How can I loop over all directories and subdirectories and find files with a specific extension, then run FFMPEG on them, then copy them to a new lib

Question

Ive been researching all of today and yesterday trying to find a solution, none have worked for me so far.

For example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5784661/how-do-you-convert-an-entire-directory-with-ffmpeg

I want to be able to loop over all files in a folder (such as /Music/), find any files in any directory or subdirectory that ends with .flac, then convert those flac files to alac files using this command:

ffmpeg -i "$i" -c copy -acodec alac "${i%.*}.m4a"

the $i variable is the "name" of the file from the for loop. ${i%.*} should just return the name, not the .flac portion.

Anyways, after that command has been run, I want all of those saved .m4a alac files to then be sent to a "new library"... IE: Ill have two /Music/ libraries.

One has all the flac files

One has all the alac (m4a) files

Is this possible?

This is the commmand I have so far, definitely doesnt work, and even if it did, it doesnt create a new library like I want: for i in *.flac; do ffmpeg -i "$i" -c copy -acodec alac "${i%.*}.m4a"; done

Currently that command just throws the error *.flac: No such file or directory, which I assume is because its not searching subdirectories?...

Answer 1

#!/bin/bash

shopt -s globstar

src_dir="Music"
dest_dir="Music_new"

for orig_path in "${src_dir}"/**/*.flac; do
    #Change first directory in the path
    new_path=${orig_path/$src_dir/$dest_dir}

    #Remove filename from new path. Only directories are left.
    #They are needed for mkdir
    dir_hier=${new_path%/*}

    #Remove extension .flac from path, thus we have original path with first directory
    #changed and file extension removed.
    #Original path:   "Music/one/two/song.flac"
    #New path:        "Music_new/one/two/song"
    new_path=${new_path%.*}

    echo mkdir -p "$dir_hier"

    #New path with extension:   "Music_new/one/two/song.m4a"
    #ffmpeg should create new file by this path, necessary directories
    #already created by mkdir
    echo ffmpeg -i "$orig_path" -c copy -acodec alac "${new_path}.m4a"
done

echo before mkdir and ffmpeg should be removed after checking.