Convert ape to mp3

[Robbyx]

I thought VLC would do the conversion but I have not been able to see how to do it. I wish to convert quite a few ape files to a format that will play on a cd player. What is the best way to do it? If VLC will do the conversion then my problem was that when I chose media--convert/save it did not recognise the file extension via the filter option. Strangely it could play the ape file

[Robbyx]

Since posting the message I have found a nautilus script to convert audio files. I get an error message when I run it:

you don't have the right codec to decode the selected file. missin' codec: mac

Do you know where to get this missing codec?

Robin

[mc4man]

For an app maybe soundkonverter or soundconverter. I see soundkonverter supports Ape (mac)

Otherwise ffmpeg could easily batch convert to ?? (you never said.

If your intention is to burn to a cd then I'd convert to .wav


Edit. grabbed a .ape sample and on a machine with both soundkonverter and soundconverter it was not accepted by soundkonverter (no mac codec), but was by soundconverter (though it butchered the run time

Was quite simple to convert with ffmpeg on my main box

[Robbyx]

Thank you for that advice. I have just installed ffmpeg from synaptic.

Here is an example of a batch that needs converting. It is getting very tedious to make this work. It keeps reporting no such directory. If there is no gui that will make this easy what would you suggest. My failed proposal to combine the 5 files to one wav file is as follows.

ffmpeg -i '/media/video/Music/Grimaud-Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5/'%Beathoven Concerto No 5.ape /media/video/Music/beethoven.wav


/media/video/Music/Grimaud-Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5/%Beathoven: no such file or directory

It looks as if ffmpeg has limited wild card ability. So I renamed the five files listed below to 1Beathoven Concerto No 5.ape (incrementing each one)




/media/video/Music/Grimaud-Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5/7 Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.28 - IV - Allegro.ape
/media/video/Music/Grimaud-Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5/6 Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.28 - III - Adagio, ma non troppo, con affetto.ape
/media/video/Music/Grimaud-Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5/5 Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.28 - II - Vivace alla Marcia.ape
/media/video/Music/Grimaud-Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5/4 Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.28 - I - Allegretto, ma non troppo.ape
/media/video/Music/Grimaud-Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5/3 Beethoven - Concerto No. 5 - III - Rondo. Allegro.ape
/media/video/Music/Grimaud-Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5/2 Beethoven - Concerto No. 5 - II - Adagio un poco mosso.ape
/media/video/Music/Grimaud-Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5/1 Beethoven - Concerto No. 5 - I - Allegro.ape

[vanadium]

You are mixing up two problems. Can ffmpeg convert a single ape file? If yes, then we can look into batch encoding. If not, your first problem remains to decode the ape files.

I have been using the linux command line utility "mac" which I installed from www.rarewares.org. Previously, I have used the graphical Windows utility under wine. I have converted all my ape's to flac, which was a truly free format from the beginning and is much better supported on different platforms than Monkey's audio.

[Robbyx]

My ffmpeg now converts ape files to wav or mp3 using the following command line:

ffmpeg -i '/media/video/Music/1Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 (Zimerman)/(01) Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 - I. Allegro maestoso.ape' /media/video/Music/chopin.mp3

As you can see I have had to put the path and name in inverted comma.

Any suggestions as to batch processing?

Robin

[mc4man]

If your going to use ffmpeg then you don't need to type in the path, track name ect.
You can do this from the cli or create a script, in either case you'd just cd to the directory (folder) containing your tracks and then run this basic command.

It can be adapted for mp3 or other formats, additional actions ect.
This will convert to .wav using the existing track names.

Basic command for batch converting

for f in *.ape; do ffmpeg -i "$f" "${f%.ape}.wav"; done

I've got to go out, here's a post with some more info, I don't use mp3 but it would be fairly easy to use the above to convert to mp3 (within whatever parameters ffmpeg will accept for mp3

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1081958

[vanadium]

Great trick with { % } to avoid the "basename" function!

[mc4man]

I found the "mac" source code that 'appears' to have built and installed properly in 8.10
Whether it's of any value I'm not sure, will have to test later, though something I'm about to build did find it. (pacpl

checking for mac... yes

Anyone you wants to test it's here (appears to be a patched ver.

http://etree.org/shnutils/shntool/su...4-b5-s4.tar.gz

A straight configure seemed to work, did find this, though didn't try (were 2 large groups of warnings, didn't look at

a) for unix targets:

% CXXFLAGS="-DSHNTOOL" ./configure

@ vanadium
you can use that 'style' for a lot of things, while I don't need to run neroAacEnc as a standalone (use rubyripper) was just fooling around

for f in *.wav; do neroAacEnc -if "$f" -of "${f%.wav}.m4a" -q 0.65; done

Edit:
well it's works fine as an encoder/decoder (.wav to .ape, .ape to .wav )

doug@doug-desktop:~/Desktop/monk$ mac "see.wav" "see.ape" -c2000
--- Monkey's Audio Console Front End (v 3.99) (c) Matthew T. Ashland ---
Compressing (normal)...
Progress: 100.0% (0.0 seconds remaining, 8.5 seconds total)
Success...
doug@doug-desktop:~/Desktop/monk$ mac "see.ape" "see1.wav" -d
--- Monkey's Audio Console Front End (v 3.99) (c) Matthew T. Ashland ---
Decompressing...
Progress: 100.0% (0.0 seconds remaining, 12.4 seconds total)
Success...

Reedit;
Batch decompress .ape to .wav, basic command (after installing 'mac'),

for f in *.ape; do mac "$f" "${f%.ape}.wav" -d; done

here's a recent thread semi related (ape to flac
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1084665&

It also links to a ppa with debian packages of mac
http://ppa.launchpad.net/eudoxos/ubuntu/pool/main/m/

You might also post in that thread - see if he's got a script to do ape->mp3 directly

[Robbyx]

If your going to use ffmpeg then you don't need to type in the path, track name ect.
You can do this from the cli or create a script, in either case you'd just cd to the directory (folder) containing your tracks and then run this basic command.

It can be adapted for mp3 or other formats, additional actions ect.
This will convert to .wav using the existing track names.

Basic command for batch converting

for f in *.ape; do ffmpeg -i "$f" "${f%.ape}.wav"; done

I've got to go out, here's a post with some more info, I don't use mp3 but it would be fairly easy to use the above to convert to mp3 (within whatever parameters ffmpeg will accept for mp3

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1081958

I have just tried your code and it works very well with either wav or mp4. Thank you.

I am disappointed with the mp4 results because the music is not sounding full blooded. It is mooted down when the music gets loud. The music is also sounding thin. Do you know if there are any settings which would bring back the full tone and depth?

Robin