This is on Ubuntu 12.04 I'm trying to figure out how to get ffmpeg to do a batch conversion of FLACs to MP3, recursively. If I cd into a directory and use for f in *.flac; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a libmp3lame -q:a 2 "${f/%flac/mp3}"; done that works perfectly fine. However, when I try this, it doesn't work: for f in "$(find . -type f -name *.flac)"; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a libmp3lame -q:a 2 "${f/%flac/mp3}"; done It doesn't even throw up any useful errors (but here is the output anyway, no need to complain): evilsoup@enchantment:~/Music/Jean Sibelius$ for f in "$(find . -type f -name *.flac)"; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a libmp3lame -q:a 2 "${f/%flac/mp3}"; done ffmpeg version git-2012-12-18-b7e085a Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers built on Dec 18 2012 19:23:11 with gcc 4.6 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.3-1ubuntu5) configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-libfaac --enable-libfdk-aac --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-librtmp --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-x11grab --enable-libx264 --enable-nonfree --enable-version3 libavutil 52. 12.100 / 52. 12.100 libavcodec 54. 80.100 / 54. 80.100 libavformat 54. 49.102 / 54. 49.102 libavdevice 54. 3.102 / 54. 3.102 libavfilter 3. 28.100 / 3. 28.100 libswscale 2. 1.103 / 2. 1.103 libswresample 0. 17.102 / 0. 17.102 libpostproc 52. 2.100 / 52. 2.100 ./Symphonies 1, 2, 3 & 5 (Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Mariss Jansons) Disc 1/02. Symphony No.1.flac ./Symphonies 1, 2, 3 & 5 (Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Mariss Jansons) Disc 1/03. Symphony No.1.flac ./Symphonies 1, 2, 3 & 5 (Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Mariss Jansons) Disc 1/stripped2.flac ./Symphonies 1, 2, 3 & 5 (Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Mariss Jansons) Disc 1/05. Symphony No.1.flac ./Symphonies 1, 2, 3 & 5 (Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Mariss Jansons) Disc 1/stripped3.flac ./Symphonies 1, 2, 3 & 5 (Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Mariss Jansons) Disc 1/09. Andante festivo.flac ./Symphonies 1, 2, 3 & 5 (Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Mariss Jansons) Disc 1/08. Symphony No.3.flac ./Symphonies 1, 2, 3 & 5 (Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Mariss Jansons) Disc 1/01. Finlandia.flac ./Symphonies 1, 2, 3 & 5 (Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Mariss Jansons) Disc 1/07. Symphony No.3.flac ./Symphonies 1, 2, 3 & 5 I've tested the find command on its own, and it works as expected, so the problem has to be something to do with the interaction between find and for. I'm aware that I could do something with find's -exec option, but I can't find any way to do string substitution as I can with a bash for loop, and I'd rather not have a bunch of file.flac.mp3s to deal with, even if they could be fixed with a simple rename.