MPEG-4 Audio lossless format (MPEG-4 ALS) available now - Page 2

SeeMoreDigital · 2nd September 2006, 10:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kurtnoise13

MP4 support will be available in the next release (around September the 22nd )...

http://www.nue.tu-berlin.de/forschun...ess/mp4als.htm

Is it just me or is the above link dead?

EDIT: Is this it?

http://www.nue.tu-berlin.de/research...ss/mp4als.html

Lossless audio with lossless MPEG-4 AVC video within MP4... what a prospect LOL

Mug Funky · 6th September 2006, 04:13

from guada 2's post:

Quote:

MPEG4 Amd 7 Spatial Audio Coding (SAC)(Surround sound)
Current status: CFP [call for proposals]
2005 ??

not quite on topic, but looks promising. i wonder if something like b-format will be utilised (this would be great for multichannel - only 4 channels needed at most, and any number of channels can be generated from that...)

bkman · 6th September 2006, 10:42

Tried the reference program on a lossless CD rip of mine with parameter "-7". Compression was a little worse compared to Monkey's Audio High mode (and much slower, obviously).

ac-chan123 · 12th September 2006, 06:58

@SMD: Yes that is the english version of the same page. They have change the directoys name from german to english(with no redirction) that is awful but it seams that it is also state of the art at the internet.

Hyper Shinchan · 13th September 2006, 17:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by ac-chan123

@SMD: Yes that is the english version of the same page. They have change the directoys name from german to english(with no redirction) that is awful but it seams that it is also state of the art at the internet.

??? State of the art???^^''
Anyway does anyone know if it has been published somewhere the way that they will use to store ALS in MP4? I think that they will use the mp4a entry with a new object descriptor, but there's any clue until now, right?

Coderjoe · 14th September 2006, 21:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hyper Shinchan

Anyway does anyone know if it has been published somewhere the way that they will use to store ALS in MP4? I think that they will use the mp4a entry with a new object descriptor, but there's any clue until now, right?

Offhand, I have no idea. I'm sure it is published in the relevant portions of ISO/IEC 14496 (parts 1 and 3, and their ammendments). Unfortunately, I do not (yet) have copies of anything from 14496.

Zero1 · 14th September 2006, 22:59

http://uclc.info/lossless_audio_compression_test.htm

A decent test of various command line compressors. In my opinion, the ALS reference did pretty damn well when you consider that reference software is usually unoptimised.

Lossless H.264 and ALS would be really nice for archives of my NLE work (when I actually get round to doing it

).

I emailed Mr. Liebchen months ago, basically telling him how standardised lossless audio appeals to a lot of people, but the lack of MP4 support stumps it's growth somewhat (and in turn, sales of the spec). Also if any of you browse HA, you may have seen an old ALS thread there.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...dpost&p=387008

I made a point of telling Mr Liebchen that people were losing interest before the format had even had a chance, and that people feared that the spreading of raw ALS files would end up in people doing non spec things with them.

Now it has been months since I sent that, maybe he got it and it's been in the process all this time, or maybe he didn't read it/ignored it and MP4 support was already on the cards at a later date; either way I was very happy that a little progress had been made.

I notice that Haali's splitter is capable of parsing AC3 in mp4a (much to my surprise, I was expecting it to be stored as a private stream, but I won't speak of how such evil was created; I was just testing stuff out of pure curiosity as to how it works or would something break

); seeing as we will soon have ALS in MP4; providing Haali's splitter will do the same magic for ALS as AC3, we really only need a directshow ALS decoder and we're up and running!

Based on how MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 audio is stored as mp4a, and that ALS is an MPEG-4 standard, together with the fact that ALS is available in ISO/IEC 14496-3:2005/Amd 2:2006; I would think it's almost a given that it will be stored in mp4a. Of course let's wait and see before we do anything drastic

Hyper Shinchan · 25th September 2006, 09:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zero1

Based on how MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 audio is stored as mp4a, and that ALS is an MPEG-4 standard, together with the fact that ALS is available in ISO/IEC 14496-3:2005/Amd 2:2006; I would think it's almost a given that it will be stored in mp4a. Of course let's wait and see before we do anything drastic

No doubt about it, it's just an other profile of the MPEG-4 audio.
But what the hell happened? Today is 25 september and in the ALS page there isn't the Release 18 yet.

