RazorLame

A Front-end for LAME

written by Holger Dors

Version 1.1.5
December 12, 2001

E-Mail: Razor dot Blade at gmx dot net
Homepage: http://www.dors.de/razorlame/

Description

RazorLame is a so-called "front-end" for use with LAME. LAME is a great MP3-Encoder: it's very fast, it produces high-quality files, has many advanced features (like Variable Bitrates and Joint-Stereo), and it's open source. Unfortunately, it is a command line utility, and that is where RazorLame comes in: It provides an easy-to-use graphical user-interface which makes MP3-encoding even easier!

Requirements

RazorLame needs Win9x, NT4, Win2K or WinXP. And of course you need LAME in order to use RazorLame. (For the decoding option you'll need at least version 3.84 of LAME.)

You can find LAME here.

Installation

Put all the contents of the archive into one folder, ideally named "RazorLame". I'd suggest you put LAME and RazorLame within the same folder, but this isn't necessary.

Uninstallation

In the rare case that you would want to uninstall RazorLame, simply delete the folder into which you've installed RazorLame. That's it. RazorLame doesn't use any registry entries, nor does it need any runtime libraries or OCX-files.

Usage

RazorLame should be quite straightforward. But in case your unsure, I'd suggest you read the following short notes on the usage of RazorLame.

First I'd suggest you take a look at the Options. Here you can set the MP3-Options with which you want your files to be encoded. Also, you should specify where Lame.exe resides. If you've put both programs in the same folder, you don't need to change this, as that's RazorLame's default.

LAME offers a great variety of options. I've tried to support as much as possible of those, but a few are missing. To find out what an option does, hover with the mouse a few moments over the control and a (hopefully helpful) hint will appear. Also, I recommend you take a look at the LAME documentation

Second, you should collect the files you want to be encoded. You can do that by using the Choose Files menu entry or pressing the equally captioned button. A comfortably way of adding files is to use drag-and-drop: Simply drop some files onto the list. You can also drop whole folders onto it: RazorLame will search it recursively and add all audio files it has found.

You can clear the whole list with the Clear List command, or you can remove selected files by pressing the Remove button.

You can change the order of the files by clicking on a header of the listview. The files are then sorted accordingly. When you click again, the sort order changes. Also, you can sort the files using drag and drop.

Once your all set, simply press the Encode button. A window will show up showing the status of your encoding session. You can minimize the whole application by pressing the minimize caption button. You can interrupt the process by pressing Cancel. You'll be asked if you want to stop encoding immediately, or if you want RazorLame to first finish the currently processed file and stop then.

You also can send RazorLame into the System-Tray next to your clock; simply press the button saying "Send to tray". You also have the option to shutdown Windows when the batch is through; simply check the box on the progress dialog.

Once the batch is through, you might want to take a look at the log-file of the last run. Just choose View/Last Log from the menu. (You can also open the file RazorLame.log.)

You can decode your MP3s back to WAVs again the very same way you've encoded them; just choose the mp3s you want and press the "Decode" button!

The toolbar is configurable from the menu using View/Toolbar. You can choose whether you want only icons, only captions, or both. Additionally, you can turn it off completely.

Disclaimer

RazorLame is distributed "as-is", with no warranty of any kind.