Once upon a time...

... there were lots of mp3 encoders available for a variety of platforms, including BeOS. Then the Fraunhofer Institute came along, slapped all the developers with a $15000-per-year royalty demand, and the free mp3 encoders quickly vanished.

The problem

The only encoder left for BeOS is the Kizuno encoder. Unfortunately, it doesn't work too well for some people, who complain about distortions and a "metallic" sound.

The solution

There used to be the "8hz" encoder, which had been ported to a number of platforms including BeOS when Fraunhofer started making demands and pushed it into oblivion.
Fortunately, sourcecode for this encoder can still be found on the net, and we will use this sourcecode to create a BeOS version, as seen in this picture

The details

Here's how to create your own mp3 encoder for BeOS:

First of all, get the file 8hz-mp3.src.v02b.tar.gz from the net. This is the sourcecode of the commandline unix version of the 8hz encoder, which can still be found on a few servers.
Click HERE to perform a search for the whereabouts of this archive.
Second, download liblayout and the liblayout headerfiles from my main software page.
Third, download and install the 'patch' command from GeekGadgets. You will need to get patch 2.4, since 2.5 will crash. The 2.4 version can be found in the Amiga directories for example.
After unpacking the archive, run the configure script, then run make to build the patch command.
Copy the resulting executable to /boot/home/config/bin/
Next, get my patches (diffs). This archive contains patches that will make the 8hz-encoder compile on BeOS, and adds a graphical user interface to it. Unzip the diff archive, run the patch-8hz script, follow the instructions.

I do not provide support for the 8hz encoder in any way. If you can't get it to work using the above instructions, do NOT contact me. I will not answer any questions about this.