FreeGameDev

Hi. So I wonder what is the good way to publish music. Like, I have a master render as WAV but I want my listeners to choose the format they want.

The obvious first thought: "Ah, I can just have a download page where they can choose format, bitrate, stuff like that and when they click "Download" I just fire up ffmpeg on the server that produces the file at exact settings". But then that feels difficult to program.

So maybe I just convert master file to a lot of formats beforehand and just have that? But what options to use? I have no idea. Anyone else been in this situation? Maybe you have a list of formats/bitrates/etc ready somewhere?

Don't waste your precious server resources transcoding. Stick to popular file formats and standard bitrates. The patents on MP3 have expired, so it is a free format now. MP3 @ 320 kbps is standard. OGG Vorbis with .ogg extension and OGG Opus with .opus extension are also desirable, though nobody has agreed on standard bitrates for those codecs. Also FLAC, which shouldn't need any special configuration.

If you upload the wav to the Internet Archive, it will probably convert it to various formats.

I'd try it, then try a couple other formats.

Some formats just upload as-is, others get automatically converted to others (including the original.)

you normally upload the audio/music in .flac or .wav formats on bandcamp (its for music but many games share soundtracks there)
then the user can choose the format (it will transcode the entire thing or single tracks)
maybe not the best option but its the most simple and probably popular

Deleted.

I didn't know you made music, that's great! :-)

If you have no concern for CPU or RAM usage, I'd suggest you transcode files on the server. Process: 1) Create a RAMFS and mount it to a directory, so that you won't be trashing your SSD/HDD 2) Use Python to make a Flask website that calls ffmpeg's CLI to generate required files in proper bitrates and formats. 3) Voilla!

You could also use something else to build your website, and use Python to make a simple websocket server, which your webpage can call via JavaScript. If you do this, you wouldn't have to run the websocket server on your main webserver.

Ntech {l Wrote}:If you have no concern for CPU or RAM usage, I'd suggest you transcode files on the server. Process: 1) Create a RAMFS and mount it to a directory, so that you won't be trashing your SSD/HDD 2) Use Python to make a Flask website that calls ffmpeg's CLI to generate required files in proper bitrates and formats. 3) Voilla!

You could also use something else to build your website, and use Python to make a simple websocket server, which your webpage can call via JavaScript. If you do this, you wouldn't have to run the websocket server on your main webserver.

If I were to actually write this, I'd use C++ for server-side and just HTML button for download. Surely, that's how HTML forms worked before JavaScript, right?

Lyberta {l Wrote}:Your account is tied to your e-mail address and there is no way to change item identifiers.

The second part is a arguably a feature, though I'm with you on the email thing.

Fair point about identifiers and dead names. To some degree the archive may make exceptions and help out with that, but they certainly don't make it user-friendly or standard or obvious. So, fair points. Either way I mostly wanted you to know the option is there, which you clearly do already. Cheers.