New command-line encoder for EAC, to directly create a mka file Options

[Omion]

I hope all this to be ready soon ... may be end of next week.

Great! I look forward to it!

[ChristianHJW]

I never took some details about matroska - hmm, now I still have to emphasize that I am still wondering this is not possible -  it's a pitty isn't it ?'kay, whatever, ape or flac, for temporarily storing - it doesn't matter (given in Wyclef style).

To support APE correctly in matroska, we needed to

- add APE parsing and muxing to mkvmerge
- create a APE DirectShow parser filter
- create a APE DirectShow decoder filter

Now, i am not 100% sure but IIRC some of our team members were looking at doing that, and gave up because

1. like with many other audio formats, the parser and decoder code is so tightly woven together, you basically had to rewrite big parts of it to be able to use them separately

2. The license situation was at least 'unclear' , say very probably incompatible with DirectShow

[k.m.krebs]

I get a problem with ansi characters. I'm trying to encode an album by µ-Ziq. It does fairly well, until it goes to merge:

CODE

Start merging to "╡-ziq - My Little Beautiful.mka".
Next command-line to be executed:
mkvmerge -o "C:\mp3\╡-ziq - My Little Beautiful.mka" --command-line-charset UTF-
8 -D -S "C:\mp3\╡-ziq - My Little Beautiful.ogg" --attachment-mime-type text/pla
in --attach-file "C:\mp3\╡-ziq - My Little Beautiful.cue" --chapters "C:\mp3\╡-z
iq - My Little Beautiful.cue"
Press [Enter] to continue
mkvmerge v0.9.3, built on Jul 18 2004 18:24:15
Error: The source file 'C:\mp3\' could not be opened successfully, or retrieving
its size by seeking to the end did not work.
Error: Unable to merge!

Is there a way around this, or am I stuck with having to rename after encoding?
Also, would it be possible to have an command-line option to specify additional files to include; I would like to automaticall include a text file with information on the version & command line of the encoder used.

[jcsston]

I never took some details about matroska - hmm, now I still have to emphasize that I am still wondering this is not possible -  it's a pitty isn't it ?'kay, whatever, ape or flac, for temporarily storing - it doesn't matter (given in Wyclef style).

To support APE correctly in matroska, we needed to

- add APE parsing and muxing to mkvmerge
- create a APE DirectShow parser filter
- create a APE DirectShow decoder filter

Now, i am not 100% sure but IIRC some of our team members were looking at doing that, and gave up because

1. like with many other audio formats, the parser and decoder code is so tightly woven together, you basically had to rewrite big parts of it to be able to use them separately

2. The license situation was at least 'unclear' , say very probably incompatible with DirectShow

I had looked into APE back when I was working on FLAC support.
It would require more or less the same type of 'demuxing' as RAW FLAC, feed the decoder one byte at a time, marking a block of bytes as a frame when the decoder returns a decoded PCM block, a bit of a hack and slow.

I don't believe the licensing would actually be a problem for DirectShow filters, but mkvmerge (GPL) could have problems with linking to it

This post has been edited by jcsston: Jul 26 2004, 23:09

[jokull]

I hope all this to be ready soon ... may be end of next week.

Any news yet? When might we expect v.1.0? Forgive my impatience.

[goldenear]

v.1.0 should be ready soon. May be next weekend or next week... we are still fixing some little stuffs. be patient!

[NoXFeR]

Hmm... I can't seem to get this to work.

I am using the following additional opts. in EAC:

-z -i "%s" -s "%o" -y "%Y" -g "%m" -m -f -e "I:\Lyd\flac\bin\flac.exe" -r "pause"

At the end of the log it seems like the coder think I am using "lac.exe" as the encoding binary, which is clearly not the case.

EDIT: I tried creating a flac.exe at the default directory. This time I got the thing to work.

Also, if the MKA-container is storing some other tag-format than FLAC does, wouldn't it be good to set padding to "-P 0"?

