[Athen] Seeking recommendations for M4A converter

[Deborah Armstrong]

I have found an easier solution: winff. It is ffmpeg with a graphical front end. You still have access to the command line, either from the real Windows command line or from inside the graphical window.

Winff is screen reader and keyboard friendly, works in Win10, lets you add presets and you can dispense with it altogether and just use the native ffmpeg. Very cool!


From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu> On Behalf Of Lisa Brandt
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2020 12:10 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Seeking recommendations for M4A converter

Debee, if you have a version of Windows that's WSL-capable, you could run ffmpeg in a native Linux command line!

On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 12:07 PM Deborah Armstrong <armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu<mailto:armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu>> wrote:
Wow! I forgot about ffmpeg. Got to find a windows build as I don’t want to build from scratch on my work computer, but I use it all the time in Linux for fun to convert videos for my hubby, who tends to fill up our server’s hard drive! I need a better grasp in the obvious.


From: athen-list <athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list-bounces at mailman12.u.washington.edu>> On Behalf Of Joseph Polizzotto MA
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2020 11:54 AM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network <athen-list at u.washington.edu<mailto:athen-list at u.washington.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Athen] Seeking recommendations for M4A converter

Debee,

If you don't mind working from the command line, you can also use FFmpeg<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.ffmpeg.org/__;!!A-B3JKCz!Smev1lclUsoqLGy5v45VlF0WiVF0cFRfvslsJ03qR57JSLy1QrDkBXMW7kKXfpH0xPXoZQ$>. You can type a command like the following in the terminal to get your desired file:

ffmpeg -i input.m4a output.wav

You can also try converting directly to MP3 from M4A and see if the quality is still too poor for your needs. Here is a command that can do that;

ffmpeg -i input.m4a -acodec libmp3lame -ab 256k output.mp3

It is possible to write a short script that does this process in a loop for all of the files in a directory.

I came across this article that touches on the decline of usability of many desktop applications<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/datagubbe.se/decusab/__;!!A-B3JKCz!Smev1lclUsoqLGy5v45VlF0WiVF0cFRfvslsJ03qR57JSLy1QrDkBXMW7kKXfpHKsPMWeA$>. I thought you could relate to a lot of what is said there. Those are also arguments in favor of using the command line! (BTW I am not referring to any desktop applications mentioned in this thread).

HTH,

Joseph

On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 7:43 AM Deborah Armstrong <armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu<mailto:armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu>> wrote:
Now that we have so many webinars/courses in zoom, I’m seeking a simple converter for Windows that will create .wav files from .M4A. The editor I prefer to use likes wav files or Mp3, but if you convert to mp3 you reduce the audio quality just a bit, so I’d prefer to convert to wav, edit it and then convert to Mp3.

When I record lectures, my main tool for note-taking is to edit the recording about 75% so I have only a short audio file to retain.

This is also useful when I’m working on a recording someone else made.

--Debee

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