export batch macro to m4a (AAC) ?

Programming and Development Macros and Scripting
1

Hi, running audacity 3.2.5 on MacOS Ventura 13.1.
Installed ffmpeg to be able to export single tracks to m4a, which works fine.
Now, i’m trying to create a macro applying different VST effects, but don’t find an option in the available commands to export to m4a (just mp3, wav, flac and ogg).
Any way to export to AAC, as otherwise i have to convert the outputs to this format as an extra manual step.

2

There isn’t one. You will need to export from your macro in a supported format.
If you require m4a as the final audio format, export from the macro as WAV, then use a third party M4A batch encoder.

Yes, that’s what you need to do.

3

ok, how come this isn’t supported as autput ? AAC is commonplace these days.

4

Audacity has built-in support for:

  • WAV
  • AIFF
  • MP3 (and MP2)
  • OGG
  • FLAC

Plus all formats supported by libsndfile.

Support for other (mostly closed source formats) are provided by the optional FFmpeg library.
M4A is (one of) the file extension for audio only MP4, and is supported through the FFmpeg library.

FFmpeg is optional as there may be issues regarding copyright / patent laws in some countries - it’s not clear cut, but this is what FFmpeg have to say on the subject: FFmpeg License and Legal Considerations

Macro commands have been written to provide exporting in the most commonly used formats that are supported by Audacity. Support for external encoding libraries has not been written, and the main developer of Audacity’s scripting commands is no longer part of the development team.

5

if you need a batch tool to convert in any file format, i recommend FormatFactory.

I do batch A LOT of audiobooks, and video files. for batch purposes i havent found a better one yet.

hope this helps someone, or anybody tells me a better tool :slight_smile: