[FFmpeg-user] Convert audio FLAC to ALAC (apple lossless), 24bits 96kHz

[Lucien Pullen]

Also sprach Dagfinn Stangeland at 3/16/11 4:04 AM:
> I have been able to convert normal (16bits at 44,1kHz) FLAC audiofiles to ALAC
> using ffmpeg. Searching around I found this little line that has worked
> fine:
> 
> for i in *.flac; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -acodec alac -map_meta_data 0:0,s0
>> "`basename "$i" .flac`.m4a"; done;
>>
> 
> The above line converts all flac in a dir to alac and preserves tag info.
> 
> I was hoping to use ffmpeg to convert HQ FLAC files (24bits at 96kHz) to ALAC
> preserving bitdepth and sampling rate.
> 
> Is it so that the alac encoder really does not support such a high sample
> rate? Or do I need to pass options to ffmpeg to enable this?
> I notice that "ipod" is mentioned in the output stream info, I do not
> understand the significance.
> 
> Sidenote: I'm not aware of any other tools that supports FLAC to ALAC
> conversion. If anyone knows of better suited tools, please let me know.
You don't need to specify -map_meta_data any more, the latest version
from GIT automatically maps it.

As far as I can tell, the highest bitrate I've been able to use with the
ALAC encoder is 48 KHz.

I think ffmpeg copies the bit depth, though I couldn't find any mention
of ``depth'' in the manpage.