Topic: WMA Conversion (Read 12613 times)

Gandalf_Greyhelm · « **on:** August 05, 2016, 07:12:25 pm »

Hi,

This was also a problem I encountered in MC21.

I can convert to any audio format apart from wma.

The conversion fails immediately - I've checked the log and can see no reference to conversion whatsoever?

I'm running Windows 10.

If I use dPoweramp to convert it works fine - and I should also mention that Media Monkey also fails - so it doesn't appear to be MC's fault.

I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem and whether it's related to the OS as opposed to the program - which would appear to be the issue as far as I can see.

I've attached the log if it's of any use.

Thanks.

blgentry · « **Reply #1 on:** August 05, 2016, 07:37:48 pm »

This isn't an answer, but...

Why would you want to convert *to* WMA? Are there players you like that only read WMA? Why not good old MP3?

Brian.

Gandalf_Greyhelm · « **Reply #2 on:** August 05, 2016, 07:50:00 pm »

Well...at the risk of more "why would you do that?" comments (

) - I currently use a Lumia 950XL.

I can use OneDrive to store music files and download those files directly to my phone's music app.

Unfortunately - whilst Groove Music (the phones music app which reads OneDrive) will play flacs - OneDrive will not send them to the Groove app - so I can't access them directly through Groove Music.

But, of course, it will send WMAs.

So, I've converted my entire library to WMA lossless and uploaded it to OneDrive (1TB free storage if you use Office 365).

This means I have access to my entire library in lossless format via my phone - which I like!

As I've already said, the files have been converted - but it would a lot easier if I could convert them through my main music app (MC22) to enable the use of playlists, syncing etc.

And yes, I like my Windows Phone!

R-ed · « **Reply #3 on:** August 05, 2016, 08:17:25 pm »

On other day, I also encounter the same issue with fb2k, then searching until I found this. My guess that MC also need this. At least the installer tested and works well on Windows 8.1 x64, not sure on Windows 10. Note that this is obsolete now. (use at your own risk!). Some said to use Expression Encoder but never tried that before.

Gandalf_Greyhelm · « **Reply #4 on:** August 06, 2016, 04:40:51 am »

Thank you for your reply.

Unfortunately I cannot get this to install on Windows 10 - "a program required for the setup could not be run".

But I believe you're right - I'm guessing that MC (and MM) are both expecting the encoder to be available via the OS - but the latest OS doesn't include it.

R-ed · « **Reply #5 on:** August 06, 2016, 05:01:55 am »

You might wanna try different installer from here (via softpedia). That doesn't seem support wma10 yet.

JimH · « **Reply #6 on:** August 06, 2016, 05:12:03 am »

Did you search for an answer at Microsoft? They used to have a package of media-something files.

JimH · « **Reply #7 on:** August 06, 2016, 05:15:34 am »

This may be it:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3010081

Gandalf_Greyhelm · « **Reply #8 on:** August 06, 2016, 05:19:09 am »

Thank you both.

The second link installed -and I was able to also install the hotfix from the first link.

However, MC (and MediaMonkey as a second test) is/are still failing to encode to WMA.

As regards Microsoft - they seem to have removed everything regarding WMA encoding - you may find a page which describes and gives a download link - but the link leads straight to "thanks for downloading" - without actually downloading anything.

I did come across somebody mentioning that this all worked prior to the first update for W10 - and since I'm running the "second" update i.e. Anniversary Edition I may be doubly frustrated.

I am part of the Windows Insider group - and I have posted that this seems to be an issue - but whether anything will be done about it is another matter.

Gandalf_Greyhelm · « **Reply #9 on:** August 06, 2016, 05:27:43 am »

And thank you for that link - although it does refer to the "cutdown" versions of W10 I tried it anyway - with no success I'm afraid.

Also, my previous post regarding not been able to download has now been resolved - Microsoft Edge was the culprit! Good old IE worked like a charm...jeeze after a year of user input you'd think MS could get it right!

Guess I'll post that on the Insider forum as well...

R-ed · « **Reply #10 on:** August 06, 2016, 05:33:00 am »

sorry, seems I was wrong. just tried uninstall the encoder to make sure and MC still do the job.

Gandalf_Greyhelm · « **Reply #11 on:** August 06, 2016, 05:48:09 am »

Thank you.

I just used Windows Media Player to rip a CD to WMA lossless - and it worked.

