GPAC MP4Box Information, Requests and Discussions

[SeeMoreDigital]

Seeing as though there are a couple of good muxing (and de-muxing) tools based around MP4Box I thought it might be helpful to have a discussion about it and what it offers.

Plus, if you have any suggestions regarding implementations you would like to see incorporated in future versions of MP4Box, it might useful to discuss them in one thread rather than all over the forum!

Please Note
From time to time, you may find that various posts in this thread have been moved (split out) to create new threads elsewhere on the forum. This is done so that any new MP4Box implementations can be discussed in more detail. This will most likely happen after Jean Le Feuvre (jeanlf) adds a major new implementation to MP4Box.

Please refer to the "Summary" box below for new thread links


MP4Box
MP4Box is continuously being developed by Jean Le Feuvre (aka: jeanlf), over on SourceForge.
For the most up to date news information, please look here.
For the most up to date source code information and discussions, please look here.
For monitoring (and posting) bugs, patches and feature requests, please look here.


MP4Box (GPAC Release 0.4.0 / Dated: 2005-07-28 ) Basic offerings: -




MP4Box (GPAC Release 0.3.0 / Dated: 2005-06-21) Basic offerings: -




MP4Box (GPAC Release 0.2.4 / Dated: 2005-03-31) Basic offerings: -




MP4Box Basic functionality: -




MP4Box Compiles
Thankfully some very generous forum members have taken the time to generate some compiles of MP4Box for us all: -

MP4Box.exe compiles by Celtic Druid
Latest Build: MP4Box 0.4.0.x - Dated: 03/08/2005 11.16.03 355K
Celtic Druid's Development Builds

MP4Box.exe compiles by Sharktooth
Latest Build: Link removed

MP4Box.exe compiles by defunkt
Latest build: Link removed


MP4Box GUI's
And.... for some really excellent MP4Box GUI's (front ends) created by some of our very own Doom9 Forum members, please look here: -

MP4BoxGUI. Has been created by Mezzanine
Forum Thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=89465
Latest Build: MP4BoxGUI v0.14




YAMB (Yet Another MP4Box GUI). Has been created by Kurtnoise13
Forum Thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=93927
Latest Build: http://yamb.unite-video.com/download.html





MP4Box Request Summary

Ability to import elementary .m1v and .m2v streams - DONE
Ability to add/change MetaData language track information - DONE
Ability to add/change delay audio/video sync - DONE
Ability to import / parse NeroDigital subtitles - Requested by Doom9 - DONE
Ability to de-mux MPEG-4 SP/ASP to RAW .m4v
Ability to change PAR of MPEG-4 SP/ASP and AVC streams in MP4 - Requested by Kurtnoise13 - DONE

MP4Box Implemented Summary

10/06/05:
- added -lang option to MP4Box to change track language
- added -delay option to MP4Box to change initil media delay - ALTHOUGH 100% STANDARD, THIS MAY NOT BE SUPPORTED BY SOME PLAYERS

Latest CVS Changes 12/06/06
- added MPEG-1/2 raw importing (extensions: .m1v and .m2v).
- cleanup of gpac/src/Makefile: no more recursive makes for libgpac

New Forum threads: -
Language Option
Audio Delay Option
MP4Box Splitting - Revisited and MP4Box Splitting - Speed
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Cheers

[Elias]

I'm curious about the non MPEG-4 codecs, like mp3, ogg etc. Are these muxed into the mp4 container in a standard ISO compliant way, or are they just muxed in some "home-made" way by GPAC? From what I've read, mp3 is allowed in mp4 by MPEG, but I've never heard anything about ogg and other codecs.

[SeeMoreDigital]

If you have ever taken the time to read bond's MP4 FAQ, you would have come across the following: -

To create MP4 files you should preferably use audio/video formats covered by the MPEG-4 Standard: -

MP4 video formats:
MPEG-4 SP/ASP: XviD, DivX5, 3ivx, ffmpeg/ffvfw, Nero Digital... and MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-1 (not DivX3/MS Mpeg-4, WM9, RV9 or VP6)

MP4 audio formats:
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC): Quicktime/iTunes, Nero, Psytel, FAAC... and MP3, MP2, MP1, CELP (speech), TwinVQ (very low bitrates), SAOL (midi), ALS (lossless)

MP4 subtitle/text format:
MPEG-4 Timed Text

MP4 picture formats:
JPEG, PNG

As you can see MP3 audio streams are perfectly compliant.

As for audio streams within the .OGG container... Just ask yourself (or find out) what these streams are?

[Elias]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
If you have ever taken the time to read bond's MP4 FAQ, you would have come across the following: -As you can see MP3 audio streams are perfectly compliant.

As for audio streams within the .OGG container... Just ask yourself (or find out) what these streams are?

I've read that FAQ. I know mp3 is compliant in mp4 and that's why I wrote that mp3 is allowed by MPEG. My question was:

Are these muxed into the mp4 container in a standard ISO compliant way, or are they just muxed in some "home-made" way by GPAC?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Now... there would not be much point in "MP4Box" muxing audio streams, such as MP3, in a non-compliant way, because that would severely limit their playback

As for .OGG audio stream muxing... it's still in the experimental stage!


