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OS X Freeware of the Day: EasyWMA Audio Converter for .asf and .wma
Posted by: admin on Friday, July 22, 2005 - 07:14 AM
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 EasyWMA is the sort of program you don't really use on a day-to-day basis, but when you have a need for it, you're very thankful that it's there.
Windows media formats are some of the most annoying around. Most Mac users refuse to install Windows Media Player on the computers, and those that do are often in for an unsavory experience. Nevertheless, there are times when you really do need to acces a Windows-specific file format. Read on to learn about how EasyWMA fits the bill, at least for audio files in Windows-specific formats.
.asf and .wma are two Microsoft created formats that encompass both audio and video. The two are frequently used by Windows users who want to save and transfer audio files to other computers. Although, thankfully, these formats have not caught on with non-Windows users and are largely trumped by better fromats such as MP3 and AAC, you still will occasionally see an .asf or .wma file you really need to open.
EasyWMA does just what it says it does. It opens and can convert to MP3 or WAV format a file in either .asf or .wma audio format. The program has a clean, simple interface, and should be no trouble at all to use for even a novice. In our tests, the program worked as advertised, converting an old .asf file lickety split.
There are some limitations on EasyWMA, none of them really faults of the programmer, of course. Namely, EasyWMA cannot convert WMA files with digital rights management (DRM) encoding used by some content providers to prevent their files from being converted into other formats or used with non-compatible players. EasyWMA also does not work on video files, so you can't convert movies of any kind with it.
EasyWMA is the type of program you download and store in your utilities folder for that inevitable time you will need it. For anyone who gets multimedia files from windows users, we think it's inevitable that you will eventually call on it.
EasyWMA can be downloaded for free here.
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