DivX Audio.wav -> Windows Media Audio.wma

[SimonSez07]

... some background info ...

for a while now, i have been creating divx movies with DivX4 Video muxed with 'DivX Audio' from the old DivX 3.11a package. i was doing this to avoid having to use mp3 which takes up double the bitrate.

with people nowdays installing only the newer divx video codecs that do not support decoding 'divx audio', my friends are unable to play my (large collection of) movies with out also installing the divx311 package.

i would have thought that since the 'divx audio' acm is only a repackaged (cracked) version of microsoft's wma acm, that windows media player would still be able to play the divx audio streams, but this is not the case. it identifies the audio as wma and audomatically downloads the codec but then reports that 'the downloaded codec didnt work' on the audio stream.

... so ... here's my question...

what if i take the movies that i have already created, and demux the the 'divx audio' to a wav file. is there a way to convert it into a .wma file (strip the wav header or something) and then somehow mux that wma file back into the avi as windows media audio??

any help with this would be great.

... or any other ideas for that matter.

thanks,

- SimonSez07

[tiki4]

Damned! I already had my reply ready when that Netscape 6.2 crashed. So once again:


The only way I can think of is to demux and decompress the DivX audio soundtrack with VirtualDub to a WAV file. This can be reencoded using the 'Windows Media 8 encoding utility' which is command line based. This gives you and WMA file that can be given a WAV header using a program called WMA2WAV. This should be available here on the software page.

This fake WAV can be muxed with VirtualDub to an AVI again. However I see several drawbacks using this method. First you have to de- and re-compress the sound which gives you pretty bad quality. Then you have to use a video player that doesn't use the DirectShow WMA codec but the ACM driver instead. I don't which player can do so as I still stick to WMP. All versions of the media player cannot handle such an AVI file properly, you'll get very jerky playback. I think that is because the WMA DirectShow decompressor doesn't expect WMA in AVI files.

But considering this I had the idea of using OGG instead. I don't know if anyone has tried that yet. Perhaps it is possible to mux a WMA file with any video stream into an OGG container. I have to try that out. Not that I'm using WMA, I stick with OGG Vorbis and MP3 but that's an idea worth trying...

Regards,

tiki4

[SimonSez07]

thanks for the suggestions ... in future i think ill use ogg if i want lower bitrates than mp3 can offer, but for now, i REALLY want to avoid re-encoding the audio on all my movies. i would rather just have the user install the divx3.11a codec than do so much work at the cost of so much quality.

i guess i was hoping that since divx audio was based off microsoft's wma codec there would be some way to maybe modify the wav header or something to discuise the 'divx audio' wav as a wma file with a wav header. i'll check out the wma2wav util.

thanks ...

- SimonSez07

[tiki4]

Hi,

just another suggestions. How about only installing the DivX audio codec. I found a packaged version on some web site (dunno where that was, I think somewhere in France). Perhaps that would be an interims solution. And for the future: I think Ogg Vorbis is the superior format at low bitrates like 64 kBit/s. And no: Don't use WMA2WAV unless you want to force your friends to use certain players with their AVIs. In Media Player audio and video are horribly out of sync. My efforts to mux WMA to an Ogg Stream were not successful as well...

Take care,

tiki4

[Neo Neko]

WMA is just a nasty format. Nasty to handle , nasty to play back, and nasty to listen to. You just need to copy the "Divx.acm" I believe to their system or system32 dir. Also you could download and distribute coppies of that codec pack from that famous Frenchman NIMO! He has the awful old "Divx Audio" hack as well as many better MP3 codecs.

[SimonSez07]

i will agree that wma7 / 'divx audio' is a nasty format(s). iv had many sync issues with using this audio in the past, but overcame it by downsampling from 48000 hz (dolby digital) to 44098 hz (instead of 44100). therefor, i dont think the sync would be an issue, since the movies play perfectly now (using the 'divx audio' acm).

so ... i think the only issue is turning my divx auido .wav files into wma files (losslessly) by possibly modifying / stripping some header info or something. then i'm sure i can get the newly muzed avi's to play syncronously no prob.

i checked out wma2wav and it (as the name implies) only does the reverse of what i want to do, so i appeareantly need some other tool or something.

thanks for the advice on no longer using wma / divx audio (i think this one's unanimous) but i still have a large collection of divx audio movies.

i will look into a standalone repackaged version of the old 'auful' divx auido acm, but a wav2wma tool would also be handy, since wma is universally accepted (by microsoft anyway ;) and i have a lot of divx audio stuff.

come to think about it, does anyone know if wma and divx audio are even compatible?? (before i waste my time) i mean, ignoring all header info, can a (microsoft) wma audio decoder even decode divx audio (a hack thereof)?

thanks for ur input

- SimonSez07