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is there any way to losslessly convert a whole recursive file directory of .m4a files to .opus (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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i have a bunch of .m4a files in one folder, 1000s. can i automate their conversion somehow?

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

No as both are lossy codecs you will always lose quality doing so. You can do it with ffmpeg.

parallel ffmpeg -i {} {.}.opus ::: *.m4a

You may want to tweak parameters for bitrate, etc. But this is not needed at all, as AAC had patents that are now expired.

If you get .flac, .wav or similar lossless music, you should encode that with opus. But lossy to lossy makes nearly no sense (apart from specific players not supporting them)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

GNU Parallel works well for this kind of thing. A lot of audio stuff is single threaded, so unlike video transcoding running multiple conversions simultaneously is a useful thing to do. The command is simpler, too:

parallel ffmpeg -i {} {.}.opus ::: *.m4a

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Thanks, learning is always good, changed it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

If you get .flac, .wav or similar lossless music, you ~~should~~ could encode that with opus.

Fixed.

Unless you have a strong stance against people storing lossless files of their music? But I don't think that's quite what you meant :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

it's my music and i dont like proprietary formats

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

"If you get .flac, .wav or similar lossless music, you should encode that with opus."

I am looking forward to similarly useful discussions XD