Then I tried MC - with the answer - "Read track failed. Failed to initialize encoder plugin"

(Media Monkey also failed to rip to WMA).

Hmm...

JimH · « **Reply #12 on:** August 06, 2016, 05:53:16 am »

I wonder if the plug-in is there but has a different name.

Gandalf_Greyhelm · « **Reply #13 on:** August 06, 2016, 06:19:48 am »

Yes - since both MC and MM are failing - yet MP works - it would suggest that either the name / location has been changed in the latest builds of W10 - or permissions? I guess it depends what "Failed to initialize" actually means in this context.

blgentry · « **Reply #14 on:** August 06, 2016, 08:29:38 am »

Quote from: Gandalf_Greyhelm on August 05, 2016, 07:50:00 pm

Unfortunately - whilst Groove Music (the phones music app which reads OneDrive) will play flacs - OneDrive will not send them to the Groove app - so I can't access them directly through Groove Music.

But, of course, it will send WMAs.

That doesn't make any sense. The player can read FLAC. One Drive can store FLAC. But the player can't read FLAC from OneDrive? I just did a web search and confirmed this. Why can't Microsoft get anything right? It's like they break stuff on purpose.

Brian.

Gandalf_Greyhelm · « **Reply #15 on:** August 06, 2016, 08:50:31 am »

Exactly...if they'd allow that (which surely is not difficult?) then this problem (along with WMA

) would go away.

pschelbert · « **Reply #16 on:** August 06, 2016, 04:38:40 pm »

Quote from: blgentry on August 06, 2016, 08:29:38 am

That doesn't make any sense. The player can read FLAC. One Drive can store FLAC. But the player can't read FLAC from OneDrive? I just did a web search and confirmed this. Why can't Microsoft get anything right? It's like they break stuff on purpose.

Brian.

looks as Windows phones are a dying specie....
After my HTC Windows phone some years ago I know why... before using robust Ericsson and Nokia phoens which never crashed..

Peter

patented_licks · « **Reply #17 on:** September 18, 2016, 06:28:53 pm »

Have been ripping to WMA lossless using MC for years with no incident. Then, yesterday, I updated Windows 10-64 to the Anniversary Edition to cure a problem with Directory Opus.

The next time I tried to rip a CD, the dreaded "Read track failed. Failed to initialize encoder plugin" error appeared for the first time ever.

Found this post, and, from what I understand (correct me if I am wrong), it's time to go to FLAC, as MC relies upon an encoder provided by the OS, and its access was somehow broken by Microsoft. So why does Windows Media Player work but MC does not?

JimH · « **Reply #18 on:** September 18, 2016, 06:48:00 pm »

FLAC is probably the right answer.

patented_licks · « **Reply #19 on:** September 18, 2016, 06:52:12 pm »

Thanks Jim. Will do.

DLNelson · « **Reply #20 on:** September 28, 2016, 10:21:51 pm »

It is an issue with Windows 10 Anniversary and MediaMonkey website had this work around that works with MediaCenter

Quote

The Windows 10 anniversary update (aka Windows 10 version 1607 OR build 14393.xx) introduced a bug that results in failures in WMA/WMV encoding.

The only known workaround is to copy "WMVCORE.DLL" and "WMVENCOD.DLL" from the "system32" ("sysWOW64" on Windows x64) folder in Windows 10 version 1511 into the MediaMonkey for Windows main installation folder and restart MMW so that those files are used in WMA encoding.

Luckily for me I still had a PC that was not upgraded to the Anniversary version.

Happy Anniversary Microsoft users

patented_licks · « **Reply #21 on:** September 29, 2016, 01:12:29 am »

DL Nelson,

Thank you for the suggestion. Alas, it failed to work on my machine.

DLNelson · « **Reply #22 on:** October 03, 2016, 06:04:00 pm »

Are these the version of the files?

wmvcore.dll version 12.0.10586.0

wmvencod.dll version 10.0.10586.0

Placed in the Media Center 21 folder

patented_licks · « **Reply #23 on:** October 03, 2016, 09:08:10 pm »

DL Nelson:

using Windows 10-64 Anniversary edition:
wmvcore.dll version = 12.0.14393.0
wmvencod.dll version = 10.0.14393.0

I'm running MC 22.0.28.

