Frequently Asked Questions
-
WinRAR tries to open the FreeMPC file when I double click it
-
I'm getting a "There was an error while creating temporary files" error message
-
When I double-click the FreeMPC.jar file it creates some files and doesn't do anything
-
WinRAR tries to open the FreeMPC file when I double click it
That happens because .jar files are associated with WinRAR. Here's a link on how to change that association in WinRAR, take a look at the third image. More generally, here's another link on how to change associations in Windows XP.
It's probably much easier if you simply reinstall Java (click here to get it) -
Is FreeMPC open-source?
No, for time being it's only freeware. In the future I may release it as an open-source project on Sourceforge. -
I'm getting a "There was an error while creating temporary files" error message
FreeMPC needs to be run from within a folder on which you can write to. You get that error because the FreeMPC.jar file is inside a folder that is read-only or on which you don't have permissions to write to. The easiest way to work around this is probably to create a new folder, place the FreeMPC.jar file there and run it (double-click) from that location, as noted by blue fox. To change the folder's read-only state you have to right click the folder that contains the FreeMPC.jar file, deselect the "Read Only" box and click Apply. Click here to learn about file and folder permissions. You have to restart the application after this error occurs. -
I'm having trouble using the FreeMPC.zip file
There is no FreeMPC.zip file, the original file is FreeMPC.jar but some users are reporting that, for some obscure reason, it's extension is changed to .zip when they download the file. If this is happening to you, simply rename the file to FreeMPC.jar and it's ready to be used :) -
When I double-click the FreeMPC.jar file it creates some files and doesn't do anything
The problem there is the same as mentioned in question 1: when you run the FreeMPC.jar file, Windows is using some archive manager (Winzip, WinRAR, some other that you have installed) to open the file. That happens caused because the .jar files are (wrongly) associated with WinRAR/WinZip/whatever, when they should be associated with the Java Runtime Environment that is installed on your computer. In this FAQ it's explained how to work out this problem; on a side note, it'll probably be easier and faster if you just reinstall Java (meaning, the Java Runtime Environment) on your computer (click here to get it). If your computer has Java installed and the .jar files are correctly associated with it, the only thing you have to do to run the application is double-click on the FreeMPC.jar file. -
What is MPC?
Musepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160-180 kbit/s. Despite being optimized for 100% transparency at moderately high bitrates, MPC has scored highly on many 128 kbit/s tests. In May 2004, a series of double-blind listening tests (as reported on Slashdot) suggested that Musepack and Ogg Vorbis (which was the 1.1 "aoTuV" fork at the time) were the two best available codecs for high-quality audio compression at bitrates around 128kbit/s, beating MP3, AAC, WMA, or ATRAC. -
I chose some files to convert and the conversion process returned no errors, but the files produced are empty, cannot be read, are reported as invalid or have a file size that's just too small to be correct.
That happened because the files you chose are not valid MPC files (i.e. they are damaged or have been incorrectly encoded to MPC).