Convert m4a to mp3 with banshee?

[Tsquad]

Im running ubuntu 9.10 and im trying to convert my music i bought off itunes from m4a to mp3. I use Banshee, iv seen a few things saying you can do it with mplayer or something like that. Is there a way to do it with banshee?

[reed9]

I don't use banshee, didn't realize it was able to convert media formats. But it's easy enough to do. Fortunately, other people have done all the hard work and written scripts to handle it.

First make sure faad and lame are installed

sudo apt-get install faad lame

Then do

gedit ~/m4a2mp3

Paste the following in gedit and save.

#!/bin/sh
#
# m4a to mp3

trap 'rm -f "$info" "$opts" "$wav" "$mp3"; exit 10' 1 2 3 15

quality=5
bitrate=192

for m4a in "$@"; do
 info=` echo "$m4a"|sed -n 's/\.m4a$/.info/p'`
 opts=` echo "$m4a"|sed -n 's/\.m4a$/.opts/p'`
 wav=`  echo "$m4a"|sed -n 's/\.m4a$/.wav/p'`
 mp3=`  echo "$m4a"|sed -n 's/\.m4a$/.mp3/p'`
 [ -z "$mp3" ] && continue

 # study it
 faad -i "$m4a" 2>"$info"  #faad outputs info to stderr!
 cat "$info" | sed -n '
   s/["`$]/\\\&/g   # handle any escapes in titles
   s/^title: \(.*\)$/--tt "\1"/p
   s/^artist: \(.*\)$/--ta "\1"/p
   s/^album: \(.*\)$/--tl "\1"/p
   s/^track: \(.*\)$/--tn "\1"/p
   s/^date: \([12][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)$/--ty "\1"/p  # year?
  #s/^genre: \(.*\)$/--tg "\1"/p   # m4a genres dont match those of mp3
  ' - > "$opts"

 # convert it
 faad "$m4a"
 eval "lame -q $quality -b $bitrate "`cat "$opts"`" \"$wav\" \"$mp3\""

 # cleanup
 rm -f "$opts" "$wav" "$info"
done

Make it executable

sudo chmod +x ~/m4a2mp3

You may want to put it in a directory in your $PATH.

sudo cp ~/m4a2mp3 /usr/bin

Put the files you want to convert in a directory, open the terminal to said directory, and type

m4a2mp3

[Tsquad]

I don't use banshee, didn't realize it was able to convert media formats. But it's easy enough to do. Fortunately, other people have done all the hard work and written scripts to handle it.

First make sure faad and lame are installed

sudo apt-get install faad lame

Then do

gedit ~/m4a2mp3

Paste the following in gedit and save.

#!/bin/sh
#
# m4a to mp3

trap 'rm -f "$info" "$opts" "$wav" "$mp3"; exit 10' 1 2 3 15

quality=5
bitrate=192

for m4a in "$@"; do
 info=` echo "$m4a"|sed -n 's/\.m4a$/.info/p'`
 opts=` echo "$m4a"|sed -n 's/\.m4a$/.opts/p'`
 wav=`  echo "$m4a"|sed -n 's/\.m4a$/.wav/p'`
 mp3=`  echo "$m4a"|sed -n 's/\.m4a$/.mp3/p'`
 [ -z "$mp3" ] && continue

 # study it
 faad -i "$m4a" 2>"$info"  #faad outputs info to stderr!
 cat "$info" | sed -n '
   s/["`$]/\\\&/g   # handle any escapes in titles
   s/^title: \(.*\)$/--tt "\1"/p
   s/^artist: \(.*\)$/--ta "\1"/p
   s/^album: \(.*\)$/--tl "\1"/p
   s/^track: \(.*\)$/--tn "\1"/p
   s/^date: \([12][0-9][0-9][0-9]\)$/--ty "\1"/p  # year?
  #s/^genre: \(.*\)$/--tg "\1"/p   # m4a genres dont match those of mp3
  ' - > "$opts"

 # convert it
 faad "$m4a"
 eval "lame -q $quality -b $bitrate "`cat "$opts"`" \"$wav\" \"$mp3\""

 # cleanup
 rm -f "$opts" "$wav" "$info"
done

Make it executable

sudo chmod +x ~/m4a2mp3

You may want to put it in a directory in your $PATH.

sudo cp ~/m4a2mp3 /usr/bin

Put the files you want to convert in a directory, open the terminal to said directory, and type

m4a2mp3

Great thanks ill do this when i get home!

[Tsquad]

Ok, the first command turns out this:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package fadd

im already sutck. Im not quite sure what this error message is caused by?

[reed9]

E: Couldn't find package fadd

faad, you have fadd

[Tsquad]

Wow, I'm not really that stupid! I promise lol.

It worked.

Another question, are there any programs or utilitys that will search my drive and point me to a certain file type. Like say I wanted to see the name and location of every m4a file on my hard drive, or even just in a certain dir.

[reed9]

For a GUI search tool, I think Ubuntu uses Beagle by default.

Probably one of the more powerful search tools in the find command. Basic usage is

find [path] [options]

So you might do

find /home/username -name '*.mp3'

You can also execute a command on files found, such as your conversion script.

find /home/username -name '*.m4a' -exec m4a2mp3 '{}' \;

I don't have need of these tools much, so I'm not well versed in all their capabilities.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FindingFiles
How-To: Find files on your computer with find | Debian/Ubuntu Tips & Tricks
Unix/Linux "find" Command Tutorial

[Tsquad]

For a GUI search tool, I think Ubuntu uses Beagle by default.

Probably one of the more powerful search tools in the find command. Basic usage is

find [path] [options]

So you might do

find /home/username -name '*.mp3'

You can also execute a command on files found, such as your conversion script.

find /home/username -name '*.m4a' -exec m4a2mp3 '{}' \;

I don't have need of these tools much, so I'm not well versed in all their capabilities.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FindingFiles
How-To: Find files on your computer with find | Debian/Ubuntu Tips & Tricks
Unix/Linux "find" Command Tutorial

alright great that worked perfect.

the only problem now is that i have many files in many different directories that i need to convert. There is no way to convert all audio files in a directory to mp3 is there? like if i point it to my /hom/user/Music dir, could it convert everythingin there to mp3? or atleast try?



EDIT: also having problems as what you had posted to convert is not converting. I am trying to convert aac(aka m4a) files to mp3. After typing in the m4a2mp3 command while in the artest directory and it returns nothing. It just jumps down to the next line and is ready for another command. The files are still .m4a.

[reed9]

Sorry, you need to specify the files you want to convert.

Something like

m4a2mp3 *.m4a

To target all files in the current directory ending in .m4a.

[Tsquad]

ok, after that it looked like it was going to work. I cd'd to my itunes music dir and entered the command and got this:

 *********** Ahead Software MPEG-4 AAC Decoder V2.6 ******************

 Build: Oct  8 2008
 Copyright 2002-2004: Ahead Software AG
 http://www.audiocoding.com
 Floating point version

 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

 **************************************************************************

Error opening file: *.m4a
Could not find "*.wav".

For this to work do i have to cd to the actual folder that the files are in i am wanting to convert? Like if i cd to ~/Music/iTunes Music , and enter the command it will not work? Do i have to be in ~/Music/iTunes Music/artest/album then enter the command? im unsure exactly what one is right.