Kurtnoise · 26th September 2006, 22:12

It's available now...

Sharktooth · 27th September 2006, 15:09

Any w32 builds available?

quake74 · 27th September 2006, 15:23

If you download the file from the page there's a win32 bin inside bin/win/Release. Funny thing, I had to make it executable with cygwin to make it run. Testing as we speak...

Sharktooth · 27th September 2006, 15:49

sorry, i missed one word on my previous question: "optimized"...
So, any w32 optimized builds available?

Hyper Shinchan · 27th September 2006, 15:51

Oh in the end they released it

Now I'm going to test it (but anyway their Winamp plugin doesn't seem updated, so there's no way to play the mp4 with als content in Winamp, I think).
Anyway I've tried to use the settings that the website linked by zero1 used for their tests. I've added in my command-line the checking of the file but the output file failed the checksum. And it was a not valid als for ALS plugin. I've tried to rencode the same file using just the -7 -c -v that I've used until now and it was alright (of course it doesn't seek very well).

shon3i · 27th September 2006, 16:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hyper Shinchan

Oh in the end they released it

Now I'm going to test it (but anyway their Winamp plugin doesn't seem updated, so there's no way to play the mp4 with als content in Winamp, I think).
Anyway I've tried to use the settings that the website linked by zero1 used for their tests. I've added in my command-line the checking of the file but the output file failed the checksum. And it was a not valid als for ALS plugin. I've tried to rencode the same file using just the -7 -c -v that I've used until now and it was alright (of course it doesn't seek very well).

Maybe foobar can play, any w32 build

Kurtnoise · 27th September 2006, 16:22

1/ None players are able to play those kind of files for the moment.
2/ No optimized builds available.

Zero1 · 27th September 2006, 20:01

Indeed, it's possible to encode ALS stored in MP4 now, but there is no way of playing them. The Winamp ALS plugin that they released was crippled and didn't support the decoding of all of the features; also it does not read ALS in MP4.

However some semi good news. Haali's splitter seems relatively happy to parse the file already (the explorer extensions and tooltips etc. report the correct duration and samplerate), and seems to think it is an AAC file. Obviously the only thing missing is a directshow decoder, but I reckon that if we had a directshow decoder, these files would work fine with the combination of that decoder and Haali's MP4 splitter.

So if any devs out there are reading; there is some reference software available (which obviously has decoder components). Perhaps some kind soul cares to whip up a basic directshow decoder or library? Something that could be usable and a part of FFDShow would be awesome, but really just _something_ so that we can listen to the files in our favourite players would be nice ;p

Ah well, can only ask

SeeMoreDigital · 27th September 2006, 20:46

Hi Zero1,

Are you able to provide a short sample encode please?

Cheers

Zero1 · 27th September 2006, 22:23

No sooner said than done; here are some test files

First, a bit about the music in the test track itself. It's track 13 from the After War Gundam X OST; Side 1. It was released around 1996, and is an orchestral track used in the series (as opposed to a bonus track which you quite often get on soundtracks). It was chosen for no reason other than I wanted something short and appreciable. Not my choice of music; but you have to admit it's a good powerful sample.

Anyway, on to the more interesting part. I have encoded 4 test files in total; an ALS and MP4 for each set of switches. The first set is something I came up with; I'm sure it's nothing like optimal (and some switches like the wordlength and sample rate redundant), but there you go.

The other set I had to disable the "-z3" switch to get the ALS files to play in Winamp. Off the top of my head, I believe that to be the option pertaining to RLSLMS (reverse predictive coding?). So for whatever reason, that feature seems to be missing in the Winamp plugin (I didn't test, but I think it's safe to assume -z1 and -z2 won't work either). Providing an ALS and MP4 for each set of options means that using the Winamp decoder, you at least have something to play

Fortunately dropping -z3 didn't have a huge impact on the filesize (but I guess it could accumulate to a decent saving over a whole album), so in it's place I put -7. I also put in -r5 and -u1 as per Mr. Liebchen's suggestion (on the page regarding the Winamp plugin).

