I have an album thats a bit more than 200MB, converted to just an audio only M4a or MP4 its still under 80MB

Is that 120+MB all chaff or is there another way to prevent losing all muh damn wheat

CONSTRAINT/NON-CONSTRAINTS

FILE SIZE DOES NOT MATTER AT ALL TO ME. JUST TO BE CLEAR

MUST BE AN MP4 “video” file. I get that MP4 is a container or whatever but that is a hard constraint—Please respect that

M4A/AAC are not acceptable. It must be within the container that is MP4, non-negotiable

  • OtherbarryEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    For the most part .mp4 / .m4a are interchangeable, you can go lossless --> lossless by going FLAC to ALAC like the earlier comment mentioned e.g. using ffmpeg

    ffmpeg -i yourfile.flac -acodec alac yournewfile.mp4

    In fact, now that umt@lemmynsfw.com mentioned it, you can create a out-of-spec .mp4 with a flac codec inside it if you really wanted. again using ffmpeg

    ffmpeg -i yourfile.flac -c:a copy yournewfile.mp4

    You’d have to test that whatever player you’re using can actually play them, I suspect a lot of players won’t know what to do with a .mp4 containing a FLAC codec unless the player already supports FLAC anyway.

    PS - The files actually come out a tad bit bigger FYI, I guess there’s more padding and metadata in a .mp4 container.