu. If you do not see your new Profile and it is not listed in the Profile pop-up menu, you probably forgot to select Script in the New Profile dialog.

At the bottom of the Common Stream Settings page, in the Script section, enter a numeric value in the Script Bit Rate field. Microsoft documentation recommends 1,000 bps as the setting for that application. Lower values result in slower Script execution; higher values offer no noticeable benefit.

DEFINING THE OUTPUT FILE

Click on the Output tab at the top of the New Session dialog. Deselect Broadcast Encoded Output and select Encode to File. Click on the Browse button to open the Browse for Output File dialog. Use that dialog to navigate to the location where you want to store your new file. That could be any folder on your computer or the desktop.

Type an original name, such as "my new file," in the File Name text-entry field. Check that "Windows Media Audio files (.wma)" is displayed in the Save as Type pop-up menu.

Click on the Save button or press the Enter key to exit the Browse for Output File dialog. Exit the New Session dialog by clicking on the OK button or pressing the Enter key. You'll see a prompt indicating that WME "has been customized to show only the panels you need." Click on the OK button to exit the prompt.

You have now finished configuring WME and have returned to the main encoder display. You're ready to start encoding!

ENCODING AND INSERTING

Open the text file you created during the preparation stage and position it onscreen so that your list of URLs is visible and accessible without a lot of extra mousing around (see Fig. 4). Locate the Script panel in the lower part of the WME window directly beneath the General, Display Information, and Connections tabs.

Click on the Start button in the lower-right corner of the encoder window. Click on the URL Script command button (the little globe icon with the chain links) in the Script panel. In your text file, click and drag to select the first URL in the list. Copy the selected URL to the Clipboard.

Now go back to the encoder. Click on the Script data text-entry field next to the Insert button. Paste the URL from the Clipboard into the Script data field and click on the Insert button. Your first URL has been inserted into the encoded audio; repeat the process for your other URLs.

In your text file, click and drag with the mouse to select the next URL in the list. Copy the selected URL to the Clipboard. Double-click on the Script data text-entry field to highlight the previous entry and then paste the URL. Click on the Insert button. Continue copying, pasting, and inserting until you reach the end of your URI list.