As you might expect, I also included the original wave file; you might want to play around and try compressing it for yourself with different switches. If you happen to find a more optimal set of switches, do share

Also have CRC32'ed the files _just_in_case (if you are paranoid, I can provide MD5 or something too

)

I think that's everything of relevance, so here are the files followed by the switches I used.

You can get the ALS test files here

[source]make_it_sure_by_yourself[d8871b23].wav

[winamp]make_it_sure_by_yourself[34dfa439].als
mp4alsRM18.exe -v -g5 -t2 -a -b -e -p -7 -R -W16 -F44100 -r5 -u1 "Track 13.wav"

[winamp]make_it_sure_by_yourself[a0366a99].mp4
mp4alsRM18.exe -v -g5 -t2 -a -b -e -p -7 -MP4 -R -W16 -F44100 -r5 -u1 "Track 13.wav"

[zero1]make_it_sure_by_yourself[05237556].als
mp4alsRM18.exe -v -g5 -t2 -a -b -e -p -z3 -R -W16 -F44100 "Track 13.wav"

[zero1]make_it_sure_by_yourself[94a9971d].mp4
mp4alsRM18.exe -v -g5 -t2 -a -b -e -p -z3 -MP4 -R -W16 -F44100 "Track 13.wav"

If you decide to dive straight into the directory rather than taking the direct links, you can also find a copy of RM18 and the Winamp plugin.

Hyper Shinchan · 23rd October 2006, 17:22

This is in someway unrelated but:
http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/pro...dio/index.html
This encoding solution has been dropped or not? In the ALS webpage says that initially it was tried a similar usage of AAC scalable, but it seems that it won't be standardized. Am I wrong?

Kurtnoise · 24th April 2007, 10:55

Just for your information - the last MP4Box from cvs entry is able to read/write als embedded in mp4 files now, (although there are some bugs for channels detection.)

So, any volonteer to patch FFDshow to be able to decode als streams correctly ? If it's too hard for you, we can create a new plugin with the BASS library...

6th September 2006, 10:42	#23 \| Link
bkman Registered User Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 294	Tried the reference program on a lossless CD rip of mine with parameter "-7". Compression was a little worse compared to Monkey's Audio High mode (and much slower, obviously). Last edited by bkman; 6th September 2006 at 12:27.

27th September 2006, 15:09	#30 \| Link
Sharktooth Mr. Sandman Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Haddonfield, IL Posts: 11,768	Any w32 builds available? __________________ MPEG-4 ASP Custom Matrices: EQM V1(old), EQM AutoGK Sharpmatrix (aka EQM V2), EQM V3HR (updated 01/10/2004), EQM V3LR, EQM V3ULR (updated 04/02/2005), EQM V3UHR (updated 17/12/2004) and EQM V3EHR (updated 05/10/2004) Info about my ASP matrices. MPEG-4 AVC Custom Matrices: EQM AVC-HR Info about my AVC matrices My x264 builds. Mooo!!!

27th September 2006, 15:49	#32 \| Link
Sharktooth Mr. Sandman Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Haddonfield, IL Posts: 11,768	sorry, i missed one word on my previous question: "optimized"... So, any w32 optimized builds available? __________________ MPEG-4 ASP Custom Matrices: EQM V1(old), EQM AutoGK Sharpmatrix (aka EQM V2), EQM V3HR (updated 01/10/2004), EQM V3LR, EQM V3ULR (updated 04/02/2005), EQM V3UHR (updated 17/12/2004) and EQM V3EHR (updated 05/10/2004) Info about my ASP matrices. MPEG-4 AVC Custom Matrices: EQM AVC-HR Info about my AVC matrices My x264 builds. Mooo!!!

