Can I batch convert a bunch of .aup files into MP3?

[AkbarJaffer]

Hello Audacity gurus, I hope you can help me.

I have several .aup files each representing my college lecture. I want to convert them into MP3 files to save space and be able to listen to them on my ipod. Is it possible for me to use some sort of "batch processing" there I can provide the program a list of .aup files and it converts each into its own .mp3?

I have purchased the lame library and I am able to bring up one .aup file at a time and convert it into .mp3.

Thank you for your help

Akbar

[kozikowski]

You used some really dangerous words. You do not have AUP files. You have Audacity Projects which are managed by the AUP file. Each one is associated with a /DATA folder which is holding the actual show. Don't ever separate those sets.

I would probably download and install Audacity 1.3 from here.

http://audacityteam.org/download/
You should get fresh, new lame from the same web site. You should not have to pay for it.

Audacity 1.3 has "Chains" which is the Batch processor. It's not universal and I don't know what processes can be chained, but that's a good start.

Koz

[kozikowski]

You should get Audacity 1.3 whether you use Chains or not. Audacity 1.2 is not stable on modern Macs.

Koz

[bgravato]

Lame (like Audacity) is free software... I don't know from whom you have purchased it, but you can get it for free... Not all builds of lame will work with audacity, you should get the lame version on audacity's download page that Koz mentioned.

I hope you didn't pay for audacity either...

I'm afraid chains won't work for this... Chains can be used to apply a group of effects to an already open project, or they can be used to process a group of selected audio files... which ".aup files" are not...

There has been, in some older threads, some suggestions of trying to use QuickKeys for this matter, but I think we never got a reply back on whether it worked or not...

[AkbarJaffer]

Thank you for the quick responses guys.

I did mean to say .aup project files which come with a data folder. They are kept together. Also, I did download 1.3 and the latest lame library.

I don't know how to use chains. The instructions are pretty minimal. I am afraid I am stuck bringing up one .aud project file at a time and converting it into mp3. It will take me a long time doing this manually because I have 78 files.

Alas! If the Audaicity developers are reading this, What I really wanted is similar to the .jpg to .gif converters do. You specify a folder or a set of files that are .jpg and click "convert" and it dumps .gif files in a new folder. Wallah!

Hope we get this feature soon or post some "Chain" instructions on how to do that.

thank you

AJ

[billw58]

Why are the 78 lecture recordings in Audacity projects? Did they start out as some other format and you imported them into Audacity in order to convert to MP3? If the original (non-MP3) audio files exist outside Audacity you can use a batch converter called "Max" to convert them to MP3.
http://sbooth.org/Max/

-- Bill

[steve]

A "project" is a job half done.
An Audacity Project is completed when you have Exported the final audio file (for example a WAV or MP3 file).
It is not recommended to keep lots of half completed jobs on your computer - Audacity Projects are easy to break, all you need to do is to loose a bit of the data from a project and the whole show turns to dust. Do yourself a favour and export the finished audio files as the last step in the job. After that there is no need to keep the Audacity Projects using up lots disk space. "Chains" can be used on batches of audio files, not on batches of Audacity Projects.

[AkbarJaffer]

I was sitting in a lecture and in a hurry decided that it would be great to audio record it. I frantically went on the web and Audacity was the first thing I downloaded. Ever since I have been using Audacity to capture live audio off of my Macbook pro with great results. I save those files as .aud project files and at the end convert the session to mp3 and then later delete the .aud project file as I don't anticipate needing it again.

Of course as you can see the problem of scaling with 78+ lectures.

thanks
AJ

[kozikowski]

later delete the .aud project file as I don't anticipate needing it again.

...And the associated /data folder?

Koz

[bgravato]

This doesn't apply to the already recorded lecture, but in the future I'd recommend you to change your work as follows:
1) start audacity
2) start recording
3) stop recording
4) export as FLAC (*)
5) close project/audacity without saving a project

(*) or WAV or MP3, but I'd prefer FLAC at this point, because it's lossless and half the size of a WAV. If you later need to shrink it more, you can batch convert FLAC's to MP3's easily.

I don't think you need to save projects for this kind of recording... You're recording a single track and you're probably not doing any editing on it, so you don't really need an "audacity project" for that...

Audacity projects are preferred when working with many tracks or needing to save labels or envelopes or things like that... But in this case you don't seem to have any of that...