Ahead Software Showcases Major Enhancement to Nero Digital with AVC/H264 and MPEG-4 Parametric Stereo Extensions in High Efficiency AAC at NAB 2004

Of course everybody is invited to visit us at NAB, to meet some of the people behind Nero Digital.

Menno

sounds cool... what is parametric stereo and how does it compare to joint and/or intensity stereo?

Parametric stereo basically encodes the file as mono (HE AAC) and stores some parameters in the bitstream to restore the stereo image in the decoder. Giving a bitrate saving of around 33% over normal stereo HE AAC.

Menno

Is it a lossless process like Mid/Side stereo coding, or is it like Intensity Stereo?

It's more like IS, but definately not the same

Menno

Ah, sounds cool Who's gonna be there? Will the HA admins be there like they were at the IBC last year?

Ivan, JohnV, me and some men in suit

Menno

I want picz!!!

... but not what's-her-name?

- M.

Alexandra.

Ivan must be feeling lonely

I propose HA start hosting it's own convention...

*edit: Spelling to satisfy Digga

converntions are more for the hardcore special type of thing you know what I mean nudge nudge get the idea know what I mean people
I would propose a convention instead

So I made a freakin' typo. Kill me...

Can I come?

PM please!

Ruairi

heh, hoping again to get a box of Ahead cigarettes/candy?

What can you come? Of course you can come to Vegas.
But it's a looooong flight and there are probably hardly any hotel rooms left.

hotel rooms?
you are planning to sleep in vegas ???

that's what all the oxygen is pumped in for!


...ninnies

When can we use those features?

That's what I'm wondering. I was waiting for some big Nero Digital update to begin my huge encoding spree, and this seems to fit the bill.

Menno, will this process be used for only dual-channel audio, or will it be used for multiple, or all channels?

Anyway, this sounds great!

The process for multichannel is still being standardized.

Okay. Thanks, Roberto.

So, how'd the show go? Anybody take any pictures?

Although parametric multichannel extension might not be so efficient, because at least in 5.1-movies the content of diffrent channels varies greatly compared to each other.

This may be inane, but how long does it usually take between standardisation and a consumer product? Wasn't HE-AAC in Nero about like 9 months after ratification? Would we need to wait for 'FAAD3' for a free decoder for something like that?

Can you tell i've got ants in my pants for this tech.

P.S. AC3 throws in the range of 384kbps at 5.1 regardless of whether or not much sound is actually being made in the back let alone if it's similar to front channels (i think - someone should correct me on this). Could P.S. multichannel do better? if it's coding channel differences (in a way i have no clue about) then like toke said, could it actually do much better? Then again, it's not like you've got 5.1 X mono audio tracks completely independant of each other.

AFAIK not parametric but spatial is the mode that's meant for use with multi-channel in AAC.

See also here.

In movie soundtracks dialog is usually at center, music uses also L&R and atmosphere&effects also rear channels. So this "parametric spatial" could be efficient mainly with music&effects. That's an advance anyway...

Menno, any chance we would ever see a Mac OS X version available? It seems like there is a lot of interesting development going on in Nero AAC but us non-Windows users cannot take advantage of it. I would be interested in a Mac OS X command line encoder if the price wasn't too high!