Is it possible to import Monkey's Audio in MKV/MKA?

[Nozdrum]

Hi, I'm trying to import some .ape file in a MKV container because I wanted to use the Matroska chapters to make navigation points for this playlist, I'm using MKV Merge but it doesn't accept .ape files, do you know any other method? I'd rather avoid converting this file to some other format, if possible.

Error: File D:\Audio\My Dearest.ape has unknown type. Please have a look at the supported file types ('mkvmerge --list-types') and contact the author <moritz@******.org> if your file type is supported but not recognized properly.

[Guest]

If it is not listed when you run 'mkvmerge --list-types' then it is not possible. The message you got seems perfectly clear so your post is a little baffling.

[Nozdrum]

If it is not listed when you run 'mkvmerge --list-types' then it is not possible. The message you got seems perfectly clear so your post is a little baffling.

I know but when I open the .ape file using IsoBuster 3, it let's me extract the WAV files of each track, the problem is that these WAV files sound like random noise, even if I import these WAV files inside a MKV, it still sounds like random noise, so I thought that if MKV merge can import WAV file which was extracted from an .ape container, maybe there's some shortcut to import directly the whole .ape file, like making MKV merge believe that it's a MKA, sorry for the lame explanation, I've never tried something like this before (probably impossible, I guess).

[Guest]

I know but when I open the .ape file using IsoBuster 3, it let's me extract the WAV files of each track Here your lack of understanding of fundamentals is leading you astray. APE is a form of compressed audio and WAV is uncompressed. Therefore, you cannot *extract* WAV from APE. You need to have a decompressor (decoder). Here is one option for properly converting APE to WAV:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5070740_convert-ape-wav.html

[Nozdrum]

Here your lack of understanding of fundamentals is leading you astray. APE is a form of compressed audio and WAV is uncompressed. Therefore, you cannot *extract* WAV from APE. You need to have a decompressor (decoder). Here is one option for properly converting APE to WAV:

http://www.ehow.com/how_5070740_convert-ape-wav.html

It worked flawlessly, it's 100% sure that there's no quality loss after decompressing it? I'm trying to hear if there's any difference but it sounds idential with my headphones, I hope it's not because they're just cheap headphones :D (the file size is definitely doubled).

Thanks for your support! :)

[Guest]

Any quality loss is incurred during compression, not decompression. And of course the size is increased when you decompress. Don't you understand the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio? I would suggest you do some studies on fundamentals of audio and video compression.

[Nozdrum]

Any quality loss is incurred during compression, not decompression. And of course the size is increased when you decompress. Don't you understand the difference between compressed and uncompressed audio? I would suggest you do some studies on fundamentals of audio and video compression.

Even though I'm not an expert, I knew that compression reduces the quality, but this .ape format looks different from what I've always used before, for example I've converted FLAC to AAC before and both size and quality were reduced, while this monkey's audio can keep the original quality reducing the file size and can be decompressed easily, it sounds very good for me, or maybe that's not how it worked?

I've just tried to compress a WAV using "Insane" compression and then decompress it again, the crc32 was the same before and after, in theory there was no quality loss during the compression phase nor the decompression, but while it was compressed the size was 60% reduced.

[Guest]

for example I've converted FLAC to AAC before and both size and quality were reduced, Everything you ask can be answered by getting a fundamental understanding, which as I mentioned, you appear to lack. Unfortunately I do not have time to teach you all of that.

I will add, however, one thing that also appears to be confusing you. Compression always reduces the file size, that is what the word means. But you can have lossy or lossless compression. The former loses quality, the latter does not. Generally, lossy compression will give you a bigger file size reduction. I do not know the details of Monkey Audio to tell you if it is lossy or lossless, or can do both depending on the mode you select. You can research that yourself I'm sure.

Good luck with your projects.

[nhakobian]

Monkey's Audio is a lossless compression format. From http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison, it seems its compression is on par with FLAC, but is much slower to decode. Unless this article is out of date and Monkey's Audio has improved its compression, it doesnt appear to have any benefits over FLAC (slightly OT).

Unfortunately that is the extent of my knowledge about this format, especially since FLAC has much greater acceptance/compatilibity.

[Guest]

Thanks, nhakobian!

Also, regarding the FLAC to WAV conversion quality will not be lost. But for FLAC to AAC, quality will be lost because AAC is lossy.

[Nozdrum]

Thanks everyone for the explanations, I'm just an amateour in video encoding and I didn't know that 100% lossless compressions existed for audio, I always thought that lossless were just codecs like lossy codecs but better for keeping the quality from raw files (at the cost of larger file size), now I understand that lossless are exactly like the raw files, but the difference is that they're not supported by many decoders, I'm using MPC-HC (from CCCP) to play compressed .ape without decompressing them (thanks to APE DirectShow Filter from CCCP probably), but since now I know how it works I'm going to recompress my .ape files in FLAC (which can be imported in mkv easily, just what I needed). So, thanks again and even though it's a bit late, merry xmas everyone and happy new year in advance!

[marcusj0015]

You can always go to MKVToolNix mail list and request the feature, APe is open source right? if so, it should be trivial to implement.

and if you can't and they refuse for some reason, you could just convert it to flac, which is far easier to decode and is almost as efficient (something like 0.5% difference in comression between flac and ape)

[filler56789]

You can always go to MKVToolNix mail list and request the feature, APe is open source right? if so, it should be trivial to implement.

No, open-source is not a synonym for "easy implementation". See the bad examples of Opus (designed for the Ogg container in the first place) and Musepack
( http://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2009-March/072320.html )

[marcusj0015]

I see that, but musepack is a lossy format, and as a result of the loss it's encoder needs a psychoacoustic model, which would complicate it a lot more than a simple lossless format like APE.

[filler56789]

I see that, but musepack is a lossy format, and as a result of the loss it's encoder needs a psychoacoustic model, which would complicate it a lot more than a simple lossless format like APE.

It seems you have no idea of what you're talking about :scared:

http://codecs.multimedia.cx/?p=50

http://codecs.multimedia.cx/?p=528