Quill Converter User Guide: Converting Audio and Video on Your Own Computer

Version 1.0.0 – September 28, 2026

Introduction

Quill Converter changes audio and video files from one format into another, on your own computer, without uploading anything to a website. Sound to sound, video to sound, and video to video. It can clean up the sound on the way through, let you hear the result before you commit, join a pile of files into one audiobook, and split a chaptered book back into its chapters.

It is a small window with a queue, a few choices and a Convert button. Focus lands on the queue the moment it opens, every control has a name, most have an access key, and everything runs from the keyboard. It was built for screen readers from the first line: every action says what it did, and the status bar always carries the same words.

What you will be able to do

By the end of this guide you will be able to:

• turn a recording into the format your player, phone or editor wants;
• pull the sound out of a video, or make a video smaller;
• clean up speech, even out loudness, and hear the result before you convert;
• keep, write, find and edit chapters, so a long recording stays easy to move around in;
• join a folder of files into one audiobook, or split a book into its chapters;
• download the sound of a video, a playlist or a channel from a link.

How this guide is laid out

Each chapter starts with what it covers and ends with a short summary of what you learned and where to go next. You do not have to read them in order.

1. Getting started – installing, your first conversion, and the main window.
2. Formats – what Quill Converter reads and writes, video included.
3. Making it sound right – presets, effects, and hearing a preview.
4. Chapters – keeping them, writing your own, the Chapter Workbench, and joining and splitting.
5. Working with the queue – adding, ordering, tags, the report, and Advanced Options.
6. Converting from a link – one video, a playlist, or a channel.
7. Out of the way, and easy to find – the tray, a key to show and hide Quill Converter, and finding any command by name.
8. When you need a hand – F1, troubleshooting, updates and support.

The keyboard reference at the end lists every key in one place.

Reading this guide with a screen reader

Every chapter is a level 2 heading and every topic inside it is a level 3 heading, so your screen reader’s heading keys move through the guide a topic at a time. Keys are written the way you press them, such as Ctrl+Enter. A menu path such as File > Add Files… means open the File menu and choose Add Files. Help > User Guide (Ctrl+F1) opens this guide from inside the app.

Chapter 1: Getting started

This chapter gets Quill Converter onto your computer and walks you through one conversion from start to finish. Then it tours the main window, so you know where everything is.

Installing

There are two downloads. Choose one.

• Quill-Converter-Setup-Shared-1.0.0.exe – the installer, recommended for most people. It installs the shared QuillVille runtime if this computer does not have it yet (the same runtime QUILL and Quill Radio use), then the app, with a Start Menu entry and an uninstaller.
• Quill-Converter-Portable-1.0.0.zip – the portable copy. Unpack it anywhere, including a USB stick or a folder with spaces in its name, and run QuillConverter.exe. It keeps its settings in its own data folder next to the app and writes nothing to the computer it runs on.

Nothing downloads the first time you use a feature. Both downloads already contain everything the app needs: FFmpeg and ffprobe (which do the converting and reading), libmpv (the mpv playback engine, the Chapter Workbench’s player), yt-dlp (for Convert from URL), mutagen (for carrying cover art and chapters across) and, in builds that include it, the OptiLab Core broadcast-polish adapter.

The File Explorer right-click menu

The installer offers three choices, each a real Windows checkbox that a screen reader announces as checked or not checked: Create a desktop icon (off by default), Add “Convert with Quill Converter” to the File Explorer right-click menu (on by default), and, on the last page, Launch Quill Converter (off by default). With the File Explorer entry on, right-click any audio or video file Quill Converter reads and choose Convert with Quill Converter. The file opens in Quill Converter, already queued.

• Select many files first and choose it once: they all land in the same window, in one queue. Quill Converter only ever runs one copy of itself, so a second launch hands its files to the window that is already open.
• The entry is added for your Windows account only, and the uninstaller removes it.
• .ts files are left off this menu, because on many computers .ts is a TypeScript source file rather than video. Add Files and Add Folder still take them.

QUILL has its own, separate setting for a Convert with Quill entry; it also opens Quill Converter. You do not need both.

Your first conversion

1. Start Quill Converter from the Start Menu. Focus is on the Files to convert list.
2. Press Alt+A (Add Files…) and choose one or more files. Or press Alt+O (Add Folder…) to add a whole folder, sub-folders included. You can also paste files you copied in File Explorer with Ctrl+V, or drop them on the list.
3. Press Alt+T to reach Convert to and choose a format with the arrow keys. Each format is spoken with what it is for, for example “MP3 audio – plays everywhere”.
4. Press Alt+P for Preset and choose how the result is made, or leave it on “Just convert (no processing)”.
5. If you want the sound improved, press Alt+E for Effects and choose a recipe named for the problem it solves, such as “Clean up speech”.
6. If the files have chapters, or you want some, press Alt+K for Chapter marks. The default, “Keep each file’s own chapters”, carries them across as they are. See Where chapters come from.
7. Press Alt+Y (Play Preview) to hear fifteen seconds exactly as the converted file will sound. Press it again to stop.
8. Press the Convert button, or Ctrl+Enter from anywhere in the window.

