Linux - Convert all Ogg files in a directory to MP3

Feb 08, 2017 Audio Linux

I need to convert all Ogg Vorbis files in a directory to MP3. I will create a small bash script that uses avconv or FFmpeg to convert the audio files.

Let us assume that we have the following Ogg music files in a directory.

In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country/
|-- 01 - Kid For Today.ogg
|-- 02 - Amo Bishop Roden.ogg
|-- 03 - In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country.ogg
`-- 04 - Zoetrope.ogg

ffmpeg or avconv command

The following command will convert the file 01 - Kid For Today.ogg to 01 - Kid For Today.mp3.

avconv -i 01\ -\ Kid\ For\ Today.ogg -acodec libmp3lame -map_metadata 0:s:0 01\ -\ Kid\ For\ Today.mp3
avconv version 11.8-6:11.8-1~deb8u1, Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the Libav developers
  built on Oct  1 2016 07:16:29 with gcc 4.9.2 (Debian 4.9.2-10)
Input #0, ogg, from '01 - Kid For Today.ogg':
  Duration: 00:06:23.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 109 kb/s
    Stream #0.0: Audio: vorbis, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp, 160 kb/s
    Metadata:
      ALBUM           : In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country
      track           : 1
      ARTIST          : Boards Of Canada
      DATE            : 2000
      TITLE           : Kid For Today
Output #0, mp3, to '01 - Kid For Today.mp3':
  Metadata:
    TSSE            : Lavf56.1.0
    Stream #0.0: Audio: libmp3lame, 44100 Hz, stereo, fltp
    Metadata:
      ALBUM           : In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country
      track           : 1
      ARTIST          : Boards Of Canada
      DATE            : 2000
      TITLE           : Kid For Today
      encoder         : Lavc56.1.0 libmp3lame
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (vorbis (native) -> mp3 (libmp3lame))
Press ctrl-c to stop encoding
size=    5985kB time=382.99 bitrate= 128.0kbits/s
video:0kB audio:5985kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.003067%

Loop over all Ogg files in a directory

We want to loop over all Ogg files in a directory and print the filename with the extension mp3 instead of ogg. The following bash script ogg2mp3.bash placed in the directory with the Ogg files is doing that.

#!/bin/bash

for i in *.ogg; do
    printf "${i:0:(-3)}mp3\n"
done

We can call that script the following way.

bash ogg2mp3.bash
01 - Kid For Today.mp3
02 - Amo Bishop Roden.mp3
03 - In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country.mp3
04 - Zoetrope.mp3

Convert Ogg to MP3 in a loop

We will combine the avconv command with the loop script and can execute it the same way as above in the directory.

#!/bin/bash

for i in *.ogg; do
    avconv -i "$i" -acodec libmp3lame -map_metadata 0:s:0 "${i:0:(-3)}mp3"
done

The script should have produced for every Ogg file a MP3 file in the current directory.

In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country/
|-- 01 - Kid For Today.mp3
|-- 01 - Kid For Today.ogg
|-- 02 - Amo Bishop Roden.mp3
|-- 02 - Amo Bishop Roden.ogg
|-- 03 - In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country.mp3
|-- 03 - In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country.ogg
|-- 04 - Zoetrope.mp3
|-- 04 - Zoetrope.ogg
`-- ogg2mp3.bash

Ogg to MP3 recursive in all subdirectories

Sometimes it is necessary to convert also every file in all subdirectories. For example if you want to convert your whole music library. Let us assume that we have the following directories with the some Ogg files and some image files. The test logo.png files are just to check if our script works fine.

Music/
|-- Iron Maiden/
|   |-- Futureal/
|   |   |-- 01. Futureal.ogg
|   |   |-- 02. The Evil that Men do.ogg
|   |   `-- 03. Man on the Edge.ogg
|   `-- logo.png
`-- Tofu Resistance/
    |-- logo.png
    |-- Tofu Resistance - Carlindos Way.ogg
    |-- Tofu Resistance - Manduka - Brasil 1500 -Edit-.ogg
    `-- Tofu Resistance - Soimatoi Part 2.ogg

Loop over all Ogg files in all subdirectories

We are doing the same as above, but in this case with the find command. The following bash script ogg2mp3rec.bash in the Music directory will list all Ogg files in all subdirectories.

#!/bin/bash

find . -name *.ogg | while read line; do
    printf "${line:0:(-3)}mp3\n"
done

Here the execution of the bash script.

bash ogg2mp3rec.bash
./Tofu Resistance/Tofu Resistance - Carlindos Way.mp3
./Tofu Resistance/Tofu Resistance - Soimatoi Part 2.mp3
./Tofu Resistance/Tofu Resistance - Manduka - Brasil 1500 -Edit-.mp3
./Iron Maiden/Futureal/01. Futureal.mp3
./Iron Maiden/Futureal/03. Man on the Edge.mp3
./Iron Maiden/Futureal/02. The Evil that Men do.mp3

Convert Ogg to MP3 in a loop over all subdirectories

The following script will convert all Ogg files in all subdirectories to MP3 files.

Without the </dev/null at the end of the ffmpeg command you might get errors like the following one.

#!/bin/bash

find . -name *.ogg | while read line; do
    ffmpeg -i "$line" -acodec libmp3lame -map_metadata 0:s:0 "${line:0:(-3)}mp3" </dev/null
done

We can call that bash script as before.