Converting .wma to more useful formats.

[benwiggy]

I've been sent some audio that's saved as .wma. iTunes won't accept it, though I can play it in the Finder preview and in QuickTime, thanks to Flip4Mac.

However, if I want to save the audio from QuickTime as another format, I get a message from FLip4Mac, saying that I have to upgrade to the paid version.

Obviously Googling on the subject turns up pages of people asking how to do similar conversions, and there are a great many apps out there that claim to convert the formats -- some paid, some free.

Now, I'm perfectly happy to pay for software. I'm not one of these people who expects free software. But I am a bit loath to pay simply to change my data from one format to another. Admittedly, Flip4Mac Pro only costs $29, which is less than six pints.

Given all the tools that OS X has bundled within it, I'm surprised that there isn't a simpler way of doing the conversion -- perhaps on the command line. I'm guessing it's probably a licensing thing. But if people are offering free converters, they can't be paying a licence -- so what code are they using?

Anyway, I've found a program called Switch, which seems to work well. But I just wondered if anyone else had any thoughts on the subject.

[cpragman]

I've used EasyWMA (paid but cheap) and have been happy with it.
If you have access to a windows machine, the windows version of iTunes will do the conversion.

[Makoto]

MediaHuman Audio Converter also claims to be able to do it.

MediaHuman Audio Converter - free audio converter for Mac OS X and Windows.

...along with probably a few other shareware/commercial converters. I haven't really done any WMA/WMV conversions, though, so I haven't tried any of the converters or looked into them.
VLC's transcoding ability may also do the job.

Of course, none of the converters are likely going to be able to handle anything with DRM, but that's a slightly different issue. :|

Edit: I believe most of the free converters use ffmpeg or mencoder (or both) to handle their WMA conversions. I'm not sure how well either of those supports Windows Media, though (I think both may still have issues with some versions of the video support, like WM3 and 9)... and, as I mentioned, there's no DRM support.