Progress is announced at 25, 50 and 75 percent, counted inside each file as well as across the queue, so one long audiobook is not silence until it ends. The status bar says how far it has got and, once it can tell, about how long is left, and the Progress bar under the buttons fills as it goes. The run ends by saying how many files converted and naming any that did not. If anything failed, Ctrl+R opens the Conversion Report with the reason for each one.

Converted files go to the Output folder. Leave it empty and Quill Converter makes a folder named Converted beside the first file in the queue. Your originals are never changed, and an existing file is not overwritten: a converted file whose name is taken is numbered instead, unless you choose otherwise in Advanced Options.

Quill Converter remembers your format, presets, effects, custom effects, the keep-from and keep-until times, the Chapter marks choice, the Advanced Options, and the output folder between runs, so the next job starts where the last one ended.

The main window

Tab order, top to bottom, with each control’s access key:

• Files to convert – the queue (focus starts here). A folder reads as “name (folder)”.
• Add Files… (Alt+A), Add Folder… (Alt+O), Remove (Alt+R).
• Convert to (Alt+T) – the output format. Sound formats come first, then video.
• Preset (Alt+P) – quality settings chosen for a purpose. The list changes with the format: sound presets for a sound format, video presets for a video format.
• Effects (Alt+E) and Custom Effects… (Alt+S).
• Chapter marks (Alt+K) – where the converted files’ chapters come from – and Chapter Workbench….
• Output folder (Alt+D) and Browse… (Alt+B).
• The Advanced section, when View > Advanced Options (Ctrl+Alt+V) is checked. See Advanced Options.
• Convert (Ctrl+Enter), Play Preview (Alt+Y), Hear Original (Alt+G), From URL… (Alt+L).
• Progress – a progress bar, named “Conversion progress”, under the buttons. It shows how far a conversion has got, counting inside each file as well as across the queue, and is empty when nothing is converting. It is not in the Tab order, because a progress bar never takes focus; review the window to find it, or simply listen to the status bar, which says the same in words with about how long is left.

The menu bar is File, Queue, View, Convert, QuillVille, Help and Window, and no control on the window uses a menu’s letter, so Alt+F always opens the File menu.

While a conversion runs, the Convert button becomes Stop Converting, and Ctrl+Enter stops as well.

Press F1 on any control to hear what it does, after a sentence about what the window is for.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can install Quill Converter, add files, choose a format, and press Ctrl+Enter. You know that your originals are never changed, and that the converted copies go to the output folder. Next, Chapter 2 explains the formats, so you can choose one by what it is for.

Chapter 2: Formats

Quill Converter reads 82 kinds of file and writes 34. This chapter lists them, explains what the fussier formats decide for you, and covers video.

What it reads

Quill Converter reads 82 file types. Sound files:

• Everyday: MP3, WAV, FLAC, OGG, OGA, Opus, M4A, M4B, AAC, WMA, AIFF, AIF, AIFC, ALAC, CAF, MKA, WEBA, M4R.
• Lossless and archival: APE (Monkey’s Audio), WV (WavPack), TTA, TAK, SHN (Shorten), W64, RF64, BWF, DSF, DFF.
• Film and broadcast: AC3, EAC3, EC3, DTS, THD, MLP, MP2, MP1, MPA.
• Phones, voice and telephony: AMR, AWB, SPX (Speex), GSM, AU, SND, VOC.
• Older and specialist: MPC (Musepack), RA (RealAudio), OMA, AA3.
• Tracker music: MOD, XM, IT, S3M.

Video files:

• MP4, M4V, MKV, MOV, QT, WebM, AVI, DIVX, FLV, F4V, WMV, ASF, MPG, MPEG, MPE, VOB, TS, MTS, M2TS, M2T, 3GP, 3G2, OGV, RM, RMVB, MXF, DV, WTV, DVR-MS, NUT.

A file with a name ending in one of these that turns out to be damaged, or not really that kind of file, fails on its own; the rest of the batch carries on.

What it writes

34 formats: 25 sound and 9 video. The Convert to list only shows the ones the bundled FFmpeg can actually write, so a batch never stops half way because an encoder was missing.

Sound formats, in the order the list offers them:

• MP3 audio – plays everywhere
• M4A audio (AAC) – Apple devices and phones
• M4B audiobook – remembers your place in book players
• Opus audio – smallest files for speech
• Ogg Vorbis audio – open format
• FLAC – lossless, smaller than WAV
• WAV – uncompressed, for editing
• AAC audio stream (.aac)
• AIFF – uncompressed, Apple
• Apple Lossless (ALAC, .m4a)
• WMA – Windows Media Audio
• CAF – Core Audio Format
• AC-3 (Dolby Digital) – DVD and home theater
• E-AC-3 (Dolby Digital Plus)
• MP2 – broadcast and DVD audio
• WavPack – lossless
• TTA (True Audio) – lossless
• MKA – Matroska audio, lossless FLAC inside
• WebM audio (Opus) – for web pages
• M4R – iPhone ringtone
• Speex – low bit rate speech
• AMR narrowband – phone voice memos
• AMR wideband – clearer phone voice
• AU – Sun and Java audio
• Wave64 – WAV for files over 4 GB

