Convert Audio Online – media.io

Time for exciting, new things at media.io! Since the last update, I haven’t done a lot I confess, but at least this:

• “Download Links” are no more. From my conversion rates, I noticed that people didn’t seem to understand what the download links were meant to do so this feature is gone.
• Fixed download encoding issues. @Warin notified me of a problem when downloading files with certain characters in the file name. This might have been a big problem that’s now resolved.
• Impromptu instead of Thickbox. The venerable ThickBox has been replaced by the newer Impromptu that’s at least as good, if not better.

Coming Soon

I’ve also changed one or two things here and there, as evidenced by the screenshots below. And there are more changes in the works (yes, including support for WebKit and mobile browsers). As always, if you have questions or need a feature when converting audio online, please let me know.

   

Click here to download:

media.io_updates_and_bugfixes.zip (74 KB)

I have published an updated version of media.io.

What’s new?

• Support for download links. Sometimes, people have tried to use download accelerators – which media.io doesn’t support. Now, if the “Download” button doesn’t work for you, download the file by using “Save link target as…”
• Improved “File-not-found” page. I still need to put in a lot of work on making media.io more robust though.
• Increased upload limit to 250 MB. That’s right, you can now upload and convert audio online with files up to 250 MB large.
• Some layout work. I did run ClickTale on media.io for a while and the things I’ve learned have now been changed. As always, there are “before” and “after” screenshots below.
• Warning screen for WebKit users. WebKit-based browsers (Chrome, Safari, Midori…) aren’t supported yet due to a bug in WebKit. If you use a WebKit-based browser, there is a warning now.

As always, let me know if you have questions or would like to request an audio format.

   

Click here to download:

New_Features_at_media.io.zip (76 KB)

media.io is now much more awesome.

What’s new?

• More privacy. Resolving this problem, in addition to adding Cache-Control: private headers to most pages, ensures that the details of your uploads are hidden from me and proxies.
• Support for files without extension. When you convert audio online at media.io now, your file doesn’t need an extension.
• Support for WAV encapsulated MPEG audio. This was a common cause of problems.
• Support for WMA. media.io now supports decoding from and to Windows Audio.
• There’s now a table that explains what formats are supported.
• Easier file uploading. I’ve posted a screenshot of the new upload progress bar before. I hope you like it.
• A different look. I did rearrange certain links on the page. Also, I incorporated some ideas I got from the user tests I ran on media.io.

Coming soon

Some of the things I will enable soon is support for FLAC.

Screenshots

I’m attaching two screenshots to this post, the first one is “before,” the second one “after.” Enjoy.

   

Click here to download:

media.io_now_much_more_awesome.zip (74 KB)

Bugs, bugs, bugs

Software bugs are annoying so I fixed some more.

• Repeatedly uploading files would not work in Internet Explorer. This was a caching issue.
• Don’t log file names during download. Nobody seemed to care about this bug but it was easy to fix for the next version of media.io.

Time for tests!

It’s no secret I love testing. I’m a bad designer and a bad copywriter, but I don’t have to be good because I can let my users tell me what they like. In the next days, I’ll start another multivariate test that should answer some of my questions regarding button and help text placement.

Survey

I would like to find out how you use media.io and I have created a short survey. If you have 30 seconds, please take the survey. Thank you!

New upload layout

I mentioned that people are occasionally uploading files but never converting them. In response to that, I’ve completely redesigned the file upload. You can see it in the screenshot below. Soon, when you convert audio at media.io, it’ll be painfully obvious how much data you’ve already uploaded.

Right now, I am working on making media.io easier to use. The first area I'm concentrating on is the file upload. I don’t have the numbers yet but occasionally people upload a file and never start the conversion, which tells me the process isn’t easy enough.

Popularity

The second thing I’d like to mention is that media.io receives more and more visitors every day, without me doing a lot of promotion. I generally don’t like to show traffic numbers because there’s always someone who has more than you, but I like where this is going.

Testing, 1, 2, 3

Also, I’m running a test on media.io right now. What I’d like to find out is which combination of the attached buttons gets most people to use media.io. What do you think? :-)

media.io doesn’t support any and all file types yet. Whenever someone tries to upload something media.io doesn’t know yet, I can find out what it was. That’s good for everyone because I can concentrate on audio formats most people want. Here’s the list so far:

• 13 wma
• 1 rm
• 1 ram
• 1 ogx
• 1 mpeg
• 1 flv
• 1 flac

As you see, many people want to convert WMA – Microsoft’s audio format – to other formats. Understood :-) It’s coming soon

media.io now lets you convert MP3 to WAV online, as well as

• Ogg Vorbis to WAV
• AAC to WAV

I admit that WAV isn’t the most popular target format but some people have been looking to “decode MP3 to WAV” – search engines simple don’t understand that, if I say “convert WAV to MP3,” I don’t automatically support converting MP3 to WAV. :-)

I know there are some strange bugs that some people (including myself) run into occasionally. If you experience a problem with media.io, simply file a bug, describing what you did and what you expected to happen.

It’s only been five days since the last update – but here’s another update to media.io.

Changes

• Most of the changes in this update are subtle or only affect the code (and I assume you are not interested in that).
• The most “visually striking” change is that the background is now darker than before.
• The other change affects downloads. You can now download files as many times as you want. Previously, you could only download each file once (please don’t abuse this).

There are two screenshots below, see if you can find a difference :-)

   

Click here to download:

Another_week_another_update.zip (71 KB)

AAC Decoding and Transcoding

I built media.io from the ground up to be easily extensible with new audio formats. The first new audio format after the launch is AAC, short for Advanced Audio Coding. You might know AAC as the audio format used in Apple’s iTunes store. AAC is nice and all but now you can convert AAC to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis. This includes all MPEG-4 profiles – MPEG-4, MPEG-2 MAIN, LOW, LTP, LD, LC, SBR, PS and ER object type AAC files.

New Look

I’ve also refined the look of media.io, making it easier on the eyes. The new layout should give you a little bit more information about media.io before you convert your music. I’m attaching two screenshots below – before and after.

Feature Requests

Also, the user suggestions board is slowly filling up with ideas. If you like media.io but wish it would do something you need, go there and vote, it’s that easy.

   

Click here to download:

AAC_support_in_media.io_new_lo.zip (62 KB)

One week after launching media.io, I’m already expanding the list of audio formats
supported by media.io

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) will be the next format that you can convert audio files from.

All MPEG-4 profiles will be supported, including MPEG-4, MPEG-2 MAIN, LOW, LTP, LD, LC, SBR, PS and ER object type AAC files (thanks to FAAD2). Encoding to AAC will come a little bit later. For audio file conversion to AAC, I’m torn between FAAC and the Nero AAC Encoder. If you have a preference, please post a suggestion, thanks!