Converting M4A Podcasts to MP3

I love audio learning, so I subscribe to some podcasts using iTunes. Usually, I will copy those podcasts to my music player so that I can listen to them while going around and working on something else. But recently I got a problem: one of the podcasts, which is Harvard Business Review ideacast, doesn’t play in my music player. Apparently, this is because the podcast use M4A format which is not recognized by the player.

Fortunately, there is a Lifehacker post which tackle this problem. It explains how to convert M4A format to MP3. I try to do that to the HBR podcast and it works ! Here is how to convert M4A format to MP3 in iTunes:

1. Open Edit | Preferences menu, go to Advanced tab, and inside Advanced tab go to Importing tab.
2. In the Importing tab, choose MP3 Encoder in the Import Using dropdown list. Then click OK.
3. Select the files we want to convert, then click Convert Selection to MP3 in the Advanced menu.
4. To see the MP3 files, right click on one of the files in iTunes and select Show in Windows Explorer in the popup menu.

Now I can bring those HBR podcasts around in my MP3 player. Nice trick !

http://www.lifeoptimizer.org