http://www.nerodigital.com

New design and encoded material could be found there - also, the site will contain up-to-date information concerning Nero Digital technology.

ciao..


a quick question.. (a little of topic..)

i haven` used any of aheads products since the release of 6..
so i wouldn`t know.. is any of nero digital capable to rip DVDA
to aac/mp4..


btw. nice site.. a little more informative..
btw2. wazzup with this powerpack concept..

gday..

why the face rc55..
(to be more presice.. audio only.. from a dvd..
dvda or not..)

I know why. But i would risk losing my neck and being called a drama queen for the nth time

So, I recommend people just avoid commenting on rc55's post...



hardly. There's no DVD-A ripper available so far, AFAIK.

Actually, Recode 2 can't even rip encrypted DVDs. (Of course, there are n ways to circumvent this limitation)

Well, I just dont think 4 jpeg's are a good judge of a codec.

Ruairi

WOOT!!!

http://www.nerodigital.com/en/NDAudioFeatures.html



Good.

It was taking too long for Ahead to join the bullshit train

well, they are also a little bit too dark to be usable to really show what the codec is able to do

I think I'll setup a model bullshit train in my basement...

seriously though, I couldn't help but laugh reading the info on their website... I guess you gatta be sensational to sell..

well, there are samples where I would prefer a Nero 64k HE-AAC over any 128k mp3, any time. play around a little with fatboy

So, any word on when I'll be able to walk into Best Buy and pick up a shiny new HD-based music player with the Nero Digital logo on the box?

Is it just me or are those samples they provide are really poor quality of mpeg4? I mean they so much bloorier than the dvd ones. I seen better 1 CD rips than that. They really should try to show themselves off harder!

My calculator's broken... 128 * 50% != 96

CDs are really that far from transparent?

Bravo on going with Valid XHTML, very nice looking site.

hhmmm, the way I get it, the statement means that the quality of nero-aac at a bitrate of 96 is equal to a 128kbps mp3 file. the 50% relate just to size, not to bitrate.
though that makes the claims not less wild

A lot of BS but still an excellent suite of programs from Ahead.

I concur, which is why i've been playing around with the new beta of recode 2 (which afaik is the only program to do nero digital you can get your mitts on).
Results are promising so far, it has to be said, although player support is an issue (zoom can play the video, but doesn't find the audio tracks. Possibly installing QT with its mp4 codecs will help, but since it has a quicktime compatability checkbox in the advanced encoding options (forces a couple of choices and prevents some others ) i'm not sure. Currently it seems to be nero showtime or nothing. Still, the quality of the rips it does are pretty good, and it is pretty nippy (the option to do a second pass only if the first pass warrents it is nice, but not a feature I would use...)

Haha, and bitrate is in no way related to the size?

Menno

Well, make all fun out of Digga you want, that makes the ND site no less full of bullshit.

Install the CoreAAC playback filter (google is your friend) and any player will do.

NO! bitrate and filesize are commenly believeed to be related, but recent searches by Grisworld Bitfile have proven the opposite, as some of you might have already thought.
uhm, äh... ok, my mouth was once again quicker than my brain (happens sometimes if you're pretty drunk )
second that. though everybody with a little bit of insight will not believe all this without serious doubts. then again, I hope the majority of potential customers w i l l have the insight... one must say though, that the nero aac codec IS very good indeed... but not that good.

well, tnx for the site, i finnally found a clicky to upgrade from nero 5.5 oem to 6. (and that was a key from 5.1 ac3 to 5.1 aac as well...)

On this board most people will indeed know better and make a reasonable quality comparison before chosing a codec. But not everyone visits this board, so you need to use some marketing

Besides that, I don't think the majority of the users are going to compare codec quality, they just pick one codec to use, whatever their reason may be (ease of use, marketing BS, ... ).

Menno

This marketing crap reminds me of Microsoft FUD. Is Ahead really sinking that low?

Not even Apple/Quicktime is spreading as much FUD as this.

Oh well.. I guess the best way to get "up in the world" is to lie your way there..

I'm not a fan of marketing exaggerations, but this is way over the top. Do you even know what FUD means? Clearly you don't.

