[FFmpeg-user] MP4s (and M4As) for music

[Paul B Mahol]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2025 at 11:55 AM Reino Wijnsma <rwijnsma at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Hello Mark,
>
> On 2025-06-08T19:27:20+0200, Mark Filipak
> <markfilipak.imdb-at-gmail.com at ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> > I want archival quality.
> On 2025-06-07T21:17:03+0200, Mark Filipak
> <markfilipak.imdb-at-gmail.com at ffmpeg.org> wrote:
> > ffmpeg^
> >   -i "c:\Ashra, Correlations [1979] chapters.txt"^
> >   -i c:\01.WAV^
> >   -i c:\02.WAV^
> >   -i c:\03.WAV^
> >   -i c:\04.WAV^
> >   -i c:\05.WAV^
> >   -i c:\06.WAV^
> >   -i c:\07.WAV^
> >   -filter_complex
> > "[1:0][2:0][3:0][4:0][5:0][6:0][7:0]concat=n=7:v=0:a=1[out]"^
> >   -map_metadata 0 -map "[out]"^
> >   -c libmp3lame -compression_level 0^
> >   "c:\Ashra, Correlations [1979].mp4"
> If you want to archive audio, you should use a lossless audio codec,
> which libmp3lame definitely isn't!
>
> What's the origin of these 7 WAV-files and the chapter-file? Did you rip
> the WAV-files yourself from a CD? If so, with Exact Audio Copy (EAC) by
> any chance?
> As your intention is to archive this album to one single file, I would
> highly recommend you...
> 1) Rip the CD to one single WAV-file (if you actually have the CD). Or
> if your ripper supports it, skip the WAV-file and directly rip to FLAC,
> WV, or TAK.
> 2) I personally use TAK for audio archival, but please consult
> https://hydrogenaudio.org/index.php/topic,126205.0.html for you lossless
> audio format of choice.
> 3) Let the ripper simultaneously generate a CUE-sheet. This is the
> recommended way to tag the archived audio. Chapters are for video-files
> and the MP4-container is not meant for audio only.
> 4) I can't remember if Exact Audio Copy was capable of directly tagging
> the resulting single audio-file with the CUE-sheet, because it's been
> quite some years since I last used the ripper, but otherwise I'd use
> Mp3Tag (https://www.mp3tag.de/en/). With it you can add the CUE-sheet
> afterwards, or even cover-art and all sorts of tags if you want.
>
> If you only have those 7 WAV-files, then you could use FFmpeg for
> concatenating and compressing (except for TAK), but the tagging I would
> leave to Mp3Tag.
>
> ffmpeg -i c:\01.WAV [...] -i c:\07.WAV -filter_complex
> "[0:0][1:0][2:0][3:0][4:0][5:0][6:0]concat=n=7:v=0:a=1"
> -compression_level 12 "c:\Ashra, Correlations [1979].flac"
> ffmpeg -i c:\01.WAV [...] -i c:\07.WAV -filter_complex
> "[0:0][1:0][2:0][3:0][4:0][5:0][6:0]concat=n=7:v=0:a=1"
> -compression_level 12 "c:\Ashra, Correlations [1979].wv"
> ffmpeg -i c:\01.WAV [...] -i c:\07.WAV -filter_complex
> "[0:0][1:0][2:0][3:0][4:0][5:0][6:0]concat=n=7:v=0:a=1" -f wav - |
> Takc.exe -e -pMax -ihs - "c:\Ashra, Correlations [1979].tak"
>
> (-map_metadata 0 is unnecessary, because WAV doesn't support tags)
>

wav supports tags and chapters. at least demuxer does.


>
> --
> Reino
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