How to upload iphone voice notes to inaturalist

General
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i am rewriting this because i found new information:

from voice notes you can copy the file to your phone using email in the share feature.

you can copy the file to a computer using the share feature and upload directly to inaturalist.

these redundant conversions are apparently convoluted and unnecessasry:

Iphone records voice notes, audio thru the microphone of the phone, with decent fidelity and can be used to identify animal– however, there is an issue in that the file format of the recordings is an .m4u file, when you need an .mp3 or .wav file to upload it to inaturalist.

There are workarounds to convert the file using a computer so it can be uploaded:

  1. send the file: in the voice notes app, select the short recording you want to share and press the three dots button, then press share. You can either send it via email to your own e-mail account, or use air drop to a mac.
  2. convert the file: download vlc video player if you don’t already have it. select the media tab, and select convert/save; find the file in you computer files and add it… click convert… select output as mp3 or wav.
  3. edit: download audacity if you don’t already have it. in audacity you can trim, amplify, run eq on files to improve quality. save as wav or mp3.
  4. upload: you can upload the file directly after step 2 or 3.

I did this on a recent audio file of coyotes, and thought it might be helpful for others.

thanks,

nick

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you can also upload m4a files into audacity (i just realized mp3s might not work in some systems) by adding to the software using ffmpeg downloads… there’s a tutorial on the audacity website https://support.audacityteam.org/basics/installing-ffmpeg

edit:

spelling

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just to clarify, iNaturalist does accept m4a files. you can for sure upload these in the web upload screen although i’m not sure if the iOS apps accept them. however…

it does seem like iNat potentially makes the quality of m4a files worse upon upload: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/issues-with-quality-of-sound-recordings/52178/22, and as far as i know, that issue has not yet been resolved.

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only step 1 is necessary and can be done by phone with certain apps then