How to more elegantly append an audio file to itself when using FFmpeg than the process I have come up with?

It seems like the macOS QuickTime player app does not support a song playing for curtain number loops

My idea is to append a audio to itself for the curtain numbers.

Here is code:

// loop 3 times
ffmpeg -i "concat:nobody.mp3|nobody.mp3|nobody.mp3" -acodec copy out.mp3

It works.

But how to append an audio file to itself in a more elegant way than my code handles it now?

Solution 1:

Adapted from Repeat/loop with ffmpeg?

concat demuxer

Use the concat demuxer.

1. Make input.txt:

   file 'nobody.mp3'
   file 'nobody.mp3'
   file 'nobody.mp3'
   

2. Concatenate:

   ffmpeg -f concat -i input.txt -c copy output.mp3
   

• It will be more reliable than the concat protocol.
• Useful if you want to add various files (but they must have same attributes).
• In Linux you can automatically make input.txt. See "For Linux users" section in Repeat/loop with ffmpeg?

-stream_loop

ffmpeg -stream_loop 2 -i nobody.mp3 -c copy output.mp3

-stream_loop 2 will play once, then loop twice, so nobody.mp3 will play 3x. Setting -1 is infinite loop.