Apple has just released a new versions of QuickTime and iTunes.

Here you can find what's new in QT 6.5. Here is the QT 6.5 standalone installer.

What's New in QT 6.5:
3GPP and 3GPP2 Support
AMC Support
Unicode Text
Enhanced DV Playback

What's New in iTunes 4.2:
iTunes 4.2 allows you to sign in and buy music from the iTunes Music Store using either your AOL or Apple Account, view the iTunes Music Store in a separate window, and includes a number of performance improvements.
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

iTunes 4.2 was also released:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

What's New in version 4.2:
iTunes 4.2 allows you to sign in and buy music from the iTunes Music Store using either your AOL or Apple Account, view the iTunes Music Store in a separate window, and includes a number of performance improvements.

Does this update break the QTFairUse program??

1st post edited to avoid wasted space on portal page. Original 1st post:
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Hi all,
Apple has just released a new version of QuickTime.

Here you can find what's new.

Here is the QT 6.5 standalone installer.



Bye

Hmm.. iTunes 4.2 currently uses:

5,844 K of memory while minimized
10,464 K of memory while maximized

That's with a 14,352 files (mp3/aac) library, while playing a AAC file, and with SoundCheck on.

Finally some acceptable memory numbers from this program.

CPU usage has also gone down a bit

But it still doesn't read .mp4 tags or reckognize it as a audio file.. "Kind: QuickTime movie file".. What the hell Apple, wheren't you supposed to fix this!!!!.. argh!

It does play them back though, but still.. One can't even view the bitrate of the file..

Just confirmed that iTunes now correctly plays Nero MP4 files renamed to .M4A and reads their tags correctly.

Thanks skuo!

Menno

Yea that's fine and all, but IMHO, it should be able to read .mp4's as audio files too, and read their tags, without renaming the files..

I totally agree with you, it's so annoying to have to change all those extensions, too lazy to do it

ren /s *.mp4 *.m4a

Very annoying indeed...

For people that might get a .mp4 from a pal, or download it from somewhere, or even rip it with nero, and then decided to use iTunes as their default player after that (maybe they bought a ipod?), it might be. I'm talking about the regular day-to-day user here. Maybe that person even never used DOS back in the days.. And that user might not even know what AAC, MP4 or M4A is, besides that it is "better than MP3".

And we do want "everyone" to be able to use a good encoder, without being a "tech-geek", now don't we?

Yes I agree. To make MP4/M4A/AAC a popular audio encoding format it needs to be so easy that Aunt Martha or Grandma Jones can use it without knowing anything about having to change/rename file extensions.

Really they should have standardized on something like M4A to designate MPEG 4 Audio, as MP4 can contain so many other types/formats of files (video, etc.).

Now we are left with the results of the "hodgepodge" of file extensions. Winamp 5 uses .aac as it default to encode staright AAC (without MPEG 4 container). Many people will likely rip audio files using Winamp (especially kids/teenagers) and end of with files ending in .AAC. Nero uses .MP4 naming and Apple's default unprotected (no DRM) MP4 format has a .M4A extension standing for MPEG 4 Audio (or maybe even MPEG 4 Apple)

So it should stand to reason now that we have at least 3 different naming conventions for very similar types of files, that all encoders/players should recognize and know how to deal with all 3 commonly used formats for playback.

Nero should be able to read all 3 (I don't think it can read in a file with a .M4A extension right now). iTunes should be able to recognize and play a file with either a M4A or MP4 file extension. Winamp should be able to playback any .M4A, .MP4 or .AAC file natively without any plugins.

Now that Apple can read Nero MP4 files (as long as they're renamed as .M4A) we are making progress, but we have a way to go to make all programs "play nice" with each others differently named files.

Then the average user, "Joe MP4", can encode and play MPEG 4 Audio files to his/her heart's content and MP4 Audio can be posied to replace the older (and technically inferior) MP3 family of formats (including MP3 and MP3PRO).

The world loves a standard, remember VHS and Betamax, and having all these slightly different file formats can cause confusions and keep people from "taking the plunge" to start to use this wonderful MPEG 4 Audio format. Since we can't put "the genie back in the bottle" and use only one naming extension as a standard, we have to honor each other's formats to gain widespead user acceptance. My 2 cents worth... (done ranting)

I will make sure that .m4a is added as recognized extension in Nero Digital Audio plug-in for Nero 6 - in order to avoid all that fuss

Regarding .aac - no, that is a wrong way of doing it, I am strongly against it (reading AAC files). AAC files should be converted to MP4 file format since raw AAC has a lot of limitations, even putting tagging would break the specs.

There is a free and easy way to convert AAC files to MP4 , and I hope Nullsoft/AOL will support native MPEG-4 file format in the next revision of Winamp.



I really do not think that audio player shouldn't read MP4 extension at all - even if we consider all MP4 files as "potential Audio + Video (+ Systems" files what if someone wishes to put his movie soundtrack to iPod ... it would be waste of space, but still - you'd be able to play the file.

Other problem is that so far everyone, except Apple, is using MP4 also for "audio only" files as well - I am not 100% sure whether this is absolutely correct behavior (I'll check the specs) but so far FhG, Ahead, Sorenson, etc... are writing audio-only files with .mp4 extension. Anyway, these three are alredy a big bunch

.m4a is valid extension (it's not MPEG-4 Apple or something , as far as I remember there is a MIME type allocated for that as well.

Well, MP3 -> MP4 sounds like a "normal" upgrade for most people, but still M4A sounds more logical (MPEG 4 Audio), and M4V for Video, and MP4 for audio+video. IMHO, that makes most sense for me atleast.

