I have a fairly large music collection, which is 9.9 GB in size. It’s mainly made up of MP3 files, with some OGG Vorbis files and a handful of WAV and WMA files. I would like to convert the entire library to AAC (or a better format, if there is one) in order to reduce the size of my collection by a considerable amount.
My library is organised using this folder structure:
~/Music/{Artist}/{Album}/{Track}
Can anyone recommend a GUI tool or shellscript which would recursively convert the files, map across the metadata, and dump the files into a different folder with the same directory structure?
EDIT: I have used a script to convert everything to Opus. Problem solved, just working out the kinks now.
Converting from one lossy codec another isn’t generally recommended, plus you aren’t likely to save that much disk space by converting to AAC.
10 GB is actually pretty small for a local music collection, quite honestly. If I were you, I would try to expand your storage capacity instead of wasting time, and potentially audio quality, by transcoding.
If I were you, I would stick to streaming in that case.
However, if you’re dead set on storing files locally and there’s no other option but to transcode, then use 128kbps Opus instead of AAC - assuming that iPhones support it (I haven’t checked). It’s a lot more efficient.
A good converter program to use is fre:ac but don’t ask me for an iOS only app because I’m not an Apple guy at all.
-
Don’t buy iPhone
-
You need ffmpeg
-
Read this for the exact command
-
You can use the find command (in console) to list all mp3 files, these you can pipe into ffmpeg.
Just ask ChatGPT to write the shell script for you
Already did that. Thanks though.
By the way, owning an iPhone is not my choice. I’m 17 and still living with my parents, and my dad is a huge Apple fanboy. Ideally, I’d have either a Pixel with DivestOS, an Xperia with SailfishOS, a PinePhone with PostMarketOS, or an old Nokia 3210; but for now I’m stuck with my second hand iPhone SE.
