Just to let you know, I contacted Speek to get a batch converter for mp4creator. It's a pain in the ass having hundereds of laggy AAC files, when I wanted mp4! (mp4 runs a lot quicker on startup in winamp on my pcs!) He never made a full frontend because, like me, he didn't understand half the commands in there (lots of video stuff!) So, this is just an AAC in MP4 out type affair, but a very very speedy one!


Anyone who wants the tool go to RareWares


Just thought I'd let you know, it was a great use for me!

The levels of interest... the demand for such a thing... it's... overwhelming.

Thanks Mac

i did get it - just have not had time to play with it yet. i normally do everything in mpc but think aac and mp4 have a strong future. i like to "play" with different audio formats.

edit - i believe that the magnitude of such a frontend has just been overlooked. once eveyone else realises what this baby can do - they will be flocking like no tomorrow.
a bit of humor . but seriously - thank you. i just need time to test/play with it and aac/mp4 in greater detail.

Hehe

At least 1 dude was interested!

It's been taken down at the request of Speek - it's not good enough to be listed as one of his frontends!!


No worries though, he's releasing something to do the trick even better soon.

I must have missed this post before, because I really want to have this program. It is extremely annoying to convert the files in the command line. This tool will greatly speed this up for me. I'll be watching for it's next release.

Jordan

Mac

still have not had time to "play" but most likely this weekend. wow there is already an upgrade for it. i told you it just takes a little time.

I'm just waiting for a fully working MP4 decoder before I start converting to MP4... But when I do start, I sure as hell ain't gonna' convert thousands of AAC files by hand... So I guess I'll have to make a front end of my own...

Ivan's next codec is going to make MP4 automatically though isn't it? And of course... with it's release, it means encoding everything again for the quality increase! )

The new frontend is here: http://home.wanadoo.nl/~w.speek/ivan&menno.htm

It can go from wav -> mp4 in one step and can also convert your aac files to mp4. Of course you'll need a Psytel encoder and Mp4Creator to do the real work And if you want to decode your aac or mp4 files to wav files you'll need FAAD. All these back-end programs are available at Rarewares. (just mentioning this for newbies who might be reading this).

Thank you!
Another extremely useful front-end by Speek.

Seems that the plans changed. It can produce both .AAC and .MP4 files.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....=50&#entry45396

Does converting a VBR encoded AAC to an MP4 container make the resulting file CBR?

I'm currently using Psytel 2.15 with the following arguments: -ultra -profile 2

This is to create a backup of my CDs with more compression than Monkey's or the other lossless encoders provide. AAC with these settings is transparent to me and perfect for transcoding to other formats to support my various devices.

Anyway, if someone has a better solution or thinks I should wait for Nero's support before I go through all my CDs, please say so now!

GodHead

No, it only changes the header informations on every frame, but the file will remain VBR.



Did you test lower bitrate settings like -normal, -extreme or -archive and did they show any artifacts, or were you just guessing that -ultra would be the best setting for you? By the way, Long Term Prediction that you enabled with -profile 2 is useless for high bitrates, it only helps at low bitrates by analyzing the purely tonal components of a signal and substituting them in the decoder. Furthermore I'm not sure if this profile works in PsyTEL v2.15, because I could not hear any differences in my own recent tests.



I don't think that Ivan has tuned the -ultra preset in Nero, but generally this plugin will be faster than PsyTEL, so you wouldn't have to spend so much time for that.

Hmmm, when I play the .MP4 files back within WinAmp2 in_mp4 the bitrate stays constant. Any Clue why?



I tried all three of those settings. Didn't really hear any artifacts, but I wanted the extra headroom. Just a peace of mind type deal I guess. Plus, it was labeled as Transcoding option, which is what I wanted.



I wasn't sure what the difference was, I just saw a post on AudioCoding.com that mentioned to use LTP vs the normal. I was too lazy to do any research because I've already wasted my time trying to find what codec I like the best. Loseless codecs like Monkey's are great, but I would only be able to get 2 (maybe 3) backups per blank CD and that's useless. I'd rather just make a 1:1 burn at that point. MPC was pretty nice, but the highs sounded a little off to me. I didn't look into OGG since it's made for lower bit-rates. I figured AAC would be the way since it is part fo the MP4 standards, which means hardware should support it a little further down the road.



Well tell Ivan to tune the -ultra preset
I'm thinking I should just hold off on my CD archive until the Nero plugin is released.

PS. Is there any tagging options? I tried to use ID3v2 but the input plugins for Winamp would throw errors with them in there.

GodHead

As far as I know, that's just because the Winamp2 plugin doesn't show the current bitrate (which will vary), only the average. Something to do with how it scans the file on startup I think.. which is why mp4's are so much faster to start than .aac files!


I was advised to stick with the default, simple profile. Most (if not all?) hardware players can only decode simple AAC files, plus the resulting differences I haven't been able to tell... except in a couple of cases where Profiles 1 messed up horribly, and profile 2 also sounded worse than the simple profile!




I'm waiting for the Nero plugin before I do any more encoding And I would hope there are tagging features built in with it, that would seem the sensible thing to do. There were some proper tagging features planned by somebody.. If you use the mp4 file format, then there are proper tags included with it (not like id3v2 which is sort of tacked on with a couple of nails)

Like Mac already wrote, Winamp shows the averaged bitrate that is still written in the header of the MP4 file. You can check this by pressing Alt-3 in Winamp. But the individual frames of a converted MP4 file don't carry the information about their bitrate anymore, so it can't be displayed by Winamp.



OK, this question seems to be an all-time goodie at Hydrogen Audio, so I'm not gonna get into this again. And of course it's your own decision how many bits you want to spend/waste for your peace of mind.



But surely only for low bitrates, not for -ultra...



That's probably correct.



I don't know (because I don't use them anyhow), but probably Menno will.

Oh, it carries this information, it's not hard to know how many bytes are read for a frame
I can add variable bitrate display if you want...



Hmm, id3v2 doesn't work in in_mp4.
MP4 files can have tagging but there's no real way for me to put them in yet. Have to wait for some library changes from the MPEG4IP people.

Menno