Video formats:

• MP4 video (H.264) – plays everywhere
• MP4 video (H.265, HEVC) – half the size, newer devices
• MKV video (H.264) – keeps every audio and subtitle track
• WebM video (VP9) – for the web
• MOV video (H.264) – QuickTime and Apple editing
• AVI video (Xvid) – older players and TVs
• WMV video – Windows Media
• MPEG-2 video – DVD players
• Ogg video (Theora) – open format

What the formats decide for you

Some formats only accept certain settings. Quill Converter makes the file right rather than letting it fail:

• Sample rates. AC-3, E-AC-3, MP2, Opus, WebM audio, Speex and AMR only accept certain sample rates. If a preset or Advanced Options asks for one they do not accept, the file gets the nearest rate the format does accept. AMR narrowband is always 8 kHz and AMR wideband 16 kHz.
• Channels. AMR is always mono, so a stereo file is mixed down.
• Bit rates. Lossless and uncompressed formats (WAV, FLAC, AIFF, ALAC, CAF, WavPack, TTA, MKA, AU, Wave64) ignore a bit rate, because it means nothing to them.
• Byte order. AIFF and AU are written the way those formats require, so an AIFF made by Quill Converter opens everywhere.
• 32-bit. Choosing 32-bit in Advanced Options for WAV, Wave64 or CAF gives real 32-bit floating point.

Converting video

• Video to a sound format keeps its sound. This is how you get the audio out of a recorded lecture, a film or a music video.
• Video to a video format keeps it a video, with the picture re-encoded in the new format.
• A sound file queued for a video format is skipped, because a video needs a picture. The end-of-run summary says how many were skipped and why.
• Every audio track is kept in MP4, MKV, MOV and WebM – a described-audio track or a second language comes through. The other video formats keep the first audio track.
• Subtitles are kept in MKV.
• Effects apply to the sound of a video conversion too, so “Louder dialogue for films and TV” on a film gives you a new film with clearer speech.
• Video files are converted one at a time, because a video encoder already uses every core of the computer. Several at once would only make each slower.
• The graphics card does the heavy lifting when it can. MP4, MKV and MOV video (H.264) and MP4 H.265 are encoded on the computer’s graphics chip when it has a video encoder – NVIDIA, Intel or AMD, which most Windows computers have – typically several times faster than on the processor. Quill Converter tries it once per session with a fraction of a second of test picture and uses it only if it works; if a real conversion on it ever fails, that file is converted again on the processor, and the processor is used for the rest of the session. There is nothing to set. WebM (VP9), AVI, WMV, MPEG-2 and Ogg Theora always use the processor.

Video presets

When the format is a video format, the Preset list offers:

• Same quality (recommended) – looks the same as the original, at the original size.
• Phones and the web, up to 1080p – good quality in a noticeably smaller file.
• Smaller file, up to 720p – for sharing and messaging; about a quarter of the size.
• Smallest file, up to 480p – for slow connections and small screens.
• Change the container only (fastest, no quality loss) – copies the picture and sound untouched into the new format. It takes seconds rather than minutes, but effects cannot apply (you are told they were skipped), and some combinations of picture and sound do not fit every container. When that happens the file fails with a reason that says so; choose one of the other presets instead.

A size limit never makes a picture bigger: a 480p video on “up to 1080p” stays 480p.

What you learned, and where to go next

You know what goes in and what comes out, and that a video can become sound or stay a video. When a format is fussy, Quill Converter makes the file right rather than letting it fail. Chapter 3 is about how the result sounds.

Chapter 3: Making it sound right

A preset decides the quality of the result. An effect fixes something in the sound on the way through. A preview lets you hear both before you spend time converting a whole batch.

Sound presets

When the format is a sound format, the Preset list offers:

• Just convert (no processing) – a pure format change. The default.
• MP3 320 kbps (maximum quality), MP3 192 kbps, MP3 128 kbps (small).
• Podcast (MP3, spoken word) – mono MP3 for talk, with a rumble filter.
• Audiobook (M4B) – mono M4B at a compact bit rate.
• Voice memo (small MP3) – mono, 22 kHz, tiny files for spoken notes.
• Web voice (Opus) – mono Opus at a low bit rate, the smallest for the web.
• Archival (FLAC, lossless) – keeps the original rate and channels.
• Hearing-aid mono – everything mixed down to one channel.

Each preset is spoken with a sentence about what it is for. The Convert to choice always wins over a preset’s own format, so you can take the Podcast preset and still ask for Opus. Quill Converter remembers your last sound preset and your last video preset separately.

Effects

The Effects choice (Alt+E) is what to do to the sound on the way through. Each recipe is named for the problem it solves, so you do not need to know what a de-esser is to use one.

