is there any way to losslessly convert a whole recursive file directory of .m4a files to .opus
is there any way to losslessly convert a whole recursive file directory of .m4a files to .opus
i have a bunch of .m4a files in one folder, 1000s. can i automate their conversion somehow?
No as both are lossy codecs you will always lose quality doing so. You can do it with ffmpeg.
parallel ffmpeg -i {} {.}.opus ::: *.m4aYou 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)
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 ::: *.m4aThanks, learning is always good, changed it
If you get .flac, .wav or similar lossless music, you
shouldcould 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 :)
"If you get .flac, .wav or similar lossless music, you should encode that with opus."
I am looking forward to similarly useful discussions XD
it's my music and i dont like proprietary formats
Unless the m4a files are ALAC-encoded, you shouldn't do it. m4a files tend to hold AAC-encoded audio, which is a lossy format. Opus is also a lossy format, so you'll only lose sound quality, basically. You should only convert lossless to lossy.
You can use the
findcommand to do the stuff other commenters have posted recursiveor fd
Opus is lossy, so no. But they’re already stored in a lossy format, so you probably won’t notice a difference if you use the same bitrate.