Create mp3, wma, m3u file for portable reader

If you come to buy a portable reader or a jukebox with a hard disk for WMA or MP3 files and that you do not know whereby to begin, this page can interest you. His objective is to bring help to the beginner who want to insert music (from CD or cassettes) in his portable reader.

Indeed , to listen music, or to practise the learning of a foreign language for instance, it can be appreciable to use the Windows Media Player, or a portable reader, in complement to the CD or the tape reader wich stay in your living room (tape reader can sometimes exist indeed...:-).

Before transferring your favorites musics in your portable reader you must begin :
1) To create or extract the audio files you want to listen directly from a CD (to the format wma or mp3);
2) To create a m3u file associated to those files ( this step is sometimes obligatory with some models of portable readers... ).

What is a m3u file ?
A m3u file (or playlist) is a simple text file, which can be created with the Windows notepad. Here is an example of content of a file with the m3u format, what one could call "ILE1.m3u" for instance. It indicates a succession of 10 files with the format WMA(Windows Media Audio):
#EXTM3U
ile1_01.wma
ile1_02.wma
ile1_03.wma
ile1_04.wma
ile1_05.wma
ile1_06.wma
ile1_07.wma
ile1_08.wma
ile1_09.wma
ile1_10.wma

In the present particular case, the "ILE1" set of initials means "Initiation to the chinese Language and Ecriture - cassette n°1". The characters _01 to _10 are associated to the (speech and music) extracts contained in this cassette. Of course , it belongs you to use a set of initials who would good tally to your particular case.

When the ten files ("ile1_01.wma" ... "ile1_10.wma") are present in the same directory that the "ILE1.m3u" file, it suffices you to open the "ILE1.m3u" file with the Windows Media Player (version 9 or more for preference...) and so you can :

- To throw the reading of the 10 files in sequence without intervening;
- To have instantaneously access to one of them.

The knowledge and the comprehension of the m3u format is in fact necessary to organize the importation of audio files in some wma or mp3 readers.

The audio tracks extraction from the original CD and the encodage in files to the wma format can be do easily with the help of the Windows Media Player.

In revenge, to extract files from a cassette recording is a little more complicated. Personally i have used the following steps but it exists many other methods :

1) Files capture in real time, to the VCD format, from video tape recorder, with the help of DVDXpress box ( good box, and relatively inexpensive of my point of view ...) connected in the USB port of the micro-computer.
2) Files extraction to the WAV format with the help of Adobe Premiere
3) Files encoding to the WMA format with the help of the Windows Media Encoder (available free on the Microsoft site).

Once those operations are executed, insertion of the files in the MP3 or WMA portable reader, with the help of Windows Explorer, or with the help of the software supply with the portable reader (if unfortunately the portable reader imposes a specific software).