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Can iTunes, QuickTime Player or any free software be used to convert a bunch of MP4's to MP3's? I have 184 video lectures I gave I want to turn into MP3's. So far QuickTime Player worked great, but that only converts one at a time and it is a very tedious and repetitive work.
MacBook Air
I combined what you helped with and the StackOverflow and came up with the solution below. I created a fold on the desktop, moved all the videos in that folder. I created the folder "outputs" within the folder with the videos. I option-dragged ffmpeg from the bin file to the folder with the videos (NOT in outputs). I wrote in terminal:
cd Desktop
cd "The name of the folder with the videos I wanted to convert"
for f in ./*.mp4; do ./ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a libmp3lame "outputs/${./f%.mp4}.mp3"; done
This did it! Shout-out to you and our programmers out there, this piece of work was not pleasant. Or it is not for me.
I combined what you helped with and the StackOverflow and came up with the solution below. I created a fold on the desktop, moved all the videos in that folder. I created the folder "outputs" within the folder with the videos. I option-dragged ffmpeg from the bin file to the folder with the videos (NOT in outputs). I wrote in terminal:
cd Desktop
cd "The name of the folder with the videos I wanted to convert"
for f in ./*.mp4; do ./ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a libmp3lame "outputs/${./f%.mp4}.mp3"; done
This did it! Shout-out to you and our programmers out there, this piece of work was not pleasant. Or it is not for me.
Two things.
Thank you so much for your reply. This has potential to be a life and money saver. I had to gave it access in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Accessibility. Now I uploaded one lecture to see if it works and it says "1 failed." I tried 5 and 50 lectures and they also failed ("5 failed," etc.). I attached a picture with details if you have any insight on this. Thanks so much once more!
That link that I just provided, Download a 64-bit, static build of FFmpeg, is a .zip file, and in Firefox, clicking on that link displays:
If you click this link in Safari, (or as I have in Firefox) the zip file will get dropped into your Downloads folder. If you copy that ffmpeg binary as I suggested to your Desktop, you may have to revise the command to:
./ffmpeg -i ./"Herding Cats".mp4 -acodec libmp3lame -ac 2 -ab 160k -ar 48000 ./foo.mp3
That ./ nomenclature is telling the Terminal that you are running the command from the current directory (e.g. Desktop) location. Without that, the Terminal may not be able to find the path to the ffmpeg binary, the .mp4 file, or where to write the .mp3 file.
You can use FFmpeg to batch convert .mp4 to .mp3. Stackoverflow example of how to use FFmpeg in the Terminal to perform the .mp4 to .mp3 batch conversion.
And here is how to convert with either Constant Bit Rate, or Variable Bit Rate. Regardless of the fact that it is a Linux command-line example, the FFmpeg command syntax should be the same on macOS.
Stop. Remove the ffmpeg that you downloaded, because you can download a static build version that has all the good stuff built into it and no need for plug-ins.
Just download a 64-bit, static build of ffmpeg with all of the libraries included in it.
That zip file will get dropped into your Downloads folder as ffmpeg-4.2-macos-64bit-static.zip. Double-click to unzip into a folder of the same name (without the .zip extension). You can option-drag its bin folder's ffmpeg binary to your Desktop.
The following tested command will convert a .mp4 video that I dragged to the Desktop into a .mp3 audio file (also on the Desktop):
ffmpeg -i "Herding Cats".mp4 -acodec libmp3lame -ac 2 -ab 160k -ar 48000 foo.mp3
That command-line is from that Linux page link showing constant bitrate encoding (CBR).
In the Terminal, you must escape filenames that have white-space in their names, with double-quotes as I did in my example — or the shell will think that each part of the filename is a separate file that it cannot find.
Opps, maybe it can't, I cannot fond any .mp4s here
Yes, Clementine can do it & it's free...
https://www.clementine-player.org/
I really think I did this right.
I have no idea how to install the missing plugins. I installed GStreamer with Terminal but that's about it.
This is would be helpful, but I have no idea how to adapt the Terminal code for my situation.
Removed. That downloads a file, not a zip.
Unfortunately:
-bash: ffmpeg: command not found
It doesn't work for me.
-bash: ./ffmpeg: No such file or directory
And even if it did work, I don't see how I will convert the rest of 186 videos.
Sorry. I needed to add:
cd Desktop
I am not good with Terminal at all. Apologies!
The test file was converted successfully. It took an awfully long time however.
Batch Convert MP4 to MP3