• No effects – the sound is converted exactly as it is.
• Clean up speech – removes rumble, hum and steady background hiss, softens harsh s sounds, and sets a comfortable listening level.
• Podcast ready – cleans the voice, evens out loud and quiet speakers, and meets the podcast loudness standard of -16 LUFS.
• Audiobook, ACX ready – rumble filter, gentle noise reduction and the ACX loudness window of -20 LUFS with peaks held under -3 dB, as Audible requires.
• Clearer voice for listening – lifts the frequencies that carry consonants, trims muddiness, and evens out the level; easier on the ears and on hearing aids.
• Louder dialogue for films and TV – brings speech forward over music and effects, then evens out the loudness so explosions and whispers sit closer together.
• Night listening – quiet parts come up and loud parts come down, so you can listen at low volume without reaching for the control.
• Music, streaming loudness – normalizes to -14 LUFS, the level Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music play at, with a safety limiter.
• Broadcast standard, EBU R128 – normalizes to -23 LUFS, the loudness standard for television and radio.
• Remove electrical hum – notches out 50 and 60 Hz mains hum and its first harmonic, and the rumble below it.
• Reduce background noise – takes down steady hiss, fan and air-conditioner noise.
• Remove long silences – cuts every pause longer than half a second; lectures and voice memos get shorter without losing a word.
• Bass boost – adds warmth and weight to thin-sounding music or small speakers.
• Custom – the effects you chose in the Custom Effects dialog.

Custom Effects

Custom Effects… (Alt+S on the main window, or Ctrl+E from anywhere) puts every effect on one page. It opens showing exactly what the current Effects choice does, so you can pick “Podcast ready”, open Custom Effects, and change one thing. Pressing OK makes the result your Custom recipe and selects it.

Check boxes, in the order they are applied:

• Remove low rumble – cuts the rumble below 30 Hz: traffic, handling noise, air conditioning.
• Remove electrical hum – the 50 and 60 Hz mains hum a ground loop or a cheap cable adds.
• Reduce background noise – steady hiss and fan noise, gently.
• Remove long silences – every pause longer than half a second.
• De-ess (soften harsh s sounds).
• Voice clarity – lifts consonants and trims muddiness.
• Bass boost – six decibels of warmth below 100 Hz.
• Treble boost – brightness above 4 kHz.
• Dialogue boost (films and TV) – speech forward over music and effects. The result is stereo.
• Compress dynamics – evens out loud and quiet passages.
• Speech leveling – brings each phrase to a similar level, quickly; good for a speaker who drifts away from the microphone.
• Night mode leveler – slowly rides the volume for listening quietly.
• Peak limiter – stops any peak going above -1 dB, so a loudness boost can never clip. Recommended whenever loudness or gain is on.

Then:

• Loudness target – no normalization, Audiobook / ACX (-20 LUFS), Podcast / streaming (-16 LUFS), Music streaming (-14 LUFS), or Broadcast TV and radio, EBU R128 (-23 LUFS).
• Gain in decibels – a flat volume change from -30 to +30. 0 changes nothing.
• Playback speed – from 0.5 to 2.0, without changing pitch. 1.0 is unchanged.
• Fade in and Fade out, in seconds, up to 30.
• Keep from, seconds into each file – start every converted file this far in. Handy for trimming an intro, or making a ringtone.
• Keep until, seconds – stop every converted file here. 0 keeps everything to the end.

Keep from and Keep until apply to every file in the run, whichever effect recipe is chosen, and they are remembered until you change them. When they are set, Quill Converter says so as part of what Convert will do. Chapters follow the cut: a chapter partly inside the kept part is trimmed to it, one wholly outside is dropped, and the rest are shifted so the first starts at zero.

Preview: hear it before you convert

• Play Preview (Alt+Y, or Ctrl+P) plays fifteen seconds of the highlighted file, or of the first file in the queue, exactly as it will sound after conversion. The clip is really encoded through the chosen format and effects and then played back, so a low bit rate sounds like a low bit rate.
• Hear Original (Alt+G, or Ctrl+Shift+P) plays the same fifteen seconds untouched, so you can compare the two back to back.
• Press either one again to stop.

The fifteen seconds start a quarter of the way into the file, and never more than 30 seconds in, because the first seconds of most recordings are silence, a jingle or somebody asking whether the microphone is on. For a video format you hear the sound the new video will have.

What you learned, and where to go next

Choose a preset for the quality, an effect for the problem, and press Ctrl+P to hear fifteen seconds before you commit. Custom Effects (Ctrl+E) lets you take a recipe and change one thing. Chapter 4 is about chapters.

Chapter 4: Chapters

Chapter marks are how you find your way around a long recording without seeing a waveform, so Quill Converter treats them as part of the content. This chapter covers where they come from, writing your own, where they end up, editing them in the Chapter Workbench, and joining and splitting files by chapter.

Where chapters come from

Chapter marks are how you find your way around a long recording without seeing a waveform, so Quill Converter treats them as part of the content. The Chapter marks choice (Alt+K) says where the converted files’ chapters come from:

• Keep each file’s own chapters – the default. Chapters already in the file are carried across as they are.
• Use the chapter list beside each file (.cue, .chapters.txt, Audacity labels, .chapters.json) – chapters you wrote yourself. See below.
• Find chapters at the pauses – a chapter starts at every pause of two seconds or more, and no chapter is shorter than 20 seconds.
• A chapter every 5 minutes, and every 10, 15, 30 or 60 minutes – evenly spaced chapters titled Part 1, Part 2 and so on, for a lecture or a ten-hour recording. A last piece under a minute joins the one before it.
• Remove all chapters – the converted files have none.

