What is it?
A shell script to convert large batches of MP3 files into the Ogg Vorbis format.
What are the requirements?
It relies on Loran Hughes “mp3ogg” script, so you will need that, and any dependencies it has.
(Note: The original link to mp3ogg appears broken, an archived copy is available at the link provided)
Why would anyone want to do this?
- To store their music in a non-proprietary, open format.
- To promote the use of patent-free standards.
- To further reduce the dependency on non-free software (due to the patents and licensing complications surrounding the MP3 format, decoding libraries are typically not shipped with major operating system distributions).
- Because only pirates use MP3s, right?
Doesn’t this cause converted files to degrade in quality?
Yes, as both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis are lossy formats, conversion between the two will incur some loss of quality. As Ogg Vorbis is (theoretically) a higher quality format, it is questionable how much of this loss is perceptible. Where possible, it would be ideal to re-encode from a clean source (instead of converting between lossy encodings) but this is not always possible (if the original media becomes lost or damaged, for instance).
What is the difference between the two versions?
The Perl rendition was the first one, and it worked fine. Eventually I realized that the same thing could be accomplished with a bash one-liner, and thus the second (bash) variant came around. There is no functional need for this revised version to exist as a script, but typing it out every time the I wanted to convert a batch of MP3s into Vorbis files was a pain. I could have assigned the conversion script to a command alias instead, but it is much easier to distribute this way.
Current Version(s)
