Convert Real audio to MP3 using Linux


Make sure lame and mplayer are installed inside your Linux distribution. Next make sure your mplayer version has access to these realplayer 9 codecs for Linux :

rp9codecs-20050115.tar.bz2
rp9codecs-20050115-MD5SUMS

And make sure they are installed inside the directory /usr/lib/real , which is a default search PATH inside mplayer to search for these codecs :


   [jackson:stock]:(~)$ strings /usr/bin/mplayer | grep /real/ 
   /usr/lib/real/%s
   /usr/lib/real/
   [jackson:stock]:(~)$
If mplayer has no default search PATH for real codecs inside, you will have to install a adjusted binary package. The PLF package of MPlayer will do just fine for Mandrake/Mandriva. One can however also download the SRPM package for your distro version, edit the SPEC file mplayer.spec and adjust at the top :
   %define build_plf 0
into
   %define build_plf 1

Next proceed as follows :


   [jackson:root]:(/usr/src/RPM/SPECS)# rpm -v -ba mplayer.spec
wait for the adjusted binaries to get build, and next one can convert real audio into mp3 audio using :

   [jackson:stock]:(~)$ mplayer audiofile.rm -ao pcm:file=audiofile.wav -vc dummy -vo null
   [jackson:stock]:(~)$ lame -h -b 128 audiofile.wav audiofile.mp3
   [jackson:stock]:(~)$ rm audiofile.wav
Next play the result inside your favorite audio player like, amarok, xine, kaffeine, xmms etc. The resulting mp3 files will play on any platform including windows.