To see whether a file already has chapters, highlight it and press Alt+Enter (File Properties).

Writing your own chapters

You can define chapters for any file, in any format, with a text file. Put it beside the source with the same name and .chapters.txt on the end: for Lecture 3.mp3, that is Lecture 3.chapters.txt. One chapter per line, the time first:

0:00 Welcome
1:30 Questions
1:02:05 Summary

Times are minutes and seconds, or hours, minutes and seconds (h:mm:ss). Then choose Use the chapter list beside each file and convert.

Quill Converter also accepts, beside the file and with the same name:

• name.cue – a CUE sheet.
• name.chapters.json – Podcasting 2.0 chapters.
• name.labels.txt – labels exported from Audacity.
• name.txt – if it reads as a chapter list. A transcript or other text is ignored.

A file with no chapter list beside it keeps its own chapters.

Where chapters land

• Inside the file, written by FFmpeg: MP3 (ID3 CHAP and CTOC frames), M4B, M4A, Apple Lossless, M4R, MP4, MOV, MKV, MKA, WebM, WebM audio, Opus, and WMA and WMV.
• As chapter comments (CHAPTER001, CHAPTER001NAME and so on, the convention their players read): Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Speex and Ogg video.
• In a .cue sheet beside the file: every other format – WAV, AIFF, WavPack, AC-3, the AAC stream, MP2 and the rest – has no place for chapters inside the file, so a .cue sheet with the same name is written next to the converted file.

Nothing is silently lost: where a format cannot hold chapters inside the file, look beside the converted file for its .cue sheet.

Chapter Workbench

Queue > Chapter Workbench… (Ctrl+H, or the Chapter Workbench… button) opens the highlighted MP3, M4B or M4A in the Chapter Workbench, the same one QUILL’s Audio Studio uses. It has a player, so you can hear the book and work at the playhead:

• rename a chapter, split one at the playhead, set a chapter’s start to the playhead, and merge chapters;
• find chapters at silences;
• import and export chapter lists: Audacity labels, CUE, timestamps, Podcasting 2.0 JSON and CSV;
• edit the book’s details – book title, author, narrator, genre and year – and, with All tags…, every other tag and the cover art in the Tag Editor (see Editing tags);
• save: an MP3 is saved in place, with only its tags rewritten; an M4B or M4A whose tags alone changed is also saved in place, while changed chapters in one are saved as a new file (Save As), losslessly;
• split the book into one file per chapter.

The player is libmpv, bundled with both downloads, so it seeks exactly in every format.

For any other format, the Workbench explains the other routes: write a chapter list beside the file and choose it in Chapter marks, or convert the file to M4B or MP3 first and open that.

Preview and Hear Original ignore chapters; they play fifteen seconds of sound.

Join into One File

Convert > Join into One File… (Ctrl+J) joins every file in the queue, in queue order, into one sound file. A folder in the queue contributes its files in name order.

1. Put the files in order. Alt+Up and Alt+Down move the highlighted file.
2. Choose a sound format, preset and effects as usual.
3. Press Ctrl+J and choose where to save the joined file.

The joined file gets one chapter per source. Each chapter is named from the source’s title tag, or from a tidied file name when it has none: “01 - Intro” becomes “Intro”. The chapters go wherever the format keeps them (see Where chapters land): inside the file for MP3, M4B, M4A, Apple Lossless, MKA, M4R, Opus and the other formats that hold chapters; as chapter comments for Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and Speex; and in a .cue sheet beside the file for the rest. Files with different sample rates or channel counts join cleanly.

Join needs at least two files and a sound format; a video format is refused with a reason.

Split by Chapters

Convert > Split by Chapters (Ctrl+Shift+S) makes one file per chapter from every queued file that has chapters: an audiobook, a podcast episode, a film.

Split uses the same Chapter marks choice as Convert, so it can cut where the file has no chapters of its own:

• Keep each file’s own chapters and Split cuts at the chapters already in the file.
• A chapter every 30 minutes and Split cuts a ten-hour recording into 30-minute files.
• Find chapters at the pauses and Split cuts at the pauses.
• Use the chapter list beside each file and Split cuts exactly where your list says.
• Remove all chapters is about what a converted copy keeps, so Split uses each file’s own chapters instead, and the summary says so.

The pieces go into a folder named after the source, inside the output folder. Each file is named with its number and chapter title, for example “01 - Chapter title”, and tagged with that title and its track number. The chosen format, preset and effects apply to every piece. Files without chapters are named in the summary and left alone.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can keep a file’s chapters, write your own in a plain text file, find them at the pauses, or have one every few minutes. You know where they land in each format, and that nothing is silently lost. Join (Ctrl+J) makes many files one book, and Split (Ctrl+Shift+S) makes one book many files. Chapter 5 is about the queue.

