LameXP v4.19 Final · Build #2320 (2021-08-29)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Apparently you are using Windows 8.0, rather than Windows 8.1.

Window 8.0 has reached end of life in 2016, i.e. 5 years ago. Just update to Windows 8.1, which is essentially a Service Pack to Windows 8 and will be supported with security fixes by Microsoft until 2023.

At this point, I won't put any effort into testing or supporting Windows 8.0. The same applies to Windows 7 without SP-1, or Windows XP without SP-3.

(BTW: Please don't post ultra-large screenshots as attachments. It breaks the layout.)

Is There a Difference Between 8 and 8.1?

The answer is no, not really. Windows 8.1 is considered a service pack for Windows 8. This means Windows 8.1 is a part of Windows 8 and is included in that life cycle.

[K4sum1]

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

Apparently you are using Windows 8.0, rather than Windows 8.1.

Window 8.0 has reached end of life in 2016, i.e. 5 years ago. Just update to Windows 8.1, which is essentially a Service Pack to Windows 8 and will be supported with security fixes by Microsoft until 2023.

At this point, I won't put any effort into testing or supporting Windows 8.0. The same applies to Windows 7 without SP-1, or Windows XP without SP-3.

(BTW: Please don't post ultra-large screenshots as attachments. It breaks the layout.)

8.0 is better than 7 and 8.1 in various ways. It has a better DWM than 7, but without the activation system of 8.1. It can be easily modded to use the 7 explorer, while 8.1 has buggy start menu replacements. It has the better performance of 8.x without the telemetry updates of 8.1.

Also, about support, 8.0 Embedded gets support until 2023 as well, and 8.0 embedded updates work on regular 8.0.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Originally Posted by K4sum1

8.0 is better than 7 and 8.1 in various ways. It has a better DWM than 7, but without the activation system of 8.1. It can be easily modded to use the 7 explorer, while 8.1 has buggy start menu replacements. It has the better performance of 8.x without the telemetry updates of 8.1.

Also, about support, 8.0 Embedded gets support until 2023 as well, and 8.0 embedded updates work on regular 8.0.

Fell free to use whatever outdated and end-of-live operating system you like – it is you who has to live with the implications. I could go on to elaborate on how irresponsibly it is to use an end-of-live operating system. But I know that trying to "proselytize" notorious update refusers is a totally pointless endeavor. So, do what you want, but do not expect software developers to care about such super-exotic configuration. Windows 8.x generally is a lost cause, because it never gained much popularity and was quickly superseded by Windows 10. But Windows 8.0 without the Windows 8.1 service pack in particular is such a niche configuration that it's not worth bothering...

(BTW: You are the first person to ever try running this software on Windows 8.0, and report back. I think that says it all.)

[shades]

Dear LoRd_MuldeR
Latest nightly build LameXP-RC10.2021-06-27.Release-Static.Build-2316 seems to be broken on extraction of the file wvunpack.exe

Extracting file: wvunpack.x64-avx.exe -> wvunpack.exe
Failedto open file on first attempt, retrying...
QFile::remove: Empty or null file name
BaseTask exception error:
File 'lxp_curl.exe' could not be locked

GURU MEDITATION !!! <- (NICE! :-D AMIGA throwback?? lol )

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Originally Posted by shades

Dear LoRd_MuldeR
Latest nightly build LameXP-RC10.2021-06-27.Release-Static.Build-2316 seems to be broken on extraction of the file wvunpack.exe

Extracting file: wvunpack.x64-avx.exe -> wvunpack.exe
Failedto open file on first attempt, retrying...
QFile::remove: Empty or null file name
BaseTask exception error:
File 'lxp_curl.exe' could not be locked

GURU MEDITATION !!! <- (NICE! :-D AMIGA throwback?? lol )

Probably yet another case of "anti-virus" software gone nuts

If you run any "anti-virus" software, please turn it off (or, even better: uninstall) in order to confirm that the root cause of the problem indeed is a buggy "anti-virus" software. Then report the problem to then vendor.

(Should the problem persist after any "anti-virus" software has been eradicated from the system, then I may investigate further)

[shades]

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

Probably yet another case of "anti-virus" software gone nuts

If you run any "anti-virus" software, please turn it off (or, even better: uninstall) in order to confirm that the root cause of the problem indeed is a buggy "anti-virus" software. Then report the problem to then vendor.

(Should the problem persist after any "anti-virus" software has been eradicated from the system, then I may investigate further)

You are of course, correct.
Rotten Windows 10 simple pattern matching crap.
I placed an exception for the entire folder for MuldeR and it's frikken fine as.

thanks for the time in answering.

