Re: [Hampshire] avconv

Top Page

Reply to this message
Author: Peter Alefounder
Date:  
To: hampshire
Subject: Re: [Hampshire] avconv
Gordon Scott asked:
> Did you look further at sox for conversion?


I hadn't, on account of not having sox installed. I have now
installed it.

> You may well find that the following just works:
>
> sox mytrack.flac mytrack.mp3


No such luck. Sox says:
sox FAIL formats: no handler for file extension `mp3'

Somewhat odd, as the man page says sox can deal with mp3. However,
it worked for ogg, giving a default 112kb/s. The SansaClip works
with that, but I want to be able to control the quality.

Specifying -r 128k gave "unknown" quality. The SansaClip does not
crash with that but refuses to play it, just going on to the next
file as it would do when reaching the end of a file normally.

Chris Liddell suggested lame. I don't have that installed, and
considering the difficulties you have with it, Chris, thanks,
but I think I'll give that a miss for now.

Chris Liddel:
> Historically, not many distros package sox with MP3 support 'cause
> of the patent license issues - I don't know if that's changed much,
> these days.


Perhaps not. That would explain sox not working for mp3. I'm glad
such issues do not arise with audacity. Anyway, I'm not fussy about
the file format, the SansaClip works with many of them: ogg will do.

Ben Parsonage said:
> I have a hypothesis that you are producing VBR mp3s that your player
> does not support.


I think it does. However, I don't know enough about this to understand
how a file can be both, say, 128kb/s and VBR.

> If you just want to get this to work, you may be best off converting
> from flac to wav, then use your normal method to go from wav to mp3.


No such normal method exists!

Artur ??dka suggests:
for a in ./*.flac; do avconv -i "$a" -qscale:a 0 "${a[@]/%flac/mp3}"; done

Where in that is the quality specified?

I think what I should do is try audacity chains. I know that bit of
software works and I know how to control quality for both mp3 and ogg,
and the SansaClip is happy with the result. Other matters are taking
up my time just now, so it may be a while before I get round to this.

Thanks to all for the help.

Peter Alefounder.

--
Please post to: Hampshire@???
Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
--------------------------------------------------------------