Chapter 5: Working with the queue

The queue is the list of files waiting to be converted. This chapter covers filling it and ordering it, editing tags, what happens during and after a conversion, and the Advanced Options for when a preset is not quite right.

Managing the queue

• Add files: Alt+A, or File > Add Files… (Ctrl+O).
• Add a folder: Alt+O, or File > Add Folder… (Ctrl+Shift+O). A folder is scanned right through its sub-folders, and the output reproduces its folder layout. To take only the top level, clear Look in subfolders too in Advanced Options.
• Paste files copied in File Explorer: Ctrl+V. In a text box, such as the Output folder, Ctrl+V pastes text as usual.
• Drag and drop files or folders onto the list.
• Reorder: Alt+Up and Alt+Down move the highlighted row.
• Remove: Delete in the list, the Remove button (Alt+R), or Queue > Remove from Queue (Ctrl+Delete). Nothing is deleted from disk.
• Clear the queue: Queue > Clear Queue (Ctrl+Shift+Delete).
• File Properties: Alt+Enter describes the highlighted file: its length, size, container, overall bit rate, tags, each video, audio and subtitle track, whether it has cover art, and its chapters.

Adding the same file twice queues it once. A file that is not a media file is left out, and the announcement says how many were.

Editing tags

Queue > Edit Tags… (Ctrl+T) opens the Tag Editor on the highlighted file: the same editor Audio Studio uses, built into Quill Converter so nothing else needs installing. Its 26 fields and the cover art are spread over five pages:

• Main – title, subtitle, artist, album, album artist, track and disc (each a number of a total), genre and year.
• Details – original release date, comment, lyrics or transcript, grouping, language, beats per minute, and a Part of a compilation check box.
• Publishing – composer, conductor, publisher, copyright, encoded by and ISRC.
• Sort order – sort title, sort artist, sort album and sort album artist.
• Cover art – what the current cover is, with Load image… (a JPEG or PNG, up to 8 MB), Save image as… and Remove image.

Control+Tab moves to the next page and Control+Shift+Tab to the previous one; Tab moves between the fields.

Press OK and the tags are written into the file; the sound itself is not touched, and chapter marks are kept. Cancel changes nothing.

The Tag Editor works on MP3, M4A, M4B and MP4 files. For another format, such as FLAC or WAV, Quill Converter says so rather than risk damaging it: convert it to one of those four first – its tags come along – and edit the converted copy. Tags also travel through every conversion by themselves, and the Chapter Workbench has the five fields an audiobook needs in its Book details, with an All tags… button that opens this same editor.

During and after a conversion

• Stop: Ctrl+Enter or the Stop Converting button. Stop is immediate: the file being converted stops too, and its unfinished output is removed, so nothing half-written is left in the output folder. Files already finished are kept, and the Conversion Report lists the stopped ones as skipped. A Join stops the same way, part way through a file, and saves nothing.
• Progress is counted inside each file, not only by files finished: a single two-hour audiobook moves from 0 to 100 like a queue of fifty songs does. It is announced at 25, 50 and 75 percent, and the status bar and the tray icon’s tooltip update about once a second – “Converting Book.m4b: 42 percent, about 3 minutes left”, or “Converted 3 of 10, 47 percent overall” for a queue – so a conversion running in the tray is still something you can check on. The time left appears once there is enough to estimate from. The Progress bar under the buttons moves with it.
• Conversion Report (Ctrl+R) lists every file: converted (with its new name, and a note when there is one – where its chapters went, or that subtitles a container cannot hold were left out), skipped, or failed with the reason. It also says what settings were used, where the files went and how long it took. Copy All puts the whole report on the clipboard, ready to paste into an email.
• Open Output Folder (Ctrl+Shift+F) opens the folder in File Explorer.
• Open Output Folder When Done (Ctrl+Shift+W) is a check item on the Convert menu: when checked, the output folder opens by itself when a conversion finishes.
• Cover art is carried into the converted copy where FFmpeg would drop it: MP3, M4A, M4B, M4R, FLAC, Ogg, Opus and Speex. Text tags such as title, artist and album are normally kept as well.

Why a file failed

A failure is explained in plain words first, then FFmpeg’s own last line, which support may ask for. The explanations are:

• The file has no track of the kind this format needs – for example, a sound file cannot become a video.
• The file could not be found; it may have been moved, renamed or deleted.
• The file is damaged, or is not really the kind of file its name says.
• Windows refused access to the file or the output folder.
• The output drive is full.
• That combination of tracks cannot be copied into this container; choose a preset that converts rather than copies.
• The chosen format could not accept this file’s sound or picture settings.
• The file is copy-protected and cannot be converted.
• This file uses a codec the bundled FFmpeg cannot read.
• The file has no sound track to convert – for example, a video with no audio.

Advanced Options

View > Advanced Options (Ctrl+Alt+V) is a check item that shows or hides an Advanced section in the main window, just above the Convert button. Showing it moves focus to its first control, and Quill Converter remembers whether it is shown. Its settings shape the same Convert as everything else on the page.

Every setting starts on its neutral choice – use the preset, or keep the file’s own – so showing the section to look around changes nothing.