[danlock]

(title)

Details: @LoRd_MuldeR Do you intend to support .webp album covers in LameXP (so they will be transferred from the source to the destination file(s) for supported formats/containers)? If so, do you have a timeline or a version number in mind when that will be implemented?

Thank you very much!

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Originally Posted by danlock

Details: @LoRd_MuldeR Do you intend to support .webp album covers in LameXP (so they will be transferred from the source to the destination file(s) for supported formats/containers)? If so, do you have a timeline or a version number in mind when that will be implemented?

Not currently planned. There are many open questions regarding WebP:

1. Does Qt support the WebP format? I think Qt 4, which LameXP is currently based on, does not. Probably current Qt 5 does. But then, porting LameXP to Qt 5 will be a big project for the future
2. Do the various audio formats that we support in LameXP support the WebP format in their meta data? For example, MP3 embeds meta data in the form of ID3 tags. And, to the best of my knowledge, ID3v2 "officially" only supports JPEG and PNG. Which is obvious, because at the time that ID3v2 was created WebP didn't even exist! And that's only MP3. What about all the other formats?
3. Even if some of the audio formats that we support actually do support WebP in their meta data, do the encoders that we use support WebP as input? What do we do with the other formats?

[danlock]

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

Not currently planned.

Understandable. Thank you again!

There are many open questions regarding WebP:

1. Does Qt support the WebP format? I think Qt 4, which LameXP is currently based on, does not. Probably current Qt 5 does. But then, porting LameXP to Qt 5 will be a big project for the future
2. Do the various audio formats that we support in LameXP support the WebP format in their meta data? For example, MP3 embeds meta data in the form of ID3 tags. And, to the best of my knowledge, ID3v2 "officially" only supports JPEG and PNG. Which is obvious, because at the time that ID3v2 was created WebP didn't even exist! And that's only MP3. What about all the other formats?
3. Even if some of the audio formats that we support actually do support WebP in their meta data, do the encoders that we use support WebP as input? What do we do with the other formats?

Foobar 2000 can read .webp files in metadata (and add or remove .webp files as metadata). That was first implemented by pointing Fb2k to an external file, and later added internally (September 2000). That's a program which was coded from the ground up to support plugins and other features, though, and Peter can alter his code base or plugins to add/remove support for different things anytime. It's possible other players/encoders can read .webp metadata as well, but I can't think of any. I presumed any other relatively-decent player would discard the .webp image data as extraneous. A poorly-coded player, on the other hand, would see the "extra" data and crash or claim the file is bad, but (come to think of it) since metadata exists as a separate, resizable part of the file (whether as part of the audio file or in an external tag file), it probably just wouldn't be displayed.

As small as lossy .webp (and the next version, .webp2) files are compared to most other image formats with similar quality, it's a space savings to use .webp format in audio files (lossless .webp files obviously don't compress as much). For maximum compatibility and even more space, I should probably just use an external image in the directory and put only textual metadata in the files.

Support in QT seems to be the biggest hurdle. I had not considered that. Thanks for reminding me of LameXP's usage of QT!

Well, for the purposes of this forum and LameXP, the future is approaching at a fixed speed. End users like me will probably learn of support for any new formats whenever any porting to a newer version of QT occurs, since the tagging is typically handled by the external components for which LameXP provides the interface. And those decoder/encoder combinations that don't support .webp would output a file that doesn't contain the image, of course, like they already do.

Something will change when those included external decoders work for newer metadata or LameXP itself can copy metadata in (.webp/etc.) whatever formats are present in the file, in the future, whenever it happens.

Speaking of time, I've allowed far too much of it to march past me while I typed this message! (Muss los!)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

LameXP v4.19 has been released
https://github.com/lordmulder/LameXP/releases/latest

Changes between v4.18 and v4.19 [2021-08-29]:
* Updated LAME encoder to v3.100.1-SVN (2020-08-25), compiled with ICL 19.1 and MSVC 15.9
* Updated Vorbis encoder to OggEnc v2.88 (2020-07-07), using libvorbis v1.3.7 with aoTuV beta-6.03
* Updated Monkey's Audio binary to v6.29 (2021-05-25), compiled with ICL 19.2 and MSVC 15.9
* Updated mpg123 decoder to v1.26.4 (2020-12-24), compiled with GCC 10.2.0
* Updated MediaInfo to v21.03 (2021-03-26), compiled with ICL 2021.2 and MSVC 15.9
* Updated cURL to v7.77.0 (2021-05-26), with libcurl v7.77.0 and OpenSSL v1.1.1k
* Updated the Windows SDK version used for release builds (Visual Studio 2017) to 10.0.14393.0
* Added Bulgarian (български) translation, thanks to Симеон Илиянов Цветков <sicvetkov@uni-sofia.bg>
* Added command-line switch --no-splash, which can be used to hide the "splash" screen at startup
* Added a workaround for missing normaliz.dll to the installer (Windows XP only)
* GnuPG has been replaced by CodeSign verification tool for checking the auto-update signatures
* Updated language files (big thank-you to all contributors !!!)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hi LoRd_MuldeR,