This post has been edited by NoXFeR: Aug 4 2004, 01:04

[mosu]

-z -i "%s" -s "%o" -y "%Y" -g "%m" -m -f -e "I:\Lyd\flac\bin\flac.exe" -r "pause"

Try to use forward slashes instead of backslashes in the path, e.g. I:/Lyd/flac/bin/flac.exe

[NoXFeR]

Hmm... I still can't seem to get it to work. I will try some more, though. Here are the screenshots of my error and other things:

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2


EDIT: When trying to access mkvmerge doubleclicking the file i get the message:
"The application has failed to start because cygz.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem."

I checked the Matroska Pack directory, and I didn't find the file there either. (I did not install the ffdshow-filters, because I use another decoder.


EDIT 2: I found the Runtime archoves now.. Didn't see it at first glance. I bet this will solve my problem (-:

This post has been edited by NoXFeR: Aug 4 2004, 12:15

[goldenear]

Hmm... I can't seem to get this to work.

I am using the following additional opts. in EAC:

-z -i "%s" -s "%o" -y "%Y" -g "%m" -m -f -e "I:\Lyd\flac\bin\flac.exe" -r "pause"

At the end of the log it seems like the coder think I am using "lac.exe" as the encoding binary, which is clearly not the case.

EDIT: I tried creating a flac.exe at the default directory. This time I got the thing to work.

It's a but, I'm fixing this

Also, if the MKA-container is storing some other tag-format than FLAC does, wouldn't it be good to set padding to "-P 0"?

Good question! Indeed --dont-use-padding may be useful if you want to save some few bytes

EDIT 2: I found the Runtime archoves now.. Didn't see it at first glance. I bet this will solve my problem (-:

Yep, should work better now I will release an installer with the next version of mkaenc providing the latest mkvtoolnix and all the required DLL.

This post has been edited by goldenear: Aug 4 2004, 13:00

[ChristianHJW]

EDIT: When trying to access mkvmerge doubleclicking the file i get the message:

mkvmerge.exe is a program that must be called from command line, you cant start it by double clicking on it.

The program you are searching for is called

mmg.exe

its the GUI coming with it, creating the right command line for what you wnat to do with it, and running the program with this command then.

[NoXFeR]

EDIT: When trying to access mkvmerge doubleclicking the file i get the message:

mkvmerge.exe is a program that must be called from command line, you cant start it by double clicking on it.

The program you are searching for is called

mmg.exe

its the GUI coming with it, creating the right command line for what you wnat to do with it, and running the program with this command then.

I know. However, when using mkaenc.exe, the error message didn't appear, so I tried doubleclicking it, and it ws thus I discovered the missing package.

[NoXFeR]

Ok: New question: I have made the .mka-file using the guide provided in mkaenc.html. However, I am not very pleased with the way they lood in foobar. I don't know if you find it practical, but I don't. I guess the indexes are there so that one would know which indexes are used.

Foobar 1

But is it possible to make it look more like the standard Fooobar 2?

This post has been edited by NoXFeR: Aug 5 2004, 00:28

[goldenear]

Ok: New question: I have made the .mka-file using the guide provided in mkaenc.html. However, I am not very pleased with the way they lood in foobar. I don't know if you find it practical, but I don't. I guess the indexes are there so that one would know which indexes are used.

Foobar 1

But is it possible to make it look more like the standard Fooobar 2?

We have updated foo_matroska to support the new tags and chapters organisations of the mka. I will post very soon the link where you will be able to download the latest versions of mkaenc, mkvtoolnix and foo_matroska.
At least pre-versions of all this will be ready in the next hours... Please wait until then.

[goldenear]

Next release of mkaenc is ready and it will online for download when mktoolnix 0.9.5 is released. It should be available around the end of next week, in the same time as a new Matroska pack and a new release of foo_matroska.

