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Topic: Momentary Lapse Of Reason? (Read 5375 times) previous topic - next topic
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Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Psytel's website is showing only a "support address for previous customers"...
ZZee ya, Hans-Jürgen
BLUEZZ BASTARDZZ - "That lil' ol' ZZ Top cover band from Hamburg..."
INDIGO ROCKS - "Down home rockin' blues. Tasty as strudel."

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #1 –
Ivan is very busy at the moment (with AAC) and you'll probably see some results from that in one or two months.
I don't think there's more that I can say about it.

Menno

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #2 –
Quote
Ivan is very busy at the moment (with AAC) and you'll probably see some results from that in one or two months.
I don't think there's more that I can say about it.

Alright, but why can't I access his website anymore - like I could yesterday? I was looking for some more infos (help file or documentation) on his AACEnc...
ZZee ya, Hans-Jürgen
BLUEZZ BASTARDZZ - "That lil' ol' ZZ Top cover band from Hamburg..."
INDIGO ROCKS - "Down home rockin' blues. Tasty as strudel."

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #3 –
The aacenc package on RareWares (http://www.inf.ufpr.br/~rja00/) contains documentation. I don't think the Psytel website had any extra info.

Menno

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #4 –
Quote
The aacenc package on RareWares (http://www.inf.ufpr.br/~rja00/) contains documentation. I don't think the Psytel website had any extra info.

So now I know what was meant with "complete package"...    I downloaded only the latest command line encoder, but have found the -h switch of course and even the undocumented switches that Ivan gave about 2 months ago in this forum.

What I would like to know (while talking to the FAAD developer  ), is there any chance to speed up the decoder just a little bit? I installed the latest two Winamp 2.x plugins (by the way, isn't the MP4 one enough already?) and encountered "my usual stuttering problem" again that I already know from mp3PRO and WMA files at 64 kbps. I'm totally aware that I can't expect much more from an ancient AMD 5x86/133 running Win95, but dare to ask this question nevertheless... Because your answer might help to estimate my chances to listen to AAC files at that bitrate with Mpxplay (my favorite DOS audio player) when it will be able to do so in the future.

Just one more encoder-specific question: why can I define the cutoff frequency with two different switches, -c and -fb? Is one of them for a highpass, not a lowpass, perhaps?
ZZee ya, Hans-Jürgen
BLUEZZ BASTARDZZ - "That lil' ol' ZZ Top cover band from Hamburg..."
INDIGO ROCKS - "Down home rockin' blues. Tasty as strudel."

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #5 –
First of all: Only mp4 plugin is enough. Unless you want seeking in AAC files. But if you install them both I don't know which one will actually get used.

I don't think there's much to speed up in FAAD2, except for processor specific optimisations (MMX, SSE, etc), from which your processor will not benefit anyways.
It could be a problem in your setup (winamp output plugin, soundcard, etc) since I used to have a pentium 100 on which FAAD ran just fine, and FAAD2 is almost twice as fast as that.
I'm not sure if FAAD2 can run on a 16 bit operating system, but I guess it should not be a big problem. Maybe I'll try to compile it for DOS soon.

I'm not sure about those encoder switches, Ivan is probably able to answer that for you in a day or two/three.

Menno

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #6 –
Quote
Ivan is very busy at the moment (with AAC) and you'll probably see some results from that in one or two months.
I don't think there's more that I can say about it.

Yes you can. It's public information that Ivan works at Ahead.  I have verified that multiple times that it's public that Ivan works at Ahead.
However, what does that mean regarding Psytel MPEG4-codec, that is not public information.. 

Also it's public information that Ahead joined M4IF (MPEG4 Industry Forum http://www.m4if.org).

But the name and the form of the Ahead MPEG-4 support is not public. Given all the available information, it's certainly awfully hard to conclude what Ahead is up to, but it's just speculation until it's official.
And of course Ivan can't talk about this yet.
Juha Laaksonheimo

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #7 –
Ok, wasn't totally sure about what I can tell and what I can't.

I think I said in my first post: one or two months (probably closer to one than two  )
I'm also not sure about where they are going to use all the MPEG-4 stuff exactly, but at least in the same way as MP3 and VQF are currently used.

Ahead joined M4IF a few weeks ago (http://www.m4if.org/membercompanies.php), so I guess that they are pretty serious about MPEG-4 support.

Menno

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #8 –
Btw, Ivan is visiting here:
IBC 2002
September 13-17, 2002 Amsterdam RAI
http://www.ibc-secure.org/2002/exhib/exhabout.html

Btw. Sigma designs is also there, probably demonstrating their (or was it XviD's, oops!)MPEG-4 video codec... 
Juha Laaksonheimo

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #9 –
Yes, but Ivan is at the IBC today (friday) and tomorrow (saturday) only.
I'll be there on saturday, too. Anyone else going there?

I'll try to make some interesting pictures.

Menno

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #10 –
Quote
First of all: Only mp4 plugin is enough. Unless you want seeking in AAC files. But if you install them both I don't know which one will actually get used.

