audiotown 1.0.15

Convert Flac to Apple '.m4a' files (alac, aac)

AudioTown is a lightweight audio file oriented package that intends to do two things:

• Explain this media folder in the sense that interests me.
• It converts lossless files (.flac) in your collection to more apple friendly format, .m4a. Supports both high-quality ALAC (Lossless) and AAC (Lossy) as codec. When it converts, it tries preserving metadata, including album artwork from source files.

What to expect

1. audiotown contains three commands: check, stats and convert. This package requires ffmepg installed in the system.
   1. To run them, type auditown check or audio stats or audio convert.
   2. Type audiotown check to run check.
   3. The command checks if ffmpeg is installed.
2. stats acts as an executive assisant for audio media management. Personal media library are often messy. This command starts by searching the folder recursively and laser focus ONLY on audio files (filtered by file suffix). It then prints out to the terminal a summary report based on what it finds:
   1. numbers of songs by formats, by encoder types,
   2. storage usage details,
   3. what top artists, genres, albums are to me ,
   4. are they lossless or lossy, and
   5. detect potential unreadable or corrupt files.
3. stats can export scanned records into a JSON via --report-path flag. Default value is . (current directory).
4. convert. It converts all .flac files in a folder into lossless (alac) or lossy (aac) versions. An apple lossless encoded .m4a file can be recognized in Apple eco system but not usually for .flac files.
   1. --report-path is available in convert too. To run it audiocheck convert /path/to/flacs --encoder=alac --report-path=.. The converted will be exported to a new folder audiotown_export in the same folder path/to/flacs.
   2. convert also supports --dry-run as a tool to preview changes made in a conversion.
   3. convert searches files recursively so I can specify a high-level folder like Media or myMediaHub. Try with one ablum folder first.
   4. convert supports --bitrate when the --encoder=aac is specified. the default bitrate kbps is 256k. 128k and 320k are the other valid inputs.
   5. convert by default tries to add artwork into files. It searches for cover.jpg or library.jpg at the root of the folder. if the source file does not contain an artwork, the command attempts to find such file and embed it into the output whenever possible.

Installation

1. Ensure I have FFmpeg installed on the system. It is the powerhouse that does the conversion and other heavy work like probing ffprobe. I will need it installed and working. MacOS users can install it via homebrew: brew install ffmpeg.
2. Python >=3.10.
3. Requires click and wcwidth libaries.

# [optional but recommended] set up a virutal env named `my_env`.
python3 -m venv my_env
source my_env/bin/activate
# check python version 3.10+
python --version 

# udpate pip
pip install --upgrade pip

pip install audiotown

# help
audiotown

🛠 Usage

audiotown [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...
Options:
  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.
Commands:
  check    Verify that FFmpeg and dependencies are correctly installed.
  convert  Convert FLACs in FOLDER to Apple-friendly formats.
  stats    Stats Dashboard & Insight tool.

Examples

1. The simplest way to use AudioTown is to run it in a folder containing FLAC files: audiotown convert /path/to/album/folder --codec=alac --report-path=/path/to/report/folder --dry-run. The file search is resursive.
2. the output files from audio convert are under the subfolder audiotown_converted/ within /path/to/album/folder.
3. The /path/to/report/folder can be . or any specified directories.
4. use --dry-run to preview any perceived changes.
5. The convert takes only flac files. It supports: flac --> alac or flac --> aac

# 1. show additional help 
audiotown
audiotown -h
audiotown --help

# 2. check ffmpeg installation
audiotown check

# 3. show stats of a media folder 
cd /path/to/media/folder
audiotown stats . 
# alternatively 
audiotown stats  /path/to/media/folder
audiotown stats  /path/to/media/folder --report-path=.

# enable duplicating searching
audiotown stats  /path/to/media/folder --find-duplicate --report-path=. 

# 4. convert all flac files  to alac (default) or aac based formats. logging is controlled by `--report-path`
# . means current directory
audiotown convert . --report-path=.
audiotown convert . --codec=alac --report-path=. --dry-run
audiotown convert . --codec=aac --bitrate=256k --report-path=. --dry-run

Advanced Options

1. overview

Option	Description	Default
--codec	alac or aac. used with convert.	alac
--bitrate	Bitrate for AAC (128k, 256k, 320k). only useful when --codec=aac	256k
--dry-run	Preview conversion without writing files. used with convert	False
--find-duplicate	finds potential duplicate files by parallel comparisions via arist, title and file_name.	disabled
--report-path	generates a full log, including a json. work with both convert and stats.	disabled

1. Examples

   1. Run a preview to see what would be converted:

   audiotown convert ./AlbumFolder --dry-run
   

   2. use codec and --bitrate. It means the desired codec used for the output.

   audiotown convert . --codec=alac 
   audiotown convert . --codec=aac --bitrate=256k 
   audiotown convert . --codec=aac --bitrate=128k 
   

   3. It does not make sense to specify bitrate for lossless alac so bitrate will be ignored.

   cd /my/media/folder
   audiotown convert . --codec=alac --bitrate=128k 
   

   4. find duplicates. the command looks at the metadata like aritst, title, file size and file name. it tries to find a unique key to create duplicate groups/sets.

   cd /my/media/folder
   audiotown stats . --find-pulicate
   

LICENSE

Licensed under the MIT License.