How to convert Flac to Mp3 with FFmpeg?

The best method is to navigate to the folder containing your Flac audio files and use the following 'for' loop:

for j in *.flac
do 
ffmpeg -i "$j" -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 128k mp3/"${j%.flac}.mp3"
done

Note the following points:

1. The output files will all be created in a subdirectory called 'mp3'
2. The output bitrate can be manipulated with the -b:a 128k setting
3. Or by using a quality setting (rather than bitrate): -q:a 5
4. The naming convention of your input files will be preserved in the output files

And enjoy your music!

posted 11 months ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

11mo ago

andrew.46‭

126 reputation 1 2 15 1

I see that this is self-answered, but I disagree that the answer provided is the best way. The best way is to properly utilize the Unix philosophy, by decomposing the problem into simpler sub-problems.

It is probably not hard to figure out how to convert a single file foo.flac into foo.mp3. I'll use the other answer's command:

ffmpeg -i foo.flac -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 128k foo.mp3

Now you just need to get a list FLAC files and apply the command to each one:

ls *.flac | parallel \
    ffmpeg -i {} -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 128k {.}.mp3

posted 11 months ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

11mo ago

matthewsnyder‭

1086 reputation 79 53 175 73