WinMCE WMA->MAC->CD

I'm sure this question has been asked and answered 100 times, so please forgive my ignorance. I've used MS Windows since Windows 1.0. Always giggled at the MACs. Don't smack me yet.

Recently, I bought two MACs; an iMAC G5, and a PowerPC G5. Both are running Tiger. I'm new to MACs, and I have to tell you that I am very impressed. I love them. I don't use the Windows machines unless I have to. I'm trying to switch everything I do over the MAC. Apple Corp should love people like me.

Here's my dilema. Prior to seeing the light and buying the MACs, I ripped over 750 CDs into WMA format on my Windows Media Center Edition PC so that I could share my music throughout the house. Works great.

Now, I want to sit at my MAC and play it AND burn it. Playing it isn't a problem as I use the Sonos Music System (mesh network) and they just released, and I just installed, the MAC version. So I'm happy.

However, Windows Media Player 9, while it will play WMAs on the MAC, will not BURN them (like Media Player 10, unavailable as of now for the MAC).

I really do not want to (e.g. I'm not willing to go through it again) re-rip all those CDs to a MAC-compatible format for the purpose of burning. I'm looking for a way to access the WMA files on the WinMCE machine from my MAC, and create playlists AND burn the audio CDs on the MAC. I have no need to burn MP3 CDS; just std audio CDs.

I read the specs on Roxio Toast 6, but it doesn't specifically mention (on their site) that it will import WMA files. if it doesn't, it's of no use to me.

Has anyone out there solved this problem yet w/o re-ripping the CDs? I tried the iTunes 4.9 "file/add to library" feature on the shared folders on the WinMCE machine, and I didn't get any errors. however, I also didn't see any music show up on my "library" in iTunes. So, I'm guessing it didn't work. I can't recall, but I'd say there's a 50/50 chance the WMA files are protected on the WinMCE machine, but again, I'm not sure.

Help, please. I really want to use this MAC for everything including burning my CDs, but I'd really like to keep the basic music files intact on the WinMCE machine. If I have to, I guess I can just use the Windows machines for burning CDs, but like I said, I'm trying to move almost exclusively to the MAC.

I'd appreciate any help anyone can give me in this area in terms of products to use, different steps to take, magic wands to wave around; whatever it takes.

Thanks much.
Dennis

Probably the simplest thing to do is just keep using your win machines, but importing all your .wma's into iTunes should be fairly easy to do. It will take a bit of time however.

As long as you didn't copy-protect your music when you originally ripped it to your PC then there should be no problems. If you did, then iTunes won't be able to import it.

First, open iTunes. Next, open the iTunes Preferences and select the Importing tab. Decide what quality you want and click ok. Now, drag the folder that holds all your music over to iTunes and drop it on the Library tab on the left side (you don't need to worry about opening each folder, iTunes will do this for you). Go do something else for the next day becaue 750 CD's will take quite a bit of time. You also may want to import them in incremental stages instead, such as 50 CD's at a time, because iTunes will not delete the old files and you HDD will fill up quickly.

or just use EasyWMA :mac:

anyone know any programs that can convert wmv to mpeg? so quiktime can play them

i had the same problem. A few thousands song in WMA lossless format. I imported them into itunes on windows, converted them all(took two days lol) and then transfered them to my PB via firewire(2 hours). It worked really well.

So what does this tell us? Don't encode the media you own into proprietary formats owned by others...

Yup. WMA does sound absolutedly FABULOUS on my PC though.