When I use mplayer to decode .ra files,
They decode and play perfectly, but when I go to encode this with lame (at 192kb/s) I get an error message and the created files have a filesize of 0. I tried to encode at different bitrates and it seemed as if everything below 160kb/s worked...

Does it have something to do with this...

MPEG-1 layer III sample frequencies (kHz): 32 48 44.1
bitrates (kbps): 32 40 48 56 64 80 96 112 128 160 192 224 256 320

MPEG-2 layer III sample frequencies (kHz): 16 24 22.05
bitrates (kbps): 8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 80 96 112 128 144 160

MPEG-2.5 layer III sample frequencies (kHz): 8 12 11.025
bitrates (kbps): 8 16 24 32 40 48 56 64 80 96 112 128 144 160

When I decode .wma files with mplayer the .wav file will encode with lame at bitrates greater than 160kb/s, so why won't .ra files.....
all I can think of is the codecs.....
Could it be anything else?
I'm gonna try a reinstallation of mplayer and see if that helps...

Thanks in advance

Well... I recompiled mplayer and it still don't work....
any ideas?

oh yea....guess this might help...

here's the commands I'm using:

mplayer -really-quiet -nojoystick -noconsolecontrols "$list" -ao pcm -aofile "${list%%.*}.wav"
lame -b $BITRATE -h -t "${list%%.*}.wav" "${list%%.*}.mp3"

Alright....
I found a solution to my problem....
I quit trying to decode/encode with mplayer and moved on to ffmpeg....
It's awesome...it can encode/decode pretty much anything....
I'm not a big fan of .wma files...but it would be a nice feature to add to my script and ffmpeg is very close (if not already) to releasing this encoder, but as of now it thankfully decodes them....
It also encodes .ra files (which I'm also not a great fan of)....but I don't think there's any other linux program that uses/provieds a codec that can encode .ra files.

Thanks anyways....
If you find a solution to the mplayer thing....
I'd still like to know it....

Thanks...
cheers