• Bit rate (size and quality) (Alt+Z) – 96 to 320 kbps for compressed formats. Lossless formats ignore it.
• Sample rate (Alt+M) – resample every file to this rate. A format that cannot take it gets the nearest rate it can.
• Channels (Alt+N) – mono or stereo. Mono halves the size of speech.
• Bit depth – 16, 24 or 32-bit float for WAV, AIFF, FLAC and the other lossless formats. Compressed formats ignore it.
• If a file already exists (Alt+X) – number the new one (the default, which never destroys anything), skip it, or replace it.
• Broadcast polish (Alt+I) – runs each converted file through the OptiLab Core engine: Podcast Leveler for speech, Stream Polish for music, Smooth Limiter for peaks. Off by default, and unavailable when the build does not include it.
• Look in subfolders too – a check box, on by default. When a folder is in the queue, its subfolders are converted too, and the same folder layout is rebuilt in the output folder.

What you learned, and where to go next

You can add, reorder and remove files, see what is inside one with Alt+Enter, and edit its tags with Ctrl+T. Ctrl+Enter stops a conversion as well as starting it, and the Conversion Report (Ctrl+R) says what happened to every file and why. Chapter 6 is about converting from a link.

Chapter 6: Converting from a link

Quill Converter can download the sound of a video from YouTube and many other sites, and of a whole playlist or channel, and put it straight into the queue.

Convert from URL

From URL… (Alt+L, or File > Convert from URL…, Ctrl+U) takes a web address – YouTube and many other sites – and downloads its audio. Quill Converter first reads the link, without downloading anything, to find out what it is:

• One video. Its audio downloads, with progress in the status bar, and joins the queue.
• A playlist. The Download a Playlist or Channel window says how many videos it has and asks How many: all of it, or the first 10, 25 or 100. A link to one video inside a playlist (a YouTube address with both v= and list=) also asks What to download: only that video, or the whole playlist.
• A YouTube channel. The same window asks which Section – Videos, Shorts or Live streams; only the ones the channel has are listed – How many of the newest (10, 25, 100, or all of it, which can be thousands), and Published: any date, or only the past week, month or year.

Either way, Skip videos already downloaded from here is checked: Quill Converter remembers what it has fetched from each playlist and channel, so pasting the same link next week downloads only what is new. Clear it to fetch everything again.

A playlist or channel downloads as one job, exactly like a conversion: the progress bar, the status bar (“Downloading 7 of 42: the video’s title”) and 25, 50 and 75 percent spoken; Ctrl+Enter or Stop Converting stops it at once; and every video that downloaded joins the queue, in order. A playlist’s files are numbered in playlist order (“001 - …”), a channel’s are named by date, and all of them are tagged with the playlist or channel as the album and a track number, so they play in order in any player – and Join into One File (Ctrl+J) turns a lecture series into one audiobook with a chapter per video. A video that cannot be downloaded (private, removed, or blocked where you are) does not stop the rest; the summary counts them and Conversion Report (Ctrl+R) lists each with the site’s reason. Long runs pause a few seconds between videos, so the site does not block your computer.

The downloads are kept in a temporary folder, so when the Output folder is empty the converted copies go to Converted inside your Downloads folder – a playlist or channel into its own folder there, named after it.

The downloader, yt-dlp, and the JavaScript runtime it needs for YouTube, deno, are both included, so nothing is installed. Only download content you have the right to use; no account or password of yours is sent to the site. Anything that is not a full http:// or https:// address is refused with a plain explanation. Convert from URL is unavailable in Safe Mode.

What you learned, and where to go next

Paste a link into Convert from URL (Ctrl+U). One video downloads at once; a playlist or channel asks how much you want first, and pasting the same link later fetches only what is new. Chapter 7 is about keeping Quill Converter out of the way while it works.

Chapter 7: Out of the way, and easy to find

A long conversion can run in the notification area while you do something else. This chapter covers the tray, choosing a key to show and hide Quill Converter from anywhere, and finding any command when you cannot remember which menu it is in.

The tray

• Minimize to Tray (File > Minimize to Tray, Ctrl+W) hides the window to the notification area; the same command brings it back. A conversion keeps running.
• File > Show and Hide Key… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H) lets you choose one key that shows or hides Quill Converter from anywhere in Windows. There is no key until you choose one. Type the key you want, or leave the box empty for none. If another QuillVille app already uses it, Quill Converter tells you whose it is and lets you try another. If you tried a test copy before 1.0.0, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C did this; other QuillVille apps use that key for menu commands, so it is off now, and Quill Converter tells you so once.
• The tray icon’s menu has Show and Exit.
• Exit (File > Exit, Ctrl+Q) really exits. Alt+F4 closes the window.

Finding a setting or a command

Quill Converter keeps its options in its menus, so there is no settings window to search. Instead, Help > Find a Setting or Command (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S) searches every menu at once.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S.
2. Type part of what you are looking for, such as “tags”. The list below narrows as you type, and each row says which menu the command is in. An option also says whether it is on or off.
3. Press Down to move into the list, and Enter on the one you want.

