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Geeklog: What I Learnt Today / Adam

Converting flv files to mp3 on CLI

> Recently found myself needing to convert 2000+ .flv files to .mp3 files it took me a while to find a solution. I first tried a Japanese program iExtractMP3.app but it couldn't cope with some older .flv files I'm not sure why I think it must be something to do with how they were created. I eventually ended up using VLC on the command line. Then it took me a while to work out the right set of parameters to use as VLC seems to do a huge number of different things.

#!/bin/bash
# extract audio from flv files to mp3 files
# using vlc app
for file in /Directory/*.flv; do
/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -I dummy $file
--sout="#transcode{vcodec=dummy,acodec=mp3,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100,scodec=none}:standard{mux=raw,access=file{overwrite},dst=\"$(echo
"$file" | sed 's/\.[^\.]*$/.mp3/')\"}" vlc://quit; done;

You end up with the Directory full of the original then converted version. aardvark.flv aardvark.mp3 cartilage.flv cartilage.mp3
This post was very helpful in working out the basis. There are a lot of arguments and I'm not an expert but my combination seems to work for the files I was working with.

/ Adam