Mpeg 4 Aac Plus

[symonjfox]

Hi, Ahead is releasing their new software for MPEG4.
http://nerodigital.com/press120303.html

I have a simple question: why ahead has the only one AAC and AAC Plus encoder? (I know about FAAC and Psytel, but nero AAC is an evolution of them since the author is the same, also has better speed and better quality).

Aren't there any other (maybe freeware or opensource) implementation of such codecs?

Thanks for the replies.

[tiki4]

I don't think so at the moment. FAAC is an open source AAC encoder developed at Sourceforge, but the author Menno is also working for Ahead now (together with Ivan). Some people at HA say, that quality has very much improved the last months. So maybe you try that for yourself. Of course it cannot do AACplus as this would involve SBR which is patented by Thomson. However Ahead said they will release a capable encoder (but there is no decoder as far as I know). Other encoders are Quicktime Pro but the quality is worse than FAAC I think. However the Nero plugin is pretty well (bought it last week) and it's a natural evolution of Psytel AAC. I'm pretty much interested in AAC multichannel but there's still no DirectShow decoder and Nero Plugin manager can't handel multichannel WAV files as input :(

Regards,

tiki4

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by symonjfox
I have a simple question: why ahead has the only one AAC and AAC Plus encoder?

So far! Wait some time, and other implementations will appear.

AAC+ has just recently been standardized. Ivan was able to deliver the codec so soon because he and Menno were working since last year, based on MPEG drafts.

Aren't there any other (maybe freeware or opensource) implementation of such codecs?

Hopefully soon. It's too soon to expect anything, really.

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by tiki4
I don't think so at the moment. FAAC is an open source AAC encoder developed at Sourceforge, but the author Menno is also working for Ahead now (together with Ivan). Some people at HA say, that quality has very much improved the last months. So maybe you try that for yourself.

Actually, FAAC quality is still bad. It's even worse than well tuned MP3 encoders, like Lame and FhG.

Of course it cannot do AACplus as this would involve SBR which is patented by Thomson.

Well, nearly all technologies in AAC are patented by someone. ;)

It doesn't do AACplus yet because it's still to early. Probably someone will come up with a SBR encoder for FAAC soon. All you need to do that are the specifications, and some reference sources from MPEG.

However Ahead said they will release a capable encoder (but there is no decoder as far as I know).

They will release the decoder along as part of Nero Digital.

Other encoders are Quicktime Pro but the quality is worse than FAAC I think.

No. QuickTime has very good quality, but it's still worse than Psytel/Ahead and FhG, because it's the FhG code tweaked for speed by Dolby.

I'm pretty much interested in AAC multichannel but there's still no DirectShow decoder and Nero Plugin manager can't handel multichannel WAV files as input :(

Ivan is always promising a fix to that "in next release", but it seems things inside Ahead don't go that fast. :-P
(He isn't in charge of dealing with the plugin manager, so there's not much he can do besides begging to the guy in charge)

About the DS filters: There's NIC's "crappy beta" available at my site. I think it can decode multichannel.

Regards;

Roberto.

[tiki4]

Hi Roberto,

Nic's DS filter is maybe working with multichannel (didn't test that), but seeking is definitely broken. I put an AAC stream into OGM container recently, you can't seek in the movie as audio / video get out of sync. By the way, it's the same problem with 3ivx DS filters and MP4 container ;(

tiki4

[rjamorim]

Hello, tiki4

Originally posted by tiki4
Nic's DS filter is maybe working with multichannel (didn't test that), but seeking is definitely broken. I put an AAC stream into OGM container recently, you can't seek in the movie as audio / video get out of sync. By the way, it's the same problem with 3ivx DS filters and MP4 container ;(


That sucks. Maybe that's why his filter is called "Crappy beta". :(

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by tiki4 I put an AAC stream into OGM container recently How may i ask ? Is there a tool to add a WAV header to an AAC stream ? Maybe also done by Nic ? Did i miss that ?

[BoNz1]

I believe koepi's oggmux allows for this at least I remember seeing .aac when you open a audio file to mux.

[tiki4]

No,

Koepi's OggMux doesn't allow to mux AAC though it is shown in the supported formats. There is no AAC DS source filter AFAIK.

Putting AAC in OGM is quity easy: You take AAC2WAV from Nic's 'crappy beta' package and give that thing a WAV header. Then you can mux that file with ogmuxer on the command line (maybe that's also possible with VirtualDubMod by now). Alternatively you should also be able to add the WAV header with latest BeSplit (-addriff). Decoding is done by Nic's AAC DS filter.

tiki4

[bond]

great news for everyone who waits for aac+ (or officially called "High Efficiency AAC"):
AAC+ (High Efficiency) from Ahead will be released on 18 July (included in Nero 6)!
for more information look here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55894)

here are the results of a first small listening test:
http://www.audiocoding.com/Vorbis.AAC.SBR_64kbps_MUSHRA_test_results.png

more information about the test on hydrogenaudio (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=10530&)

[bond]

although nobody really seems to be interested there are great news also on the aac+ decoding side:
the ahead sbr decoding source will be included in a new faad2 2.0 so everybody can be sure that he/she can use aac+ sound in their matroska (and maybe .ogm in the future) files (of course together with updated coreaac)!
read more here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=10653&)

[symonjfox]

It's a very good news :)

Let's wait 1 month so ... :eek:

[bond]

Originally posted by symonjfox
Let's wait 1 month so ... [/B]26 days ;)

[tiki4]

Thanks to Ahead, now it comes really in handy that I bought a Nero serial number just a few days before the announcement of Nero 6.0 and that all people who bought 5.5 after 1st of May will get a serial for the new for free. That's really good news. Now maybe I really start to like Matroska...

tiki4