It’s still an annoyance that this simple feature has not yet been implemented in Cubase (you can vote for this feature here).
Although I have not given up hope yet, it’s time to brush up my routine.
My question: Which offline converters & routines are recommendable? I need to regularly import a bulk of m4a files from my mobile in order to work, edit or archive song ideas.
I have used different converters over the years and I think it’s time to come up with a better routine. Maybe I could automate the process with a power shell (I’m on Windows)?
Indeed…You could use a powershell script to set up a watch folder to trigger the encode in ffmpeg for example. If you google using ffmpeg with a watch folder you can even get AI to write the script…might be a job it actually can get right?
@kelp I once tried Audacity but I didn’t work out. Maybe, I should give it another try.
@mlib and @Grim I am not familiar with FFmpeg - got to check this one out! Nice idea to set up a watch folder to get things done. Yes, that’s definetly a moment for AI to shine by writing a powershell script. Sounds intriguing. Nice, thanks again
Thank you
Unfortunatly, I don’t have WaveLab. If I’m not mistaken, Spectralayers can handle m4a. I wasn’t aware that WaveLab can handle m4a, too. However, I don’t have a Wavelab license so it’s not an option. Nonetheless, thanks for the reply. If I had Wavelab that would definetly be a viable way to go.
Shutter Encoder. Win & Mac. Free. Does this and much more. Wouldn’t be without it.
I am not a salesman for Shutter Encoder but as I am sure you guys know, I am perfectly capable of writing command line batch scripts and even c# apps using FFMPEG etc. But seriously, nothing touches Shutter Encoder, I highly recommend you check it out. The GUI is just so much nicer than fiddling with command line text, especially when dealing with complex items.
It’s a command-line tool, but used “under the hood” by many applications (including SpectraLayers!). To do what you want, it would be something like ffmpeg -i inputfile.m4a outputfile.wav but you’d still need a way to automate it if you want to process many files automatically.
Is there anything more efficient than typing ffmpeg -i inputfile.m4a outputfile.wav ? How much electricity, gas, water, money and dwindling natural resources would that have used?
Newflash: people who can’t code, still can’t code if using so-called “AI”. The fact that something may actually work once, under one specific set of circumstances, does not mean it’s good code. I’ve already seen an example posted here that would have resulted in every project file on a disk being inadvertently deleted.
Yes, it’s a bit more complicated if you want your wav as 24 bit/48 kHz (ffmpeg needs at least the correct arguments). I am also working with dedicated input/output folders, naming routines and use a Powershell to handle the process. So it’s a bit more than just a one-liner.
I agree, if you have no idea about coding than it’s easy to get lost. And I must say that AI came up with some really poor code lines… At least, some lines were good enough to serve as a starting point so I took it from there. However, none of the AI code would have worked right off the bat. Disclaimer: I didn’t use a fancy AI model (not needed in this simple case). I guess, Claude and Co would have come up with better code.
Thanks again for the idea with ffmpeg, it works great!
Just some finetuning and I’m good to go while Steinberg puts all their resources into building a native m4a converter into Cubendo in 2046…
EDIT: @Phil_Pendlebury ShutterEncoder is still on my list for other tasks and runs on ffmpeg, too (like vlc, one of my favourite media players).
@Grim Sorry, I have accidently marked your post as solution. It was @mlib who mentioned ffmpeg first so I changed it, hope you don’t mind. I still keep the idea with the watch folder in mind. Thanks again!
