Comments on the new Audio FAQ

[KpeX]

@bond and alexnoe:

Q23 merged to Q9, Q9 updated, Q3 updated, thanks. Let me know any more changes.

[P0l1m0rph1c]

About DTS FAQ:

Surcode DVD Pro can create both .DTS, .CPT, and .WAV dts files, not only dtswav.

And, would it be useful to include the OSS dtsdec in the DTS decoding options?

[KpeX]

Originally posted by P0l1m0rph1c
About DTS FAQ:

Surcode DVD Pro can create both .DTS, .CPT, and .WAV dts files, not only dtswav.

DTS Q4 Clarified.

Originally posted by P0l1m0rph1c
And, would it be useful to include the OSS dtsdec in the DTS decoding options?

When it becomes more stable, yes. I haven't tested it yet personally but the development appears to be coming along well.

[bond]

i just saw that the new realplayer gold (which encodes directly to aac in m4a) is the free version and not some payware
(great stuff real!)

maybe realplayer should be added as aac encoder (next to realproducer) as most people will possibly have realplayer already installed and therefore dont need to mess around with realproducer, if they want to encode with aac

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bond
i just saw that the new realplayer gold (which encodes directly to aac in m4a) is the free version and not some payware
(great stuff real!)

maybe realplayer should be added as aac encoder (next to realproducer) as most people will possibly have realplayer already installed and therefore dont need to mess around with realproducer, if they want to encode with aac

Agreed!

This addition to RealPlayer is very welcome and was quite unexpected (I was expecting AAC in .ram/.rm only). I've been bombarding MusicMatch with emails requesting something similar but nothing positive has happened so far!

Anyways, it nice to see you guys in the Audio Encoding forum discussing future plans... I'm sorry to say that I wish the DivX section of the forum would be as positive

Cheers

[KpeX]

Originally posted by bond
i just saw that the new realplayer gold (which encodes directly to aac in m4a) is the free version and not some payware
(great stuff real!)

maybe realplayer should be added as aac encoder (next to realproducer) as most people will possibly have realplayer already installed and therefore dont need to mess around with realproducer, if they want to encode with aac

Done, sorry for the late reply, I was away for the holiday. I'm surprised this isn't getting more attention. Unfortunately I don't have time to test RP10 at the moment, does this mean that we now have a fully free LC/HE AAC encoder that outputs MP4 container by default?

[bond]

Originally posted by KpeX
Done, sorry for the late reply, I was away for the holiday. I'm surprised this isn't getting more attention. Unfortunately I don't have time to test RP10 at the moment, does this mean that we now have a fully free LC/HE AAC encoder that outputs MP4 container by default?

maybe, i dunno if the realplayer is able to encode with he-aac or only the real/helixproducer...
note that real is not offering officially he-aac! so i dont know if/how they support it, if its bug free, if the care about bugs, support multichannel aso...

[hans-jürgen]

Some updates concerning Audiocoding.com and FAAC:

* The usual website link http://www.audiocoding.com/ is not available at the moment, because the updated site is moved to a new and faster server. But the old link http://faac.sourceforge.net/ still works, also with the new website content (new design, weekly snapshots of the FAAC/FAAD2 CVS source code etc.). So it might be a good idea to add this link to the FAQ, too.

* All links related to different sections of the new website are outdated if they don't contain the /modules/ directory, e.g. http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/wiki/ would be the correct one for the Wiki/Knowledge Base or http://faac.sourceforge.net/modules/wiki/ at the moment. This also affects the forum, the download section and so on.

* Linking to the SourceForge project page doesn't make sense, because there isn't much "newbie" information to be found there, and it's hardly ever updated. So it's better to link directly to the Wiki page for FAAC which I update regularly, e.g. with recommendations due to new software using FAAC etc.:

http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/wiki/?page=FAAC
http://faac.sourceforge.net/modules/wiki/?page=FAAC

* There are other FAAC plugins than the ones for foobar2000 or CoolEdit, e.g. for Winamp (allows transcoding to AAC/MP4 from any input format, e.g. with Xvalex's AC-3 input plugin, unlike the original Nullsoft codec that only works for CD ripping), dbpowerAMP, winLAME, HeadAC3he and CD rippers like CDex, BonkEnc (new version coming soon), Easy CD-DA Extractor or AudioCrusher. The command line version is able to write MP4 files and tag them with iTunes-compatible tags, so EAC, Audiograbber, GX::Transcoder and others are able to use FAAC for this on-the-fly.

* FAAC/FAAD2 are the only available open source cross-platform AAC codecs (Windows, Linux, other *nix version, Mac OS X) so this should be mentioned in the FAQ, too. It means that plugins for well-known Linux apps like XMMS or xmcd are available, too, and development for new ones is possible, e.g. the new gstreamer plugins based on FAAC and FAAD2 which enable AAC/MP4 support for apps like Rhythmbox. This only relates to audio software, but multimedia applications like Mplayer, VLC (new v0.8 with full transcoding capabilities) and Xine are using FAAC and/or FAAD2 for quite some time already, and FAAC has been added to the ffmpeg library lately, too.

* The download links in the FAQ for FAAC versions are outdated most of the time, because at the moment RareWares has the latest binaries of the plugins mentioned above, also for the Linux versions on its Debian page:

http://www.rarewares.org/debian.html

Other *nix binaries for different distributions can be found with search engines like http://www.rpmseek.com/, http://rpm.pbone.net/ or http://www.rpmfind.net/

* Most of this information is provided on the Wiki page for FAAC, but there are other Wiki pages that could be added to the FAQ as well:

http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/w...MPEG-4+Players
http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/w...rs+for+Windows
http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/w...or+Linux%2FBSD
http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/w...s+for+other+OS

[KpeX]

Thanks for the info hans-jürgen. I implemented most of your suggestions, and updated the links to point to faac.sf.net. I added the winampl encoding plugin to the FAAC download links section, but in the interest of keeping the FAQ focused on A/V needs, I left out some of the CD-audio related plugins and information.