WARNING: THE SPECS OF MATROSKA FILES FOR CD TO MKA HAVE BEEN IMPROVED AND SO HAVE CHANGED!
PLEASE WAIT FOR MKVTOOLNIX 0.9.5 TO BE AVAILABLE BEFORE ENCODING YOUR WHOLE CD COLLECTION TO MKA. ANY MKA FILE CREATED WITH A PREVIOUS VERSION OF MKVTOOLNIX WILL HAVE TO BE DEMUXED AND REMUXED TO BE COMPATIBLE WITH THE LATEST SPECS.
I RECOMAND NOT TO USE MKAENC ANY MORE UNTIL MKVTOOLNIX 0.9.5 IS READY!

Please wait a few more days, you won't regret it...

This post has been edited by goldenear: Aug 7 2004, 01:15

[BO(V)BZ]

I haven't been using your encoder to make my MKA files, but no matter how we made our matroska files, this new version completely kills all backwards compatibility? This would be a huge pain in the ass for me, as I've already made about 150 CD's in this way, and burnt about half of those to DVD. If this change indeed breaks all backwards compatibility, would it be possible for somebody to make a tool that will convert, in one simple step, an old matroska file to a new one, keeping all the tags, etc?

[goldenear]

It will be easy to convert an old mka file to a new one... just extract the old one to get back the audio and the cue file and remux them with mkvmerge version 0.9.5 or highter
A script to automate the process should be easy to do...

[BO(V)BZ]

If you could give me some pointers about how to do that, I'd appreciate it, when the time comes. I really don't know that much about Matroska, and the only reason that I use it is so that I can have a single-file archive with tags. I don't store images in it, or anything fancy =]

Is there a way to just 'open' up an MKA file, like you would a .rar archive? Or would you have to use command-line tools the whole time? Matroska offers some cool possibilities, but it could use a little more user-friendlyness =]

[ChristianHJW]

Is there a way to just 'open' up an MKA file, like you would a .rar archive?  Or would you have to use command-line tools the whole time?

You wnat to play it ? or get access to attached files ? Get the matroska full pack 1.0.2 from http://packs.matroska.org and tick the box for 'matroskaprop.exe' in the setup configuration dialogue, it will install the matroska shell extension which will allow you to do a lot of things from Windows Explorer, like extract attachements, etc. .....

[Omion]

Is there a way to just 'open' up an MKA file, like you would a .rar archive?  Or would you have to use command-line tools the whole time?  Matroska offers some cool possibilities, but it could use a little more user-friendlyness =]

There is a frontend to mkvextract.exe called MKVextractGUI. It's in French, but you can probably guess what the buttons do. You can get it over here (first post by NEXUS6)

You wnat to play it ? or get access to attached files ? Get the matroska full pack 1.0.2 from http://packs.matroska.org and tick the box for 'matroskaprop.exe' in the setup configuration dialogue, it will install the matroska shell extension which will allow you to do a lot of things from Windows Explorer, like extract attachements, etc. .....

MatroskaProp is great for extracting attachments, but as far as I know it doesn't extract tracks. For that you need to use mkvextract[gui].

[goldenear]

An mka file can be used as any audio file and so can be played in software players such as Foobar 2000 or MPC (hardware players may come later).
You can also extract elements from an mka file (tracks or attachments). In order to do it you just need mkvextract.
If you want to try matroska I REALLY recommand you to wait for mkvtoolnix 0.9.5 and the next matroska pack to be released. I will also release the next version of mkaenc in the same time (expected for the end of the week). In the same time I will put online a guide about mka and CD backup. As you will see matroska is very powerful and easy to use.

[NoXFeR]

Any news on this one? It has been over a month now..

[kurtnoise]

@goldenear and Matroska team :

I recovered mkaencoder 1.0.0 from the svn to make a compile for myself. Is it usable or not ??

[ChristianHJW]

@goldenear and Matroska team :

I recovered mkaencoder 1.0.0 from the svn to make a compile for myself. Is it usable or not ??

Sure you can use, but the tags will not be fully spec compliant afterwards, as some tags will be changed in the new system ( though not the main tags AFAIK ).

About Goldenear, he is missing in Action since some time now ..... i guess he was caught by a woman in his vacation ....

[robUx4]

I'd like to work on it, but for the moment I spend all my time on the menu system. Hopefully that won't take too long now...