Cheers

[bond]

all mpeg streams gpac supports are of course muxed into .mp4 the iso compliant way

[Elias]

Originally posted by bond
all mpeg streams gpac supports are of course muxed into .mp4 the iso compliant way

Good, I was just checking to be on the safe side. I tried muxing a jpg file into mp4 with the latest MP4Box cvs. It did not play in QuickTime (of course), and the latest haali splitter couldn't parse it either. VLC was the only player able to parse it. Is JPEG in experimental stages too, not muxed ISO compliant, or is it just QT/haali that can't parse jpg in mp4 correctly?

[JoeBG]

In the first sheet is explained, that mp4 box muxes every mpeg4 *.avi into mp4. Is this correct? I thought it can´t do AVC.avi? Have I missed a step in mp4box development?

[Doom9]

Have I missed a step in mp4box development?

No you have not. I have made a feature request for that, it was turned down. So mp4box won't be able to process AVC in AVI in the future.

[Elias]

Originally posted by Doom9
No you have not. I have made a feature request for that, it was turned down. So mp4box won't be able to process AVC in AVI in the future.

I take it that this is because AVC in avi is very incompatible?

[SeeMoreDigital]

I've been experimenting with the de-muxing and muxing features MP4Box (in conjunction with YAMB).

With regard to Mpeg2 streams, I was surprised that its possible to input full .VOB files - ie: Mpeg2 with multiple AC3 audio streams. MP4Box is able to drop all the AC3 streams and mux the video element perfectly!

Plus, once the Mpeg2 (or Mpeg1) streams are in the MP4 container, MP4Box allows you to de-mux them to an elementary .m2v (or .m1v) stream ....

Although according to YAMB, it's "Extracting MPEG-2 Visual streams to H264": -




With MP4Box being able to de-mux Mpeg1 to .m1v, Mpeg2 to .m2v and AVC to .h264, I wonder whether the developers could make it possible for Mpeg4 to be de-muxed to .m4v.... And for .m1v and .m2v streams to be muxed?


Cheers

[Elias]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
With MP4Box being able to de-mux Mpeg1 to .m1v, Mpeg2 to .m2v and AVC to .h264, I wonder whether the developers could make it possible for Mpeg4 to be de-muxed to .m4v.... And for .m1v and .m2v streams to be muxed?

If I'm not wrong, there's no difference between m4v and an mp4 file containing MPEG-4 Part 2 only. Just rename it to m4v if it has no audio. And this isn't really a standard thing, I believe Apple 'made up' m4a/m4v just to differentiate between MPEG-4 audio and video.

[Drachir]

@Elias
Here m4v is used for RAW Mpeg 4 Video

[Doom9]

I take it that this is because AVC in avi is very incompatible?

No. Here's the full scoop: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index...01&atid=571741

[SeeMoreDigital]

But it looks like future versions still be able to offer AVC in .AVI de-muxing to .H264?


Cheers

[Doom9]

But it looks like future versions still be able to offer AVC in .AVI de-muxing to .H264?

Why remove what is working? In fact if somebody were to make a patch combining the demuxing feature with the import feature... any volunteers?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Another useful MP4Box feature would be the ability to mux (and de-mux) VOB-subs (as created by Recode2).

Currently, if you generate an encode with Recode2 that contains VOB-subs and wish to add or delete say, some chapter-point information or audio streams, MP4Box is unable to create a new encode


Cheers

[Kurtnoise]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
if you have any suggestions regarding implementations you would like to see incorporated in future versions of MP4Box, it might useful to discuss them in one thread rather than all over the forum!

I would like to have the possibility to edit some specific atoms for each tracks contained into mp4 file (especially for the language )....Dumpster is good but under mp4box it'll be great.


btw, SMD. Maybe could you specify that the GUI are for win32OS only and that MP4BoxGUI requires the .NET FrameWork. Thereas Yamb needs nothing...

[Elias]

Originally posted by Kurtnoise13
I would like to have the possibility to edit some specific atoms for each tracks contained into mp4 file (especially for the language )....Dumpster is good but under mp4box it'll be great.

Yes, don't forget the component name in the handler reference atom. Very cool feature Too bad it's limited to 23 letters though. Also, in QuickTime Pro, there's an option to change the track name in get movie properties>sound/video track>general>change name. It would be cool to have this feature in MP4Box as well.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Kurtnoise13
btw, SMD. Maybe could you specify that the GUI are for win32OS only and that MP4BoxGUI requires the .NET FrameWork. Thereas Yamb needs nothing...

Thanks... and "job done"

Originally posted by Kurtnoise13
Yes, don't forget the component name in the handler reference atom. Very cool feature Too bad it's limited to 23 letters though. Also, in QuickTime Pro, there's an option to change the track name in get movie properties>sound/video track>general>change name. It would be cool to have this feature in MP4Box as well.

Agreed it would be useful. And sadly MP4Box seems to loose any existing MetaData information during muxing...

That said, the other day I was wondering whether it might be more useful to have separate (purpose built) "MP4 MetaData Editor Plus" type tool....

....It's a times like this I really wish I had the skills to make these sorts of things myself