MP3 is one of the most popular audio format for a decade and now it has a new competiter called AAC. Many recent audio players are supporting both formats. Who's know one or both of them may lose in this competition. Anyway, some players only support AAC right now. That's why I have to post this howto.

FFmpeg will be our hero today. Anyway, the one comes with Ubuntu Edgy don't know about AAC you have to recompile it yourself to make it works. Enabled this feature is so easy.

1. Get the source.

   mkdir ffmpeg
   cd ffmpeg
   apt-get source ffmpeg
   

2. Change current working directory.

   cd ffmpeg-0.cvs20050918
   

3. Build it.

   DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=risky dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us -rfakeroot
   

4. Now install it.

   cd ..
   dpkg -i *.deb
   

So now you are ready for conversion.

ffmpeg \
       -i input.mp3 \
       -acodec aac \
       -ab 128 \
       output.aac

For more example, please try FAQ.

Tags: ffmpeg, ubuntu