Lame MP3 encodes wav/aiff/raw pcm file to mp3. AVI is an audio/video file. I attempted to convert it but it assumed it a raw input file and it corrupted the file.

Is it possible to convert an AVI file to mp3 using lame encoder.

How can I do this? Is there a method or step in achieving conversion without the file getting corrupted.

MP3 files can't contain the video that an AVI can - they are an audio only format. If, however, you merely want to extract the audio from an AVI file and encode it as MP3 then MEncoder will do the trick.

Also, you can use VirtualDubMod to demux an existing audio stream (mp3, etc.) from an AVI file.

Just Say No to Transcoding.

Just Demux It.

How do I demux an existing audio stream from AVI file, can you explain better.

What do i use to demux it and how do I then convert it to mp3 using lame encoder

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html

Get mplayer for Windows.

mplayer -vo null -dumpaudio original.avi

A new file called stream.dump will be created. Rename it to something.mp3, and if that doesn't work, something.ac3, and try playing it in a music player.

And I bet Doom9 has good guides on how to perform this task.

(I'm surprised that no one mentioned it, they are pretty much the HA of video)

Start VirtualDubMod > Load AVI file > Go to Streams > Stream List > Select your stream (if there's more than one) > Press Demux.

there is a good chance that the audio in an avi file is in mp3 format anyways, so just dump the audio stream.

if it isn't mp3, it's lossy - you won't need to transcode it to mp3

use mplayer (like kjoonlee said ^^)


later

If you have any problems, you should try this: http://www.geovid.com/Video_mp3_Extractor_PRO/
It's very convenient extractor. It makes mp3 from avi. Its main feature is the ability to work with the amount of files at the same time. It takes me less time to create few mp3s then if I extracted 1-by-1.
But there is also a free version. Its older then Pro and doesnt allow you to work with groups of files. It is called "Video mp3 extractor 1.3". It can be helpful. Make your choice...

Peace

MKVToolnix is another extremely convenient tool for extracting audio/video/subtitle from various container(MPG,MP4,OGG,OGM,MOV and RMVB), the output format is Matroska.

Just open the AVI with Virtualdub,
goto File > File Information,
then you will be able to identify the audio format inside the AVI.
If you are not in Win32 platform,
play the AVI with mplayer with -v switch,
mplayer will output verbose information about the AVI during playback.

at RW/Debian there is a package called avi-ogm-info which (guess) is a gui program that will show the video/audio characteristics

also, mplayer opened with stderr console will show such information (albeit in a non-presentable fashion)


later

Thanks kjoonlee, this is the only app I've tried so far that has worked. Tried VirtualDub, VirtualDubMod, a few others, and looked for about 2hrs to try and figure why the others weren't working and what will. Anyway, mplayer with the above commandline works like a dream. BTW I renamed the dump file to mp3 and it plays fine in foobar, but I was surprised to find that it had been encoded with LAME 3.96 - I guess that's been built into the app then?

Maybe I'm not understanding you correctly, but this is an answer to how I interpret your last question:

Mplayer does not create the mp3 - it just extracts it from the AVI container - so no, there is no lame encoder built into the program. The resulting mp3 was encoded with LAME 3.96 before (or at the same time) it was muxed together with the video, when the AVI file was created.

Another great muxing/demuxing tool is AVI-Mux GUI:

http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~noe/Video-.../index-eng.html

Can't wavs be stored in AVI as well? In that case, he would have to encode afterward. I seriously doubt this to be the case though.

I use avi2wav and then besplit:
http://agrgic.tripod.com/avi2wav/
http://dspguru.doom9.net/

The avi file was was captured from a UK BBC3 tramsmission (via satelillte I guess). I just wanted to get the audio from the file. The only tool that worked was mplayer.

AVI-Mux GUI didn't work for me.
I'll give avi2wav a go. However, if then it would seem that the resulting dumped audio file produced by mplayer is the best I'm gonna get, cos if that is the type of file in the avi file then that is what I've now got.
Cheers

You can use Cool Edit Pro. It captures the audio stream from the video file. Then, you can save it as mp3 or anything other.

lol...why would you like to demux whereas BeSweet can transcode directly an avi file to mp3.

Because demuxing to mp3, decoding that to wav and then reencoding it to mp3 again is dumb.

Just take the demuxed MP3 directly and listen to that!