27th September 2006, 20:46	#37 \| Link
SeeMoreDigital Life's clearer in 4K UHD Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Notts, UK Posts: 12,227	Hi Zero1, Are you able to provide a short sample encode please? Cheers __________________ \| I've been testing hardware media playback devices and software A/V encoders and decoders since 2001 \| My Network Layout & A/V Gear \|

27th September 2006, 22:23	#38 \| Link
Zero1 Two bit encoder Join Date: May 2005 Location: England, UK Posts: 157	No sooner said than done; here are some test files First, a bit about the music in the test track itself. It's track 13 from the After War Gundam X OST; Side 1. It was released around 1996, and is an orchestral track used in the series (as opposed to a bonus track which you quite often get on soundtracks). It was chosen for no reason other than I wanted something short and appreciable. Not my choice of music; but you have to admit it's a good powerful sample. Anyway, on to the more interesting part. I have encoded 4 test files in total; an ALS and MP4 for each set of switches. The first set is something I came up with; I'm sure it's nothing like optimal (and some switches like the wordlength and sample rate redundant), but there you go. The other set I had to disable the "-z3" switch to get the ALS files to play in Winamp. Off the top of my head, I believe that to be the option pertaining to RLSLMS (reverse predictive coding?). So for whatever reason, that feature seems to be missing in the Winamp plugin (I didn't test, but I think it's safe to assume -z1 and -z2 won't work either). Providing an ALS and MP4 for each set of options means that using the Winamp decoder, you at least have something to play Fortunately dropping -z3 didn't have a huge impact on the filesize (but I guess it could accumulate to a decent saving over a whole album), so in it's place I put -7. I also put in -r5 and -u1 as per Mr. Liebchen's suggestion (on the page regarding the Winamp plugin). As you might expect, I also included the original wave file; you might want to play around and try compressing it for yourself with different switches. If you happen to find a more optimal set of switches, do share Also have CRC32'ed the files _just_in_case (if you are paranoid, I can provide MD5 or something too ) I think that's everything of relevance, so here are the files followed by the switches I used. You can get the ALS test files here [source]make_it_sure_by_yourself[d8871b23].wav [winamp]make_it_sure_by_yourself[34dfa439].als mp4alsRM18.exe -v -g5 -t2 -a -b -e -p -7 -R -W16 -F44100 -r5 -u1 "Track 13.wav" [winamp]make_it_sure_by_yourself[a0366a99].mp4 mp4alsRM18.exe -v -g5 -t2 -a -b -e -p -7 -MP4 -R -W16 -F44100 -r5 -u1 "Track 13.wav" [zero1]make_it_sure_by_yourself[05237556].als mp4alsRM18.exe -v -g5 -t2 -a -b -e -p -z3 -R -W16 -F44100 "Track 13.wav" [zero1]make_it_sure_by_yourself[94a9971d].mp4 mp4alsRM18.exe -v -g5 -t2 -a -b -e -p -z3 -MP4 -R -W16 -F44100 "Track 13.wav" If you decide to dive straight into the directory rather than taking the direct links, you can also find a copy of RM18 and the Winamp plugin. Last edited by Zero1; 27th September 2006 at 23:23. Reason: Added ALS test files

12th September 2006, 06:58	#24 \| Link
ac-chan123 Registered User Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 219	@SMD: Yes that is the english version of the same page. They have change the directoys name from german to english(with no redirction) that is awful but it seams that it is also state of the art at the internet.