I also added a question about building/installing FAAC under *nix, and a question about FAAC encoding information that links to the wiki as well as our 5.1 discussion in this forum.

[hans-jürgen]

Originally posted by KpeX
I also added a question about building/installing FAAC under *nix, and a question about FAAC encoding information that links to the wiki as well as our 5.1 discussion in this forum.

Right, forgot to mention that... thanks!

[KpeX]

To all linux users / experts / critics :

I added some linux information about encoding / playback to the MP3, Vorbis, AC3, DTS, and AAC FAQs. Any criticisms / additions /suggestions are very welcome.

[hans-jürgen]

Originally posted by KpeX
I added some linux information about encoding / playback to the MP3, Vorbis, AC3, DTS, and AAC FAQs. Any criticisms / additions /suggestions are very welcome.

The compiling help for FAAC is slightly outdated, because libmp4v2 is now located in the FAAC CVS folder, since FAAD2 doesn't use it anymore.

In my opinion the AAC FAQ in general sounds as if Nero AAC was the only possibility to encode (multichannel) AAC/MP4 files with foobar2000, although using either faac.exe with the command line interface or the foo_faac plugin is easier and more flexible (e.g. supporting the audiobook file extension *.m4b), because it doesn't afford to download, install and register the Nero 6 package.

Furthermore I think mentioning at least HeadAC3he and winLAME as possible transcoder GUIs for FAAC (links on the Wiki page) is interesting for the Doom9.org community (e.g. DeXT announced his winLAME version here).

The usual homepage URL http://www.audiocoding.com/ works again, and Menno thinks it's faster, too. He also disabled the old URL http://faac.sourceforge.net/ yesterday.

[KpeX]

Originally posted by hans-jürgen
The compiling help for FAAC is slightly outdated, because libmp4v2 is now located in the FAAC CVS folder, since FAAD2 doesn't use it anymore.

In my opinion the AAC FAQ in general sounds as if Nero AAC was the only possibility to encode (multichannel) AAC/MP4 files with foobar2000, although using either faac.exe with the command line interface or the foo_faac plugin is easier and more flexible (e.g. supporting the audiobook file extension *.m4b), because it doesn't afford to download, install and register the Nero 6 package.

Furthermore I think mentioning at least HeadAC3he and winLAME as possible transcoder GUIs for FAAC (links on the Wiki page) is interesting for the Doom9.org community (e.g. DeXT announced his winLAME version here).

The usual homepage URL http://www.audiocoding.com/ works again, and Menno thinks it's faster, too. He also disabled the old URL http://faac.sourceforge.net/ yesterday.

Okay, libmp4v2 info updated, FAAC links have beeh changed back to audiocoding.com, foo_faac, winlame, and headac3he are in the frontends section. Hopefully that brings the AAC section up todate.

[hans-jürgen]

Originally posted by KpeX
Hopefully that brings the AAC section up todate.

Great.

[Schnoodledorfer]

In the General Audio Procedures FAQ, Question 13:

13. How can I extract an audio stream (AC3/MP3/OGG/WAV) from an AVI file?

Download VirtualDubmod and open your AVI file. Click streams -> stream list. Click on the audio stream you want to extract; then click demux to remove the stream losslessly, or click decode to decompress the audio to a .wav file. This will work for any audio stream in an .avi file (first/second etc.)

The issue is that there is no "decode" to click on. Instead, there is a "Save WAV" button, but I think that just adds a WAV RIFF header -- the output is still compressed. I've double-checked (with MP3 only) that the resulting file size is the same whether "Save WAV" or "Demux" are clicked. Other posts, for example this one say the same thing. vDubMod's FAQ implies this as well.

Of course, you can do a full processing mode, select PCM as the compression, and save as a WAV.

[SeeMoreDigital]

By-the-way, AVI-Mux GUI can also de-mux audio streams from .AVI and .MKV contained files

[shon3i]

I think is time to update FAQ

[Schnoodledorfer]

Originally Posted by SeeMoreDigital

By-the-way, AVI-Mux GUI can also de-mux audio streams from .AVI and .MKV contained files

Also, AVI-Mux GUI reports any delay in the audio (but doesn't report the length of the audio - at least not where I could find it). vDubMod (misleadingly, in my opinion) hides the fact that there is a delay and reports the sum of the delay and length as the audio length. You need to know the delay if you are going to mux again, and winding up with an audio file with a different duration than vDubMod indicated is confusing. Also, someone is still working on AVI-Mux GUI, while vDubMod has fallen well behind vDub. So it might be better to recommend AVI-Mux GUI for demuxing now.

I just wasted several hours trying to figure out how to keep synch while transmuxing an AVI (with no audio at the beginning or end) into an MP4. vDubMod reported one length for the audio (and the WAVs it created matched that length), but the demuxed mp3s were a different length, and the video was a third length. It didn't help that it appeared that the audio might have had some minor corruption, so I spent hours chasing that red herring.

The morals are: trust the demuxed MP3s, watch for audio delays, and don't believe everything that vDubMod tells you. It's still great that we have vDubMod, though.

[SeeMoreDigital]

I forgot to mention...

It's also possible to extract various types of audio (even AC3) and video streams from out of the .AVI container using MP4Box (with YAMB).... Whoda-thought it