But this is rather academic. WMA encoding does not appear to work with MC 22 running the Windows 10-64 Anniversary edition. My opinion is that it is a MC bug. Like many insecure developers, they don't like to admit their bugs. But WMA encoding continues to work in other media programs I have, so what other attribution is there?

But this too is academic. WMA decoding works, so nothing has been lost. And FLAC is an able substitute.

JimH was right in tersely posting: "FLAC is probably the right answer," with "probably" being superfluous.

But thanks for the help! It was worth a try.

stanger89 · « **Reply #24 on:** October 04, 2016, 04:14:37 pm »

Quote from: DLNelson on September 28, 2016, 10:21:51 pm

It is an issue with Windows 10 Anniversary and MediaMonkey website had this work around that works with MediaCenterLuckily for me I still had a PC that was not upgraded to the Anniversary version.

Happy Anniversary Microsoft users

I am having the same issue as of the Anniversary update, unfortunately the above fix didn't seem to work for MC22.

FWIW, all my music is stored as flac, but Ford Sync in my truck only supports lossless via WMA Lossless, so convert to WMA for it. Unfortunately the only workaround there is to convert to an inferior format.

Attached is the log

blgentry · « **Reply #25 on:** October 04, 2016, 04:30:20 pm »

Quote from: stanger89 on October 04, 2016, 04:14:37 pm

FWIW, all my music is stored as flac, but Ford Sync in my truck only supports lossless via WMA Lossless, so convert to WMA for it. Unfortunately the only workaround there is to convert to an inferior format.

I'm relatively certain I've played WAV files with Ford Sync before. I just did 3 minutes of research and found several different sources that seem to confirm this. So WAV is an option.

Brian.

stanger89 · « **Reply #26 on:** October 04, 2016, 06:18:28 pm »

Except you get no metadata so it's basically useless.

OK, so I got two new CDs I'm trying to sync to my USB drive, I figured at least temporarily I'd change the encoding to mp3. Unfortunately when I did that, now MC wants to reconvert all ~3400 songs that are already on the flash drive. Even though I have mp3 and wma as compatible formats for this flash drive.

I've got MC setup to sync some smartlists. Is there any way to avoid reconverting everything? Other than manually converting/copying the new files? Outside of the quality loss, there's the hours the conversion will take due to the relatively slow write speed of this flash drive.

blgentry · « **Reply #27 on:** October 04, 2016, 06:21:19 pm »

I was trying to help. Good luck.

Brian.

stanger89 · « **Reply #28 on:** October 04, 2016, 06:32:52 pm »

Quote from: blgentry on October 04, 2016, 06:21:19 pm

I was trying to help. Good luck.

Brian.

I appreciate the help, I didn't mean my reply to be so terse. I just don't see how people can really use WAV, or at least WAV is useless for me due to lack of metadata. Maybe I'm weird but all my playlists are smartlists, based on genre and rating, and my daily use playlists are also based on last played. I almost never play my music by looking up specific artists or albums. Frankly the idea of having to browse and find music by folder gives me chills.

The great thing about MC (and Sync, and which really, really bugs me about aftermarket head units, but I'll not get on that soapbox now) is that I can sync my whole library to a flash drive, based on those rating-based dynamic playlists, and all those files are synced to the flash drive, playlists are written, and it's all recognized by Sync and gives me the closest experience to MC on the go that I've seen anywhere. And it's not dependent on a wireless connection (4G or Bluetooth) or phone-car idiosyncrasies.

Being able to do this is even more important with non-PC devices since their playlist capabilities are so pathetic. You can't add things to a playlist in a car for example, you can play a folder, a genre, artist, album (the last three of course are not possible with wav) or a statically defined playlist.

If Jim decides to drop WMA conversion support, so be it, I'll be sad, but I'll just switch MP3. The last bit of quality isn't that important in a noisy car, but metadata is. But it's nice to have the piece of mind knowing I'm not leaving anything on the table. But so long as WMA is included as a "supported" conversion, I'll be asking for it to be fixed.

And of course happy to provide whatever debug information I can to achieve that end

Mark Stega · « **Reply #29 on:** December 30, 2016, 03:11:36 pm »

Any progress on getting this fixed (or removing WMA as a supported encoding)?

stanger89 · « **Reply #30 on:** January 03, 2017, 04:20:31 pm »

Doesn't look like it in the the latest build.

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Author Topic: WMA Conversion (Read 12613 times)