[FFmpeg-user] Converting a cassette audio tape (Lecture) to mp3

[Moritz Barsnick]

On Sun, Jul 12, 2015 at 12:20:25 -0600, jd1008 wrote:
> OK, so of the 2 ffmpeg's I have installed, I hope one of them will
> support either pulse or alsa.

If your older ffmpeg is the one from the rpmfusion repo, then: It
certainly supports both.
Check with:
$ ffmpeg -devices | grep -E "alsa|pulse"

> I will look at other ffmpeg command line options that might be needed
> to enhance the quality of the recording. As you well know, the audio
> quality (or more precisely, lack thereof) of tapes and the ambient noises
> during tape recording, and even the audio quirks of the microphone itself
> contribute greatly to the noise factor.

Ah, well, that makes things more difficult. Except for bandpass, ffmpeg
probably doesn't have the right kind of filters. (Feel free to prove me
wrong.) You may want to capture to a high-quality lossless format (PCM)
with ffmpeg and then apply some advanced filters from other tools:

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Sanitizing_speech_recordings_made_with_portable_audio_recorders

Cheers,
Moritz