Convert LOTS of files to M4A/OGG

DjDave238 said:

Anyone know of any good audio utilities that can batch convert tons (we're talking 1,000's) of audio files into both M4A & OGG? I really don't wanna have to manually convert each file in Audacity...

FFmpeg can convert to both formats: FFmpeg

It is a command line utility, so can be used in a Command Prompt FOR loop to process multiple files. The basic command (assuming your originals are all .wav files) would be:

for %n in (*.wav) do ffmpeg -i "%n" "%n.m4a"

This can be added to in order to do both conversions.

for %n in (*.wav) do (ffmpeg -i "%n" "%n.m4a" & ffmpeg -i "%n" "%n.ogg")

The drawback of this would be that the output files would all end up named <original name>.wav.m4a (or *.wav.ogg) with an unwanted .wav. included in the new name. To get round this we need to work from a list of the file names without the .wav extension.Generate one with:

for %a in ("*.wav") do @echo %~na >>list.txt

Now we can use this list in a FOR /F loop for FFmpeg. NB: the following will only succeed if ALL the filename do NOT have spaces in them.

for /f %n in (list.txt) do (ffmpeg -i "%n.wav" "%n.ogg" & ffmpeg -i "%n.wav" "%n.m4a")

NB: if you wish to write the FOR loop in a batch file, then you need to use a double %% instead of the single %

If you wish to control the quality of the encoding then FFmpeg has options for that. See:

Encode/HighQualityAudio | FFmpeg

TheoraVorbisEncodingGuide | FFmpeg

Encode/AAC | FFmpeg

and the FFmpeg documentation. FFmpeg Documentation


It may well be possible to use Powershell commands to call FFmpeg rather than a command prompt, but I am not well versed in Powershell. Perhaps an expert could suggest a more elegant way using Powershell?