Could we add gapless to Apple's AAC encoder?, task for iTunesencode or other? Options

[guruboolez]

I have a question about a possible new iTunesEncode feature (or any other program driving Apple's AAC encoder). Wouldn't it be possible to add a gapless feature? It might sound silly, but after all, nyaochi did it with the latest Fraunhofer MP3 encoder (here and here). I'm not a coding expert -I'm not a coder at all- but I think that doing it wouldn't be an impossible task.

Adding somewhere in the tags the precise offset (constant for Apple's encoder) and calculating the amount of padded sample maybe suffice? I don't really know. faac and Nero AAC are gapless, and apparently Apple is not hurry to implement this feature. It's a pity, because Apple's encoder is pretty good. Gapless playback is not possible on any iPod, but on a computer (playing with foobar2000 as exemple) users would benefits from it.

Could we reproduce Nyaochi's ACMenc patch to work with iTunes? Or make something similar? What do you think?

[Tropican]

We need: 1) encoder delay of iTunes AAC encoder; 2) number of padded silent samples at the end of stream by iTunes (of course it's not constant)

How did you find the delay of the FhG encoders nyaochi? How exactly is an encoder delay determined in any format, or is it format specific?

Removing silent samples has been done so many times in audio editors that it shouldn't be a problem. Or will removing silent samples that aren't padded ones by iTunes cause even bigger problems?

I'm not sure how AAC gapless is achieved

There's the FAAC source.

Please no developers take this as an insult. Note that I'm minimizing the amount of work this would take as I'm

1) Not a programmer
2) Someone who really would like to see someone at least attempt to do this, and am worried that the amount of time this would need may scare some talented people away, so is unestimating the time on such a project greatly
3)Am afraid that when iTunes receives VBR support from Quicktime 7, even if the quality ends up being better than Nero, most users here will have to stick with Nero for gapless.


There's always the chance Apple will add support themselves

[nyaochi]

How did you find the delay of the FhG encoders nyaochi?  How exactly is an encoder delay determined in any format, or is it format specific?

Lookint at this page to guess the delay, I measured and confirmed the value by using a wave editor.

Removing silent samples has been done so many times in audio editors that it shouldn't be a problem.  Or will removing silent samples that aren't padded ones by iTunes cause even bigger problems?

You missed the point. AAC stream seems to have 1024 frame size, which means that you will/must get 1024*n samples after decoding an AAC stream. That's one reason why iTunes must pad silent samples to fill the last frame. And there's another reason from encoder delay, but I don't mention here. Anyway, the necessary task is not removing the silence, but telling a decoder the number of samples to be removed for playback. It cannot be achieved by an audio editor.

There's the FAAC source.

Please no developers take this as an insult.  Note that I'm minimizing the amount of work this would take as I'm

1) Not a programmer
2) Someone who really would like to see someone at least attempt to do this, and am worried that the amount of time this would need may scare some talented people away, so is unestimating the time on such a project greatly
3)Am afraid that when iTunes receives VBR support from Quicktime 7, even if the quality ends up being better than Nero, most users here will have to stick with Nero for gapless.


There's always the chance Apple will add support themselves 

Of course I saw the FAAC source. I understand your feeling to minimize/simplify the problem. But the problem cannot be simplified as you expected. The simplest solution would be something like what I wrote in the previous post, which talented people won't scare.