Well, both *.dll are settled in the plugin subdirectory, but no matter what I install last it shows up only once in the Winamp preferences and the "About" button tells me "AudioCoding.com MPEG-4 General Audio player 1.2 beta compiled on Sep 4 2002".

Quote
I don't think there's much to speed up in FAAD2, except for processor specific optimisations (MMX, SSE, etc), from which your processor will not benefit anyways.
It could be a problem in your setup (winamp output plugin, soundcard, etc) since I used to have a pentium 100 on which FAAD ran just fine, and FAAD2 is almost twice as fast as that.


I use Winamp 2.81 mainly for testing purposes and did not change much in it, so the output plugins are still the same with the original settings (buffers and so on). It is probably because my 5x86 is not a Pentium, but only a beefed-up 486 DX4, so I'll have to wait for a new Mpxplay v1.50...  My main purpose with any encoder is to offer the demo tapes of my band on a website with the smallest size and download time while maintaining the best quality at this low bitrate.

This leads me to another FAAD plugin question: is it possible to use the buffering capabilities of Winamp just like the MP3 plugin does? Because this helps a lot to listen to the files while they are still being downloaded. The mp3PRO plugin can't do this either, so for now I have to recommend using the standard MP3 plugin instead to people that want to listen online to the mp3PRO files with Winamp.

Quote
I'm not sure if FAAD2 can run on a 16 bit operating system, but I guess it should not be a big problem. Maybe I'll try to compile it for DOS soon.


That would be great...  By the way, the Mpxplay developer has already taken a look at the FAAD source code and seems to be quite pleased with the sound of the encoded AAC files done with FAAC.

Quote
I'm not sure about those encoder switches, Ivan is probably able to answer that for you in a day or two/three.


That's fine, I'm no longer in a hurry now...
ZZee ya, Hans-Jürgen
BLUEZZ BASTARDZZ - "That lil' ol' ZZ Top cover band from Hamburg..."
INDIGO ROCKS - "Down home rockin' blues. Tasty as strudel."

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #11 –
I don't think I can use the same buffering functionality, since it is built into the mp3 plugin. I have no plans to add buffering to the mp4 plugin. Since the mp4 plugin uses a mp4 file library that does all the reading, there is not much for me to do about it.

In winamp3 it is probably a lot easier because then I can use the winamp plugins for file reading (but you probably don't want to use winamp3 on your PC).

Menno

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #12 –
Quote
I don't think I can use the same buffering functionality, since it is built into the mp3 plugin. I have no plans to add buffering to the mp4 plugin. Since the mp4 plugin uses a mp4 file library that does all the reading, there is not much for me to do about it.

OK thanks, then I'll have to live with it, it seems. Another question concerning FAAD2: is it already capable of playing AAC files that have been encoded with Long Term Prediction? Because I'm trying to "imitate" the FhG AAC evaluation codec that was used in the c't listening test with Ivan's encoder and its command line parameters... And is there a possibility to reconvert the resulting AAC file back to WAV with the Winamp plugin of FAAD2?
ZZee ya, Hans-Jürgen
BLUEZZ BASTARDZZ - "That lil' ol' ZZ Top cover band from Hamburg..."
INDIGO ROCKS - "Down home rockin' blues. Tasty as strudel."

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #13 –
Yes, FAAD2 decodes LTP files just fine at the moment. I think it didn't work entirely correct in the last release version.
Only MAIN prediction is still not working correctly.

Menno

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #14 –
Quote
Yes, FAAD2 decodes LTP files just fine at the moment. I think it didn't work entirely correct in the last release version.
Only MAIN prediction is still not working correctly.

Good news, so I can carry on with my "imitation tests"... 

By the way, after reading through some of the older threads in this forum, I'm not sure if it is possible to integrate the source code of FAAD into another audio player without legal concerns (i.e. being threatened by Dolby). What is the actual situation for a "free" AAC decoder (not encoder) based on FAAD? And isn't the QuickTime 6.0 player given away "for free" by Apple? But they probably paid Dolby's license fees already...
ZZee ya, Hans-Jürgen
BLUEZZ BASTARDZZ - "That lil' ol' ZZ Top cover band from Hamburg..."
INDIGO ROCKS - "Down home rockin' blues. Tasty as strudel."

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #15 –
"Free" AAC cannot be distributed in binary form, only as source code.

Apple is paying a lot of money to the AAC licensing authority.

Menno

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #16 –
Damn, I knew I should have made the effort & gone to that IBC show. Could have met up with you guys

Should have asked you to give a kick to the guys at booth no. # 249

Cheers,
-Nic

Momentary Lapse Of Reason?

Reply #17 –
I have the same problem with FAAD / FAAD2.  Any AAC longer than 15 minutes has a long delay when I try playing it in Winamp.  It's enough to make me convert my collection to .mp4 once there's a nice frontend and better tagging options in winamp
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