Also:

1) 64kbps HE-AAC is better than MOST 128kbps MP3's out there
2) 128kbps AAC is transparent in most cases to the great majority of people

The only 'bullshit' claim as far as I'm concerned is that 48kbps HE-AAC delivers CD quality audio. Then again, MS is saying 64kbps WMA7 delivers CD quality audio, so I can see why Ahead wants to say that.

Microsoft and Apple seemed to be doing quite well last time I looked

FUD stands for "Fear Uncertainity and Doubt' and it can be attributed to some other group here claiming presence of various >>patent "issues"<< with mp3/mp3Pro/AAC/HE-AAC as well as alleged change of mp3 decoding licensing policy on slashdot - and I am sure they will recognize themselves here. Just to clarify what 'FUD' really means.

With all respect, but I can't find any sign of FUD on the NeroDigital site - can you help me a little bit, but please stick to the definition of 'fud', please...


Info there is not BS, it is marketing information - you know, we have to sell the product as well, and the some of the competition is making wild claims, and for consumer marketing is very important - and one thing for sure is that HE-AAC is certainly better than same competition at same conditions.

And I already explained the "48 kb/s CD Quality" issue - and I am certainly not going to do that all over again. NeroDigital.com is a product web site, not a scientific analysis site (HA is, right?)

from my side i understand if companies claim a lot what their tools are able to do. its simply necessary to get recognized...

in the long run only the best codecs or the tools with the greatest usability will be successfull anyways

Can we ever expect to see a stand alone audio encoder? I don't do video, and I don't need a burner.

It would be nice to be able to get something simular to the razor/easy lame frontend and having it built in to the frontend as opposed to a console app would make it possible to control the registration of the program.

Valid point - it is probably very true that for audiophile both 48 kb/s HE-AAC and 48 kb/s WMA are not "cd quality" but one can't deny that HE-AAC is definitely higher quality, and gets better ITU score.

"CD Quality" is a very subjective term and there is no "political corectness" of using / not using it - so everyone can claim "cd quality" for their solution at certain bit rate, fhg did so for their first MP3 encoder @128 kb/s, AAC reached same level at 96, etc..

I personally refrain from using "cd quality" at all - I only use ITU-R scores and test conditions (eventually ODG in development issues) , but that's not the language that you could use to approach the average consumer (imagine this: hey - our solution gets ITU-R score of 3.8 @ 64 kb/s) come on.. the only term that could be associated with quality is the good ol' CD, at least for most of buyers out there.

that is the ideal case in the sence of darwin. but if you spin that thought a little wider (again in the frame darwinism). then 'quality of the codec' is likly to be just a part of the term fitness. it also includes the power of the organisation behind it, and how it wields it's power. also the general state of society should be taken into account (a little bit ot, but nevertheless important for this discussion)

Also true, but keep in mind that, at least for codecs developed inside ITU/ISO, there is strictly scientific method of evaluation of quality being used.

There were some "organization" issues earlier (M/S stereo and filterbank in MP3) but as far as I know currently only quality/performance matters during development of any standard and there is equal-opportunity to improve the standard if there is really an significant improvement.

So, HE-AAC is definitely best solution quality/bitrate wise (with some new tools that will be included very soon it will be even more powerful) considering all scientifically available measurment tools (double-blind testing, ODG, etc..) and that is why we chose to support and develop it further. I am quite confident that the correct decision was made towards development of HE-AAC (and some new and exciting stuff that will come in 2004) .

There is nothing "political" inside - if there was a better solution we'd use it, but there is no such thing currently.

There are some people that wrote frontends for the Nero AAC plugin.

Foobar2000, Nencode to name some of them. You can find more info searching this board.

Menno

yes, for development that's certainly true. but that is only the first step to one of the goals of research: to sell the producct (the first would be to do research 'just' out of curiosity).
I have no reason to not believe that. though one most of the time see oneself in the light of the comeptition (in this case, other companies), you almost got no choise to play the game of e.g. microsoft, which it's marketing startegies (only in terms of addvertising). almost...

Well - one could argue that the aim of commercial research is patent grant, and making money out of selling products and patent licenses - which is probably true for majority of cases.

