Music Gurus; How can I convert M4A files to MP3

[[1ponders]]

Rather than go through and re-record all my albums onto my laptop, can someone suggest a way to convert my iTunes ( :mad2: ) M4A files to MP3 music files.

Cheers

[Octane]

Paul,

VLC Player should do it.

www.videolan.org

Use the transcoding wizard in the File menu, from memory.

H

[[1ponders]]

Cheers thank Humayun

[[1ponders]]

No file menu there unfortunately. Any idea how to batch convert?

[Octane]

Sorry, go to Media > Convert/Save.

H

[Octane]

http://tutorial.downloadatoz.com/how-to-convert-audio-files-with-vlc-media-player.html

[Steffen]

In iTunes: select the format and bitrate you want in "Import Settings" under Preferences->General. Once set, select any track or number of tracks, right-click, "Create xyz version" (where xyz is the format you chose in "Import Settings").

The converted tracks will have the same name and metadata as the originals, to distinguish them enable the "Kind" column in your iTunes library.

To locate the tracks on your harddrive, right-click, "Show in Finder" or whatever it's called in Windows.

Cheers
Steffen.

[[1ponders]]

I tried that one Humayun, but I could only get it to convert 1 file at a time.

Cheers Steffen thanks for that I'll have a look at that as well. cheers


Edit: Too easy. For a change with iTunes :). Thanks Steffan

[mithrandir]

Without having seen Steffan's post I would have said ffmpeg. The hardest part on Windoze is scripting the loop. If you have cygwin:

find . -iname \*m4a | while read old ; do ffmpeg -i "$old" -acodec mp3 -ac 2 -ab 128 "${old%m4a}mp3" ; done
You might have to fiddle with the bit rate.

[[1ponders]]

thanks for the info Andrew. Scripting :scared: too dyslexic for that LOL

itunes worked a treat for a change