Enter does exactly what choosing that row from its menu would do. For an option, it switches it and tells you whether it is now on or off. Escape closes the window without doing anything.

What you learned, and where to go next

Ctrl+W tucks Quill Converter into the tray and brings it back. If you want one key that works from any program, choose it in File > Show and Hide Key… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H). Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S finds any command by name. Chapter 8 is for when something goes wrong.

Chapter 8: When you need a hand

Everybody gets stuck sometimes. This chapter covers the help that is always one key away, what to do when something does not work, where your settings live, updates, and how to reach a person.

Help where you are

Press F1 on any control to hear what the window is for and what that control does. Help > User Guide (Ctrl+F1) opens this guide, and Help > Keyboard Shortcuts… (Ctrl+Alt+K) lists every key in a window you can arrow through.

Troubleshooting

• Quill Converter does not open. It never fails silently: if the app’s engine cannot start, a plain message opens that your screen reader reads on its own. It says “Quill Converter did not start”, gives the reason in words, names the launch log that holds the details, and gives the support address. If it says the zip was opened from inside, extract the whole zip first (Applications key on the zip, then Extract All…) and open QuillConverter.exe from the extracted folder. If it names a missing file or DLL, extract the zip again into an empty folder and check your antivirus quarantine. If it says “Python reported”, send the launch log to support: data\logs\launch.log beside a portable copy, or %APPDATA%\Quill\logs\QuillConverter-launch.log for an installed one. If nothing at all happens and there is no message, a Quill Converter is probably already running; check the notification area and Task Manager.
• “Quill Converter cannot find FFmpeg.” FFmpeg is installed with the app, so this means it was removed or damaged. Help > Get FFmpeg… (Ctrl+Alt+F) puts it back.
• Only a few formats are listed. The list shows what the FFmpeg in use can write. The same fix applies: Get FFmpeg.
• Sound files were skipped. The format is a video format, and a sound file has no picture. Choose a sound format for them.
• “Change the container only” failed. That picture and sound cannot be copied into that container as they are. Choose Same quality instead, which converts rather than copies.
• A video is taking a long time. On a computer whose graphics chip has no video encoder, H.264 runs at about the speed of playback and H.265 slower; WebM (VP9) is slow everywhere. MP4 H.264 is the fastest choice. The status bar and tray tooltip say how far the file has got and about how long is left.
• A file failed as copy-protected. Files with DRM, such as purchased Audible books or protected iTunes purchases, cannot be converted.
• Preview is silent. Preview plays through the Windows default sound device. Check that it is the one you are listening on.

Settings and Safe Mode

Your choices are kept in converter.json in the app’s data folder: the shared QuillVille data folder for the installed app, or the data folder beside the program for the portable copy. Uninstalling never deletes the shared data folder; another app in the family may still be using it.

Starting with the environment variable QUILL_SAFE_MODE=1 runs Quill Converter in Safe Mode. Everything local still works; Convert from URL is refused.

Your version and updates

Help > About Quill Converter (Alt+F1) shows your version with a build number, such as 1.0.0 (build 1). The build number tells you which build of a version you have: when a fix comes out without a new version number, it is a newer build.

Help > Check for Updates… (Ctrl+Alt+U) asks whether a newer Quill Converter is out. If one is, it shows you what changed and offers to download it, with progress spoken as it goes. It only checks when you ask, and it offers the same kind of download you have: the installer if you installed, or the portable zip if you unpacked one.

Getting help

Support is run by Community Access, and the address is support@community-access.org. A person reads it, and replies come back by email.

The quickest way there is Help > Get Help from Support… (Ctrl+Alt+F2). It asks what kind of message this is, a subject, what happened, and – if you want an answer somewhere other than the address you send from – an email address. What you expected and how to reproduce it are optional, and worth more than anything else when you can give them.

Press Send and your own mail program opens with the whole message already written, addressed to support, with Quill Converter’s name and version and your Windows version filled in at the bottom. Nothing is sent until you send it there, so you can read it over, add anything, or change your mind.

If this computer has no mail program set up – webmail only, say – the app puts the whole message on your clipboard and tells you the address, so nothing you typed is lost. Writing to support@community-access.org yourself always works just as well. Say which app you were using and what happened. If a conversion failed, open the Conversion Report (Ctrl+R), press Copy All, and paste it into your message.

What you learned, and where to go next

F1 explains wherever you are, Troubleshooting covers the common problems, and Help > Get Help from Support… (Ctrl+Alt+F2) writes to a person. The keyboard reference below lists every key, so it is a good page to come back to.

Keyboard reference

The same list is in the app: Help > Keyboard Shortcuts… (Ctrl+Alt+K) shows every key in a read-only window you can arrow through.

File menu

Queue menu

View menu

Convert menu

Help menu

Anywhere

The QuillVille menu (Alt+U) opens the other released apps in the family – QUILL, Quill Radio, Quill Weather and Quill Inkwell. Each item has an access letter, so Alt+U and then Q, R, W or I opens that app with nothing held down, and each shows its key, which you can see in Keyboard Shortcuts. The Window menu lists the open windows.