If both audio and video files are .MP4 it'll be a whole lot of problems. Winamp and other players might be associated with the .mp4 extension. While it is a video, so it should have been opened in Quicktime (or bsplayer, or wmp9, or whatever really), etc, etc.. Thus you can't define one specific extension to be opened with one specific application.

This kind of sounds like a step in the wrong direction, cause it will be confusing for most people.

IMHO, i think Apple is the only one doing the right thing here. It seems like the rest of the AAC "bandwagon" just wants to use the MP4 extension for audio because that extension fits better to be the successor to the MP3 format (which is understandable, but this will all get confusing when there's AAC files, video files, all sorts of stuff, hell - even MP3 files muxed in a MP4 container - for MOST people).

It'll probably be like, if i download a .MP4, i'm never gonna know what i'm getting, untill i've got it.. is it a video? is it a (aac) audio file? or is it both? is it a crappy mp3 file within a mp4 container? is it something else?

Thanks Ivan for you statement:

I will make sure that .m4a is added as recognized extension in Nero Digital Audio plug-in for Nero 6 - in order to avoid all that fuss

That will at least make Apple iTunes and iPod users happier... No more converting filename extensions between the 2 apps (iTunes and Nero 6).

The rest is out of your hands (Fraunhofer, Sorenson, etc.) using .MP4. Let's just make the world a little easier for people that love Nero and also want to more easily play/use .M4A files as well.

Ivan, thanks again for agreeing to support .M4A files being recognized in Nero. Keep up the great work!

Adam

even if it doesn't say so in the change log, I wonder if they keep tuning their aac encoder? And will they ever support more bit rate options?

Wasn't Apple expected to add VBR to QT?

It supports VBR AAC/M4A playback and I believe the new Professional Version of Quicktime will encode VBR, just not the free player or iTunes which only encode CBR. Am I right?

Here is the info blub that mentions VBR support in Quicktime 6.5 from Apple's AAC Audio web page at:
http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/aac/

Because of its exceptional performance and quality, Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is at the core of the MPEG-4, 3GPP, and 3GPP2 specifications and is the new audio codec of choice for Internet, wireless, and digital broadcast arenas. AAC provides audio encoding that compresses much more efficiently than older formats such as MP3, yet delivers quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio.

AAC was developed by the MPEG group that includes Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony, and Nokia—companies that have also been involved in the development of audio codecs such as MP3 and AC3 (also known as Dolby Digital). The AAC codec in QuickTime 6 builds upon new, state-of-the art signal processing technology from Dolby Laboratories and brings true variable bit rate (VBR) audio encoding to QuickTime.

Move Over MP3
Internet audio has become wildly popular in recent years, specifically in the MP3 format. But what most listeners don’t realize is that MP3’s compression technology is more than a decade old. In those ten years, many advances in perceptual audio coding and compression have been achieved. AAC takes full advantage of these advances, resulting in higher quality output at lower data rates, allowing even modem users to hear a difference.

When compared side-by-side, AAC proves itself worthy of replacing MP3 as the new Internet audio standard. Take a look at these AAC advantages over MP3:
Improved compression provides higher-quality results with smaller file sizes
Support for multichannel audio, providing up to 48 full frequency channels
Higher resolution audio, yielding sampling rates up to 96 kHz
Improved decoding efficiency, requiring less processing power for decode

The Data Speaks for Itself
In numerous comparison tests, AAC comes out on top. Check out these impressive results:
AAC compressed audio at 128 kbps (stereo) has been judged by expert listeners to be “indistinguishable” from the original uncompressed audio source.*
AAC compressed audio at 96 kbps generally exceeded the quality of MP3 compressed audio at 128 kbps. AAC at 128 kbps provides significantly superior performance than does MP3 at 128 kbps.*
AAC was the only Internet audio codec evaluated in the range “Excellent” at 64 kbps for all of the audio items tested in EBU listening tests.*

* Information provided by Dolby Labs.

Why Wait?
With the release of QuickTime 6.5, the newest-generation technology for digital audio is now widely available – AAC audio in MPEG-4, 3GPP, and 3GPP2.

I think we've been through this for many times before on HA

- All AAC files are "VBR" (unless you really disable bit-reservoir) up to some extent, which is controlled by "bit reservoir" which is ~10 kbits @128/44/stereo

- QT does not allow custom bit buffer, and files are constant bit rate on a long run, try encoding silence for example - you'll end up with 128 kb/s file filled with "fill" bits. This is done because of streaming requirements.

- Nero allows "bitres-free" encoding method, where every frame could be encoded with any number of bits (usually controlled by psymodel), and these modes are called 'VBR' since they are only controlled by psymodel, not by any buffer - this is OK for fixed media, but for fixed-bandwidth streaming networks (i.e. ISDN) it might impose buffering problems

iTunes 4.2 can read Nero AAC tags/etc if renamed to .m4a - perfectly - yes..

But apparently it doesn't read the gapless information (no gapless playback).

Maybe this is because iTunes doesn't support gapless playback ? (not from lame tags either?).

this might be a bit off topic, but how is Nero better than iTunes in ripping music? i understood something that iTunes wouldn't use variable bitrate, but isn't aac always a variable bitrate? sorry to sound an idiot

Read 2 posts before yours



Menno

okay thanks... heh

so i guess there's no big difference between music ripped with iTunes and ripped with Nero...

Nero uses magic pixie dust! Seriously I can't remember the exact term, but the MP4 files created with Nero, and played back with Nero Media Player are amazing! When you play them back in other programs, they sound the same as M4A files.

here is a program that quickly renames extensions for AAC.

MP4 to M4A or M4A to MP4

it also has another program that converts AAC to Mp4 container & Mp4 to plain AAC