Do I have to convert my mp3 file to mp4 by adding blackout video track using handbrake ?

  • davelA
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    2 days ago

    FWIW, mp4 files don’t have to have video streams, so you could use an online service or VLC or FFmpeg to convert an mp3 to mp4 format.

    • interdimensionalmemeOP
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      2 days ago

      Ok, I tried

      This created a file too big

      ffmpeg -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a copy -f mp4 "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp4"

      This recompress to 64kbit, but still a few byte over the limit

      ffmpeg -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a aac -b:a 64k -f mp4 "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.64kbit.mp4"

      This was under the limit, but when uploaded, the file disappeared with no error message

      ffmpeg -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a aac -b:a 56k -f mp4 "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.56kbit.mp4"

      I tried copy to mp4 but trunkate a 30seconds, same behaviour as 56kbit file, despite being under 500k

      ffmpeg -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -t 30 -c:v copy "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.30secs.mp4"

      I tried adding an image, but this just created a 1 second file with no image

      ffmpeg -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -i "image(62)-2.png" -c:a aac -b:a 64k -c:v libx264 -shortest "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.56kbit.withpic.mp4"

      This next one loops the image file, now it created the full song with an image in the video channel. Unfortunately the video track now weights about 3 megabytes, so way over

      ffmpeg -loop 1 -i "image(62)-2.png" -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a aac -b:a 64k -c:v libx264 -shortest -vf "scale=1280:720" "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.56kbit.withpic.mp4"

      This next one created a 2.4mbps file, the image is now awful quality

      ffmpeg -loop 1 -i "image(62)-2.png" -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a aac -b:a 64k -c:v libx264 -b:v 100k -vf "scale=320:320" -shortest "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.56kbit.withpic.mp4"

      This reduces video bandwidth to 10kbps, image is incomprehensible and the file is still 1.3 megabytes (400k for the video stream)

      ffmpeg -loop 1 -i "image(62)-2.png" -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a aac -b:a 64k -c:v libx264 -b:v 10k -vf "scale=320:320" -shortest "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.56kbit.withpic.mp4"

      Reduced video stream to 1kbps, 1.2 megabytes, still too big

      ffmpeg -loop 1 -i "image(62)-2.png" -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a aac -b:a 64k -c:v libx264 -b:v 1k -vf "scale=320:320" -shortest "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.56kbit.withpic.mp4"

      I reduced audio quality to 32kbps, 677 kilobytes, half of that is the video stream still, and at this point it’s just a gray image

      ffmpeg -loop 1 -i "image(62)-2.png" -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a aac -b:a 32k -c:v libx264 -b:v 1k -vf "scale=320:320" -shortest "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.32kbit.withpic.mp4"

      And I post it here And the uploaded file just disappears …

      I try raising the video quality then the resolution

      ffmpeg -loop 1 -i "image(62)-2.png" -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a aac -b:a 32k -c:v libx264 -b:v 10k -vf "scale=320:320" -shortest "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.32kbit.withpic.mp4"

      ffmpeg -loop 1 -i "image(62)-2.png" -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a aac -b:a 32k -c:v libx264 -b:v 20k -vf "scale=480:480" -shortest "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.32kbit.withpic.mp4"

      final attempt, I’m not sure why it won’t accept it, no errors, it is under 1 megabyte

      ffmpeg -loop 1 -i "image(62)-2.png" -i "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.mp3" -c:a aac -b:a 32k -c:v libx264 -b:v 20k -vf "scale=1280:720" -shortest "Somebody I Vacuum to Decay.32kbit.withpic.mp4"

      • davelA
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        2 days ago

        Sorry to hear you’re still having issues. I didn’t write Lemmy and I don’t host lemmy.ml, so my knowledge is limited. The file size limit is per-instance, set in a config file on the server, and I had nothing to do with how lemmy.ml is configured. @dessalines@lemmy.ml or @nutomic@lemmy.ml might be able to shed some light.

        • interdimensionalmemeOP
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          1 day ago

          I did some research

          https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3630 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2529

          The main point is that Pictrs handles the files and it doesn’t handle mp4 files without a video track It seems it also strips audio tracks out of mp4 files And it also rejects mp4 files with a bitrate too low.

          So there is simply no way to post less than 1 megabyte audio file on here. It has to be stored externally and users have to leave the site to see it.

          In other words, there will not be music on Lemmy

          Also I found that admins and moderators can modify user comments and impersonate them without recourse or even notice.

          Also, all up and down votes on the platform are public but admins and moderators have decided to keep this to themselves. Anyone can see them, you just need to host a lemmy instance then you can see how makes any and all votes. But they don’t want the users to see this for “drama”, they say. Of course this makes finding astroturf campaign difficult, it also makes content discovery remain a server side thing. In other words they reserve the ability to choose what you see.

          All in all, really unhappy with lemmy right now, I think this place is just Reddit with new tyrants, not the decentralized haven that it was sold has. In fact many of Lemmy design fight against federation, such as the lack of community agglomeration in the default view which ensures big instances and big communities get bigger and not decentralized.

          I did not expect this conclusion from just wanting to post a simple song in the music community but hey …

          • nutomicA
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            24 hours ago

            Pictrs is only made for images (and videos), as the name implies. Supporting other types of files in pictrs wouldnt make much sense. This means that other file types would have to be stored by a different backend tool, or directly in Lemmy. As we are only two fulltime developers on Lemmy, we dont have the time or resources to work on this, and need to focus on the most popular features.

            There is no way for admins or mods to modify user comments or impersonate users, except directly through the db which is unavoidable.

            We had a very long discussion recently how vote privacy should be handled, and the current behaviour seems to be the best compromise.

            Multi-communities is one of those popular features we are going to implement soon.