MP3 format unavailable native in Reaper Linux

[akademie]

Why there is not a choice of MP3 format for render and batch convert, please?
(Mint Linux Live and Reaper 6.16 Linux)

[JamesPeters]

Install LAME. The option will appear. You can install LAME from the Ubuntu repo (it should be available to you in Mint as well). It installed along with FFMPEG on my system, so I didn't need to install it separately. FFMPEG is a set of codecs you would want for using video in Reaper, especially the ability to save to a higher quality FFMPEG output file.

As far as I know, Reaper has always relied on an "external" encoder for MP3 (LAME in particular for Windows, and now for Linux too). So this isn't anything new, other than your "live" distro not having FFMPEG installed by default.

As for having LAME available on a "live" install (USB stick running the distro), I don't know if that's possible since I've never tried installing more than the default software to a USB stick (I don't know if it would write to the USB stick, or only be there for the session). I guess you could look into that, how to make a custom "live" disto with whatever packages you want installed.

I wouldn't use a "live" distro to run a DAW anyway.

[Mikobuntu]

Seems like you need to install libmp3lame

sudo apt install libmp3lame0

Then restart Reaper.

[akademie]

Thanks
I thought that it is the same in Linux since some time it (the LAME MP3 encoder) was included in Reaper Windows version by default without need to install (add) anything manually to be able to encode to MP3. Strange.
Again, thank you for info.

[Justin]

Yeah we let the user install the lame package as it's easy enough to do on your linux distro... though I could be convinced otherwise, meh...

[JamesPeters]

Originally Posted by Justin

Yeah we let the user install the lame package as it's easy enough to do on your linux distro... though I could be convinced otherwise, meh...

It might be useful in circumstances like this specifically, if someone wants to use it on a "live" Linux USB stick.

On a related note: FFPMEG in general is becoming a hassle for Windows and Mac users lately. Zeranoe, who provided reliable builds, is gone. A couple other package builders/maintainers have picked up the ball but there are problems with the builds. I've noticed others commenting about problems with the latest FFMPEG versions, but those versions work fine for me in Linux so it's probably just FFMPEG builds by those maintainers that have problems. Geoffrey Francis is trying to update the User Guide with correct info where to get FFMPEG and how to install it, but it's becoming a "your guess is as good as mine" situation lately.