Is there a program to batch convert m4a's to mp3s?

[Red Squirrel]

My sister is always asking me all sorts of computer favours... now it's file conversion. She originally said mp4 but the files are actually m4a. Never heard of that format before, but it does seem to be recognized as music and plays, however ffmpeg (called avconv in Linux Mint) does not seem to support that format.

Is there another program I can use that will, or a specific parameter/command in avconv? It needs to be able to do batch conversion. So something command line will do as I'm just using a for loop.

 

[TheELF]

It's mp4 audio ,so only the audio part of an mp4 file,ffmpeg should have no problems converting those,are you sure avconv is the same thing as ffmpeg?Might be worth searching for ffmpeg for mint.

Also VLC can convert anything that it can play,and it should be available for mint.

 

[lxskllr]

soundconverter should do it, and should be in the repo.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Soundconverter seems to be working, processing now and so far the ones it did are working. Very fast too... Doing 4 at a time in maybe 10s or so.

Not 100% sure if ffmpeg is same as avconv but pretty sure I read something about that. When you try to install ffmpeg in Mint it just says it's not available and obsoleted. Not sure why they have to try to do things differently. I always forget what the other one is called (avconv) and end up having to google it each time.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Not 100% sure if ffmpeg is same as avconv but pretty sure I read something about that. When you try to install ffmpeg in Mint it just says it's not available and obsoleted. Not sure why they have to try to do things differently. I always forget what the other one is called (avconv) and end up having to google it each time.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions...ities-between-ffmpeg-libav-and-avconv#9477756

It's not just you, it's kind of a mess.

These messages are rather misleading and understandably a source of confusion. Older Ubuntu versions used Libav which is a fork of the FFmpeg project. FFmpeg returned in Ubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet".
The fork was basically a non-amicable result of conflicting personalities and development styles within the FFmpeg community. It is worth noting that the maintainer for Debian/Ubuntu switched from FFmpeg to Libav on his own accord due to being involved with the Libav fork.

 

[sweenish]

I'll be the one to insert the obligatory comment about how awful lossy-to-lossy conversion is. Don't do it. Get a better player or the proper codecs, *.m4a has been around for over a decade. It's what iTunes uses, for crying out loud.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You can't always control what the source produces, or what the destination requires. Some devices will produce a certain format, while some sources (Ex: a player or editing program) may require another format. In this case, my sister wanted to put files from one device which produces M4As to an MP3 player. (or something like that, she just said she wanted MP3s to play in her car)

 

[sweenish]

Not sure what part of *.m4a has been around for over a decade doesn't compute. Support is wide. The only thing that makes sense is an MP3 CD (see how much relevant information can help?), but converting lossy to lossy is still garbage for the audio.

Without hearing more about the actual source of the files, conversion method, and the actual intended use, this whole thing seems a fat mess for no good reason.

 

[ninaholic37]

I'm surprised that Mint still uses avconv instead of ffmpeg, especially after the "ffmpeg is deprecated" nonsense (thought they were supposed to fix that?). It sounds like the original ffmpeg has proven to be better in most (all?) ways according to Wikipedia:

In July 8, 2015, Debian announced it would return to FFmpeg[13] for various, technical reasons.[14] Several arguments justified this step. FFmpeg first had a better record of responding to vulnerabilities than Libav. Secondly, Mateusz “j00ru” Jurczyk, a security-oriented developer at Google, argued that all issues he found were fixed in a timely manner, and the situation was entirely different with Libav still affected by various bugs. Finally, the feature gap between FFmpeg and Libav, with FFmpeg supporting a far wider variety of codecs and containers than Libav does. It has been suggested to merge the two projects back into each other but this has not happened. With Debian and Ubuntu no longer using Libav, its future might be compromised and its development may no longer be sustainable.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Not sure what part of *.m4a has been around for over a decade doesn't compute. Support is wide. The only thing that makes sense is an MP3 CD (see how much relevant information can help?), but converting lossy to lossy is still garbage for the audio.

Without hearing more about the actual source of the files, conversion method, and the actual intended use, this whole thing seems a fat mess for no good reason.

Well my sister said she just wanted the files as MP3 to play in the car and that she tried with the M4As and it did not work, so I just did that. "Don't play them in the car, because converting files is a bad idea" is not really an answer she would go for.

And yeah Mint used to use ffmpeg but for some reason they changed it to avconv. Always throws me off because everywhere else it's ffmpeg.

 

[sweenish]

If we keep assuming the "average" consumer is a stupid brick, that's all we'll ever get. My wife and sister are both becoming more tech savvy exactly because I don't make those assumptions about them.

I can't help it if you can't be bothered to educate at least a sibling, but geez.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So what would you do differently then, if a certain type of file needs to be played/viewed on a device but that device does not support that type of file? A different example is if you have a video recording device like a camera, and it produces a certain type of file, and you want to edit it, but your editor does not support that type of file so you need to convert it before you can import into the editor. In a perfect world we would not have so many different video/audio formats and have one or two fully open source ones, but unfortunately it's not a perfect world.

 

[ninaholic37]

I'm guessing that sweenish does not talk to his wife the same way that he talks to anandtech members, as I'm pretty sure most intelligent women would probably file for divorce pretty quickly if his behavior here extended into his relationships. I also suspect that his wife does not read his posts on anandtech forums or even knows how he talks to people on here the way he does, or they would certainly question what they were thinking and if this is the man they truly married. Don't worry sweenish, you secret hostile/smartass personality on anandtech is safe with us.

 

[sweenish]

You're right, I don't talk to my wife the way I address certain members of these boards. There are quite a few reasons why, but they don't demonstrate the stupidity/ignorance/laissez faire that other members do here is going to be the main one. Forum communication is different than talking, and it's also different than Twitter, and quite a few people don't get that or don't care.

I can't comment further on the actual OP until I actually know what the original source of these files is, and why specifically they have to be MP3s. It doesn't even seem like OP knows that, so how do they expect to get any help if they can't even be bothered to have a full picture themselves? I usually won't answer hypotheticals, especially those fictionalized to the point of non-existence.

But lossy to lossy conversion is and always will be a terrible idea.

 

[lxskllr]

But lossy to lossy conversion is and always will be a terrible idea.

It's not a terrible idea. It's a suboptimal idea. Pretty much everything humans do is suboptimal, and a solution is chosen to balance cost, hassle and time. It's like photocopying a photocopy. It may have a bit more noise, but it's perfectly legible, and since it isn't being blownup to create a billboard, it's sufficient for the task at hand.

In this case, the alternative is to not listen to the music the sister wants to listen to, but listen to the radio, where someone else decides what music she hears, injects ads, and delivers music quality an order of magnitude worse than even a few stacked lossy-lossy conversions.

 

[sweenish]

Fidelity of FM radio easily trumps 128 kbps files. And you're making a lot of assumptions about the original quality of the track in the first place.

I stand by my phrasing. Because your phrasing is just apologetic and says nothing.

 

[TheRyuu]

I'm surprised that Mint still uses avconv instead of ffmpeg, especially after the "ffmpeg is deprecated" nonsense (thought they were supposed to fix that?). It sounds like the original ffmpeg has proven to be better in most (all?) ways according to Wikipedia:

Aren't they just stuck using whatever Ubuntu is using which it's based off of. Maybe it's just an older Ubuntu version that hasn't been switched over to ffmpeg yet. There's very little reason to still be using avconv. Almost all fixes and some features from avconv are ported to ffmpeg (however the reverse is not always true). This is likely one of the reasons why basically everybody is returning to ffmpeg.