I've just tried installing the new release but for some reason Windows 10 Home (Version: 21H1, OS Build: 19043.1165) reports the following: -

[LoRd_MuldeR]

As a long term member, I probably don't have to explain to you what a FALSE POSITIVE is and who you need to report the problem in their software to, if you want a chance for this to be fixed

Also, I probably don't have to explain that even though cURL could be abused by "attackers" to do evil things (like pretty much any non-trivial program can be abused!) it still is a perfectly legitimate software that must not be blocked

See also:
http://lamexp.sourceforge.net/doc/Ma...ti-virus-notes

(Note: Since we have been through this a zillion of times, that is as much as I'm going to say about the topic)

[jpsdr]

For me, Kaspersky didn't like lxp_curl.exe created in temp directory when lamexp is running. Contacted them, confirmed as false positive, will be fixed very shortly in their database. I had to do the same exact same process for the exact same file with previous lamexp version, and probably will with next version...
But lamexp is very good at trigging false positive...

[manolito]

Originally Posted by LoRd_MuldeR

Sorry for late replay. This has already been addressed for the upcoming release.

Thanks for the new version

The new behavior after starting the software when it is more than 1 yeaur old is very welcome...

[K4sum1]

Is there no way to encode in ALAC?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally Posted by K4sum1

Is there no way to encode in ALAC?

See here: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.p...59#post1859759

[K4sum1]

Originally Posted by SeeMoreDigital

See here: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.p...59#post1859759

Ok, I found dBpoweramp, and that works fine for my purposes. Bit janky at times but might actually use it instead of LameXP from now on.

I like ALAC because Windows shows the track ID tags on it, unlike FLAC, and I have some older Apple devices that only support ALAC.

Sorry for the late reply, I had forgotten that I made the post.

[TomServo]

We use LameXP on a Windows 10 machine to encode mp3 files in bulk to a normalized mp3 at 96kbps CBR, mono. This is done on external hard drives. We copy the encoded files to a master and a backup. We noticed that the resulting encoded files are severely fragmented, which makes them copy extremely slowly unless we optimize the external HDD after each bulk encoding. Using the Windows HDD Analyze tool after encoding a batch, it always shows fragmentation. Then we optimize the HDD, but the next time we encode a batch the Analyzer shows high fragmentation again. Is there any insight into this? Something we could do differently to help mitigate this? I can provide more information about the LameXP settings and environment if needed. Thank you!

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Originally Posted by TomServo

We use LameXP on a Windows 10 machine to encode mp3 files in bulk to a normalized mp3 at 96kbps CBR, mono. This is done on external hard drives. We copy the encoded files to a master and a backup. We noticed that the resulting encoded files are severely fragmented, which makes them copy extremely slowly unless we optimize the external HDD after each bulk encoding. Using the Windows HDD Analyze tool after encoding a batch, it always shows fragmentation. Then we optimize the HDD, but the next time we encode a batch the Analyzer shows high fragmentation again. Is there any insight into this? Something we could do differently to help mitigate this? I can provide more information about the LameXP settings and environment if needed. Thank you!

Well, the exact way how the operating system (file system) allocates "blocks" for new files on the HDD is not under the control of user-space applications. When a new file is created, or more data is appended to existing file, the file system necessarily needs to find and allocate the required number of "free" blocks on the HDD, so that the data can actually be stored. The file system should prefer to allocate a contiguous range of blocks for each file, but this may not always be possible – in which case "fragmentation" happens. This is especially true when multiple files are written out at the same time: The data of the files that are written out in parallel will have to be "interleaved" in some sort of way.

This means that while running multiple encoder processes in parallel, as LameXP does by default, results in improved usage of modern multi-core CPU and therefore will speed-up the overall process, it also is susceptible to more fragmentation.

Of course, you can simply restrict the number of parallel encoder processes, even to one, in order minimize fragmentation. But this will probably result in a massive slow-down. You can't have your cake and eat it too!

(BTW: On modern SSDs fragmentation is a non-issue. So probably the "best" solution would be to encode to an SSD and stop worrying about fragmentation altogether. You still could copy/move the files to a mechanical HDD later on)

[TomServo]

Ok, that makes sense. We used to use a software called "Audiobook Cutter" that merged all the new encoded files in a folder into one file, and then wrote, one by one, new files in ~10 minute segments. We stopped doing that, and that's when this issue was noticed. Now that I know this information, hopefully we can come up with a solution to mitigate it instead of having to purchase 20+ SSDs to replace these.