But anyway, good thing is even to support a solution which was designed by scientific foundation and accepting only highest quality proposals from research bodies. The difference here is that ND was (and future versions will be) designed by using state-of-the-art tech which is also open as well.

Regarding selling, well - yes.. we have to sell it at some point, right? IMO, it is better to sell and market something which is really very good and MPEG-4 happens to be just that

--> and you are quite good at doing so and let things shine in the light where some ppl might see a hint of shadows (realy no offence meant)

edit: that's one of the thing I meant (not a great example, but still):

well when it comes to quality (and that is what counts next to usability for the user) i suggest everyone to do its own test!

a great tool which allows the comparison frame-by-frame (also during playback and zoomed in) is avscompare!

just add
directshowsource("c:/path to/file.mp4") or
avisource("c:/path to/file.avi") and compare the two (or more files) visually...

Trust me, I spend a lot more time than I should reading this forum. Unless I am missing something major Nencode and everything else I've seen mentioned require that you already have Nero installed. My wish is for a complete package that includes not only the frontend, but also the dlls and anything else required by someone with no other products installed.

BTW, thanks for responding.

Well, ok - i might have been a bit harsh in my previous post. Sorry about that. It's just that im so tired of seeing big corporations market their products so damn high up in the sky. DVD Quality at 20% file-size? i don't think so. 64kbps or even 56kbps HE-AAC CD-Quality? heh..

The first big corporation that market their product in a way that makes sense, get's my cash and praise.

You know - I wouldn't like to be the first to start with that policy - but if some law is going to be applied in the future, why not Somehow I think that such move would just make people think others are just better because of marketing.

Speaking of which, "DVD Quality" and "CD Quality" are relative terms like I said couple of times before - they are not defined by some law or standard so everyone could use them for their products (mp3 / 128, aac / 96, wma / 64, he-aac / 48)

I think that product with following claim:



Just won't sell among average users - but it might look very professional on the other side If you ask for this figures, you usually visit sites like HA On a retail box, or product website people expect just company tech data with short description of quality that could be achieved. I can't phrase quoted sentence in "easy" language except CD-Like quality.

Plus, I am quite confident that I could easily pick 10 untrained listeners that won't hear significant difference between HE-AAC @64 and CD sound on a typical home system, so the claim still might hold even "legally"

Personally, I'd say Apple do a decent job of keeping their marketing speak believable. It seems their main selling point for AAC is that it's better than MP3, and that it is "indistinguishable" or "virtually indistinguishable" from the original at 128kbps. Whether it's "indistinguishable" or not is a question of definitions, but Roberto's tests showed that it isn't far from true.

This difference in PR between Apple, Ahead and Microsoft may be because Apple has a different objective. Where Ahead and Microsoft wish to convince Joe User that WMA/AAC/HE AAC is a space saver, Apple needs to argue that the songs they sell are of good quality. They seem to be counting on that if people use iTunes, they might as well use AAC, since it's better than MP3.

A couple of links:
iTunes overview
Apple's MPEG-4 AAC page

Nice to see that you guys finally have something online, however rudimentary. I'm not quite sure though how Ahead plans to look significant in comparison with divx.com or the rest of the sites representing the competition though with this

I guess it will be pretty interesting to see what happens in the future...

1. If there is any MP3 encoder that out performs 64kbps HE-AAC then 64kbps HE-AAC does not out perform 128kbps MP3.

2. 128kbps AAC is either transparent in all cases or it's not transparent. 128kbps AAC is not transparent to anyone who has done the slightest artifact training.

Wrong. The only thing you can infer from this situation is that HE-AAC would subsequently not be outperform 128kbps MP3 in all cases. That doesn't mean HE-AAC can't outperform 128kbps MP3 in some or even most cases though.



Wrong again for the same reasons.

Proposing that it can only be all or none like this is a false dilemma. Besides that, Garf already qualified his statements in that he was not speaking absolutely (note the "most" in both claims).

Granted, Ahead may not make the same qualifications for their statements which may result in them being misleading, but what you're saying here is just as misleading. As a reflection of reality, what Garf said is very much the case.