Looking For A Portable Audio Converter? Try FlicFlac

When you download music from the Internet, you may sometimes download file formats that your default audio player, mobile phone or mp3 player does not support. Maybe it is a Flac, Ogg or Ape file, audio files that are not that commonly supported.

If you are lucky the site that you have downloaded the music from is offering it in other formats as well. If not, your best bet is to convert the audio format into a supported one.

I have reviewed more than a dozen audio converters in the past. From Helium Audio Converter over Mobile Media Converter and Media Cope to Quick Media Converter and specialized tools such as Flac to Mp3.

FlicFlac is a free portable audio converter for Windows that supports several popular music formats including mp3, wav, ape, flac and ogg. It lacks support for other popular audio formats like aac on the other hand.

All you need to do to convert audio files is to drag and drop them into the drop area in the application window or click on the area to open a file browser.

Before you do that you may want to change the output format, Flac is selected by default, to another format. A click on the new format makes it the default output format for the conversion. You may also want to click on the settings button to make changes to the audio quality of the output or to integrate the audio converter into the shell to make it accessible in Windows Explorer. The latter allows you to convert audio files right from within the file manager.

Users can furthermore select to delete the input audio files after successful conversions. FlicFlac is definitely not the most complete audio converter but not all users need a program that supports all known audio files or offers editing options.

Portability and ease of use, those two are the biggest strengths of FlicFlac. Windows users can download the latest version of the audio converter from the developer website.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: ape, audio converter, flac, mp3, mp3 converter, portable software, windows software

How To Use YouTube To Increase Your iTunes Song Collection

The Internet offers many different options for users to increase their song collection. Among the options are to record Internet radio with tools like Streamwriter or Stream Harvester, or to download and convert Youtube videos to do the same. This guide explains how you can increase your iTunes song collection, or your song collection in general, with the help of YouTube.

For that we need to look at two things. First we need to download and convert YouTube videos and then add them to the song collection. There are lots of options to download YouTube videos, but in this guide I will concentrate on methods that make it as easy as possible.

First option is the web based service Youtube to Mp3. It is one of the easiest to use if you only want to download and convert a handful of YouTube music videos to mp3 to add them to your iTunes music collection.

All that needs to be done is to paste a YouTube video url into the form on the site. A click on the convert video button displays information about the video and an option to download the mp3.

Add-ons are available for Firefox and Google Chrome that display the download mp3 link next to YouTube videos directly making the process more comfortable.

The second option is a desktop program for Windows that can mass download YouTube videos and convert them to mp3 locally. Download and install Free FLV Converter from the developer website over at Koyotesoft. Make sure you pay attention to the installation dialog if you do not want a new search provider or search page in your default web browser.

Once installed enter a search term on the Search Video page and click on Search. This displays a list of YouTube video matches. Before you now start to download videos switch to the TubeQueue tab and select Audio only as the output format. This automatically converts downloaded videos to mp3 so that it is not necessary to convert the files manually. You can configure output settings in detail here. If you prefer a different output bitrate or audio codec you can configure it here.

Switch back to the Search Video tab and click the Download button to start downloading all the selected files. The program saves and converts the videos automatically so that you end up with audio files that you can import into iTunes.

Adding the new songs to iTunes is actually not a big problem. One could drag and drop songs or folders to the iTunes window to add them, launch them in iTunes or select File > Add File or Folder to iTunes.

The two methods describes above can be used to add new songs found on YouTube to iTunes or the local mp3 collection. Is it legal? That depends largely on your local laws. Consult a lawyer if you are unsure.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: download youtube videos, itunes, mp3, youtube, youtube videos

Mp3 Quiz, Turn Mp3 Collections Into Music Quizzes

If you like quizzes in general and have a medium to large sized music collection at your disposal, you might fancy running the mp3 quiz software to combine both passions. Mp3 quiz is a free software for Windows that can be used to create mp3 quizzes from locally hosted music collections. It can be played with one or multiple players.

Here is how it works: You need to download the freeware for Windows from the developer website. You may need to install the quiz software with elevated rights, this was the case on my 64-bit Windows 7 test system.

First thing you need to do after starting the program is to click on the Options button to configure the settings. Here you can configure the root folder of your mp3 collection, sub folder inclusion and the difficulty setting.

You can add players in the main menu. Just write each player’s name in the form at the top and click the add player button to add them to the game. You start the game with a click on the next button.

The program picks music tracks randomly before the quiz interface is displayed. The current player can pick a skill level from eight different levels. Easier skill levels add less points to the score of the player than more difficulty skills. The intro skill for instance plays the first seconds of a song and awards four points to the score of the player if answered correctly, the slow skill on the other hand while awarding 12 points for a successful answer plays the song in slow motion making it much harder to identify.

The program displays multiple choice answers. To make it more difficulty, players need to select both the artist and the song title to score. Players can play back the song normally after they have answered the quiz question or simply continue and load the next player’s question.

Windows users can download Mp3 Quiz from the developer website. The software is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating system. It requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 or higher.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: mp3, mp3 quiz, quiz, windows software