14th September 2006, 22:59	#27 \| Link
Zero1 Two bit encoder Join Date: May 2005 Location: England, UK Posts: 157	http://uclc.info/lossless_audio_compression_test.htm A decent test of various command line compressors. In my opinion, the ALS reference did pretty damn well when you consider that reference software is usually unoptimised. Lossless H.264 and ALS would be really nice for archives of my NLE work (when I actually get round to doing it ). I emailed Mr. Liebchen months ago, basically telling him how standardised lossless audio appeals to a lot of people, but the lack of MP4 support stumps it's growth somewhat (and in turn, sales of the spec). Also if any of you browse HA, you may have seen an old ALS thread there. http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...dpost&p=387008 I made a point of telling Mr Liebchen that people were losing interest before the format had even had a chance, and that people feared that the spreading of raw ALS files would end up in people doing non spec things with them. Now it has been months since I sent that, maybe he got it and it's been in the process all this time, or maybe he didn't read it/ignored it and MP4 support was already on the cards at a later date; either way I was very happy that a little progress had been made. I notice that Haali's splitter is capable of parsing AC3 in mp4a (much to my surprise, I was expecting it to be stored as a private stream, but I won't speak of how such evil was created; I was just testing stuff out of pure curiosity as to how it works or would something break ); seeing as we will soon have ALS in MP4; providing Haali's splitter will do the same magic for ALS as AC3, we really only need a directshow ALS decoder and we're up and running! Based on how MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 audio is stored as mp4a, and that ALS is an MPEG-4 standard, together with the fact that ALS is available in ISO/IEC 14496-3:2005/Amd 2:2006; I would think it's almost a given that it will be stored in mp4a. Of course let's wait and see before we do anything drastic

26th September 2006, 22:12	#29 \| Link
Kurtnoise Swallowed in the Sea Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Aix-en-Provence, France Posts: 5,191	It's available now...

27th September 2006, 15:23	#31 \| Link
quake74 Registered User Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 207	If you download the file from the page there's a win32 bin inside bin/win/Release. Funny thing, I had to make it executable with cygwin to make it run. Testing as we speak...

27th September 2006, 15:51	#33 \| Link
Hyper Shinchan Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Italy Posts: 286	Oh in the end they released it Now I'm going to test it (but anyway their Winamp plugin doesn't seem updated, so there's no way to play the mp4 with als content in Winamp, I think). Anyway I've tried to use the settings that the website linked by zero1 used for their tests. I've added in my command-line the checking of the file but the output file failed the checksum. And it was a not valid als for ALS plugin. I've tried to rencode the same file using just the -7 -c -v that I've used until now and it was alright (of course it doesn't seek very well).

27th September 2006, 16:22	#35 \| Link
Kurtnoise Swallowed in the Sea Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Aix-en-Provence, France Posts: 5,191	1/ None players are able to play those kind of files for the moment. 2/ No optimized builds available.

27th September 2006, 20:01	#36 \| Link
Zero1 Two bit encoder Join Date: May 2005 Location: England, UK Posts: 157	Indeed, it's possible to encode ALS stored in MP4 now, but there is no way of playing them. The Winamp ALS plugin that they released was crippled and didn't support the decoding of all of the features; also it does not read ALS in MP4. However some semi good news. Haali's splitter seems relatively happy to parse the file already (the explorer extensions and tooltips etc. report the correct duration and samplerate), and seems to think it is an AAC file. Obviously the only thing missing is a directshow decoder, but I reckon that if we had a directshow decoder, these files would work fine with the combination of that decoder and Haali's MP4 splitter. So if any devs out there are reading; there is some reference software available (which obviously has decoder components). Perhaps some kind soul cares to whip up a basic directshow decoder or library? Something that could be usable and a part of FFDShow would be awesome, but really just _something_ so that we can listen to the files in our favourite players would be nice ;p Ah well, can only ask

23rd October 2006, 17:22	#39 \| Link
Hyper Shinchan Registered User Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Italy Posts: 286	This is in someway unrelated but: http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/pro...dio/index.html This encoding solution has been dropped or not? In the ALS webpage says that initially it was tried a similar usage of AAC scalable, but it seems that it won't be standardized. Am I wrong?

24th April 2007, 10:55	#40 \| Link
Kurtnoise Swallowed in the Sea Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Aix-en-Provence, France Posts: 5,191	Just for your information - the last MP4Box from cvs entry is able to read/write als embedded in mp4 files now, (although there are some bugs for channels detection.) So, any volonteer to patch FFDshow to be able to decode als streams correctly ? If it's too hard for you, we can create a new plugin with the BASS library...

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