exporting mp3

Alright i bought the Steinberg CI2 which came with cubase 5 AI and it doesn’t let me export songs in mp3 format why?
i get an error saying
eLicence Control - Message

The license required for application ‘MP3 Encoder C’ was deactivated, because it needs to be validated.
Should the licenseserver validate the licenses now?

You can use the ‘Validate License Usage Periods’ wizard of the ‘eLicenser Control Center’ to validate this license later.

I already activated everything, what do i find the code to activate the mp3 export???
thanks in advance !!

Cubase AI5 comes with a trial of the mp3 encoder, which expires after the trial time, or a certain number of encodings. Could it be that…? You need to buy a full license, if you want more encodings.

You are allowed to export up to 20 different MP3’s with the trial license. You could always export as WAV files and convert them to MP3’s using a free tool like LAME.

Until you want to purchase the full license, WMA is a nice alternative.

I like using CDex to convert WAV to MP3. It gives you different setup options to convert to the bitrate you desire.