audiotown 1.0.5

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 to me.
• It converts the 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 conver.
   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 suffix). It then prints out to the terminal output a summary report about how it finds:
   1. numbers of songs by formats, by encoding types,
   2. storage usage details,
   3. what top artists, genre, album 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 file via --report-path flag.
4. convert. It converts all .flac files in a folder into lossless (alac) or lossy (aac) versions. a 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 support --dry-run as a tool to preview changes made in a conversion.
   3. convert search files recursively so I can specify a high-level folder like Media or myMediaHub. Try with one ablum folder first.
   4. converts support --bitrate when the --encoder=aac is specified. the default bitrate kbps is 256k. 128k and 320k are the other valid inputs.
   5. convert has a babit that searchs cover.jpg or library.jpg in the existing folder strucutre. if the source file does not contain an artwork, the command attempts to find such file and add it into output files 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. Mac users can installed 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 & Optimization 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 conversion 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=.

# 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	False
--report-path	generates a full log, including report.json	disabled

2. 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 

LICENSE

Licensed under the MIT License.