INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Jukebox => Topic started by: Sadashiv1 on February 10, 2009, 09:31:26 pm
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I have installed MJ12 on a computer which did not have MJ8 (MJ8 is on another computer.)
I was trying to convert .ape files to mp3. It asked me to purchase lame license for $9.99.
1. Is lame not free (open source). Why is the fee?
2. If I buy license, can I use it on multiple computers at home.
3. I use MJ12 at my radio station and it is great. I did notice a problem.
Sometimes, when I click on library and point to my flash drive, not all files
are imported. If I do it again, remaining files do get added to the library.
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If I buy license, can I use it on multiple computers at home.
You can use it on a reasonable number of "your" machines. Thanks for asking.
I use MJ12 at my radio station and it is great. I did notice a problem.
Sometimes, when I click on library and point to my flash drive, not all files
are imported. If I do it again, remaining files do get added to the library.
Odd. It's possible that the first process hasn't finished.
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1. Is lame not free (open source). Why is the fee?
LAME is free as in free speech, but not free as in free beer (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html). The MP3 format is covered by various patents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues) and to use MP3 in a commercial product requires that the company pay a fee to license those patents (http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/).
So LAME is free in that you are free to study the source code. LAME is not free in that you cannot use it willy nilly in a piece of software or hardware without regard for patent license fees.
Free software that uses LAME tries to get around that by displaying warnings that LAME may not be legal in all locations due to patents. They also dodge the issue by not distributing the LAME dll with the program and/or instead make use of the external command-line encoder.
I have no idea how JRiver has licensed the MP3 encoder/decoder for Jukebox. I'm just pointing out that LAME isn't completely free for all definitions of free.
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You could download the LAME codec and convert the .ape files using an external encoder ( LAME ;-) ). That's what I do.
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External encoder will not retain my extra tags. Moreover, I can convert selected files
based on filtering applied in MJ. I Think spending $10 is worth it.
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Odd. It's possible that the first process hasn't finished.
It happend again last night. I had 188 songs on my flash drive. While importing
it stated found 188 files but added only 114 files to the library. This time,
instead of doing it again, I dragged files from flash drive window to MJ12 window.
At home, I always drag files from hard drive folder into my library.
One difference is that at radio station, my library is always empty because
I clean it after I am done with the show.