I downloaded a “Linux ISO” which came as a series of *.opus files. My iPhone doesn’t recognize them, so I was wondering if you guys might recommend a program to convert them to *.mp3 files.
Ideally a mac or linux based program with a gui. Any suggestions?
I know you asked for GUI, but CLI tools are better at this job since it’s very easy to batch process the files using a combination of find and parallel.
Also, it’s probably a better idea to keep the files as they are and use a different audio player on your device. I don’t use iOS, so can’t suggest an app. VLC or mpv should work, but I personally prefer music apps with album, artist etc. support. For android, the app Gramophone is great. Another way would be to serve your files via a music server like navidrome and using a client like Tempo (again, it’s the android client I like, but surely there will be iOS alternatives).
Tip: You can add an & just before the last ; to run these conversions concurrently. For more sophisticated control on the concurrency, I’d use parallel.
Can probably use Audacity. May need to install a ffmpeg plugin first to read the opus files, then:
goto Tools > Apply Macro > Palette…
select “MP3 Conversion”
then click “Files…” to choose your files and it should start a batch process.
Before that, probably go to Edit > Preferences > Directories and change the entry for “Macro output” to a custom folder so it’s easy to find. (note: the instructions on that settings page says to leave a field blank to use the last directory, but that’s not the case for macro output, definitely set a custom location for that.)
edit: also a good method for converting FLAC if there’s a need for it
If you really need to convert the files to something like AAC for native iPhone playback, I would suggest either fre:ac (audio only) or MKVToolnix (video and audio).
AAC is higher quality for the same compression level and generally preferred by Apple. MP3 should be fine too though.
EDIT: To be clear though, the programs I listed can handle all kinds of codecs including AAC and MP3. fre:ac is also good for ripping CDs if you’re into that sort of thing.
FYI MKVtoolNix doesn’t do transcoding, it simply allows you inspect/modify metadata and demux/remux data streams into an MKV container.it’s indeed useful and I use it often, but it wouldn’t be for OP’s use-case.
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