I am pleased to announce the launch of FREE Reference Quality MPEG-4 Audio solution from Nero, in the command line form!

* First in the world FREE 2-Pass MPEG-4 AAC Encoder
* Support for mono, stereo and multichannel encodings
* Support for sampling rates up to 96 kHz, up to 32-bit Floating-Point PCM input
* Compression Ratios ranging from ultra high (58 CDs fit on one!) to High-End Audio (2.5:1), for absolutely perfect audiophile encodings
* Support for Embedded Album Art (Covers, Booklets, Lyrics!)
* Store Entire Audio Album in a Single .mp4 File with all the Features of an Audio CD embedded inside, but at a fraction of the space!
* Reference Quality MPEG-4 Audio Codec
* Fully Compatible with the Latest Version of the State-of-the-art MPEG-4 Audio Standard (LC-AAC, HE-AAC and HE-AAC v2)
http://www.nero.com/nerodigital/eng/Nero_Digital_Audio.html

first

thanks and wow
checking out


edit: first run without comandline parameters gives "unknown software exception 0xc000001d at 0x00402214"

thank You Ivan.
i do not know how to work with command line. (long time since lame's command line encoder. Too long)
Let's hope it will be an frontend or something. Or i'll just have to learn

it crashes whatever I throw at it after showing the introduction lines.. too bad I don't have Visual Studio installed on this machine

Does your CPU have SSE2 instruction set? It could be the source of the problem (if it is, we will have to provide a different binary)

Athlon XP 32 bit barton core, winxp normal setup

Okay thanks for the info - our team will investigate this and try to come back to you as soon as possible .

I’d regard that as an advantage. It increases the likelihood of a Linux binary (*hint hint*).

Linux is actually on the way

This is a fantastic release and could be the one finally challenging LAME for the informed audio community.

It also makes Ahead/Nero look a lot better in my book The development and patent fees surely were no small treat, and offering it for free is very generous.

I feel a little bad for the crash thingie I know the feeling when after long work your baby blows up 5 minutes after release *sigh*

Many thanks to the Nero devs...Great stuff btw.


Is there a special command line for that ? I don't see something like that in the help file.


An other question : those settings are correct or this is completely useless now ?

Just tried.
It didn't crash, but it doesn't get any commandline parameter, not even -help.
It just says
************************************************************
*
* Nero Digital Audio Reference MPEG-4 & 3GPP Audio Encoder
* Copyright © 2006 Nero AG
* All Rights Reserved Worldwide
*
* Package build date: May 1 2006
*
* See -help for a complete list of available parameters.
*
************************************************************

I run an AMD 32 bit Athlon Barton as well (mobile Athlon) @ Win XP Home SP2.

This looks really promising!
Will this implementation of aac work on an iPod?

It is wonderful gift!

Can't encode on Athlon XP here. I see an error

Yay

Will check it out right away.

Sounds promising, no pun intended.

Thanks a lot!

Erroring here as well; it hangs for a while and then a Microsoft dialogue pops up.

AMD 32 Windows XP Pro SP2.

Edit: How rude of me! Thank you though. Once this minor glitch is ironed out it will be very useful.

Same behavior with my AMD Athlon XP 2600+ with WinXP Pro SP2 (afaik, SS2 is NOT supported). It seems this release does not like AMD chips.

Hurrah Ivan!

I'm definitely excited about this. My ONLY complaint is that it doesn't support input via FLAC files. All my music is archived as FLAC, so I'm going to have to decode the songs to WAV before I can do anything. Any plans on allowing for other types of input in the future?

works great with mine!

P4 @ 4.2Ghz, XP Pro



You could use the Foobar CLI encoder right? Just to encode from FLAC. Sureley foobar can do that

Edit: Yes, just tried it, used foobar to convert from FLAC to the ref encoder, and it works.

Pasqui



No, it isn't. I guess we should wait for another binary

Athlon XP does not support SSE2.

Athlon64 does.

I've got some problems with the command line for foobar2000 and 2 questions.

1. My fb2k testing command line is: -q 0.8 -if %s -of %d

It encodes insanely fast (3 times as fast as for vorbis or mp3/lame), but in the end the converter crashes and fb2k complains:

"Error flushing file (Object not found) : file://U:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\Squeller\Desktop\Bedächtig, nicht eilen.mp4"

I think there's no output in the end? Processor issue here? (I've got an old daddy Intel P III)

2. I'm not into the nero/aac stuff. Where is this codecs place between vorbis, lame mp3, musepack? Whats the target audience?

Thx, people.

I don't really understand what you mean here.

I aslo don't have sse2 instruction and get same fatal error. Devs can you fix this

Alright, I'll go ahead and do that. Am I able to do 2-pass encoding with a FLAC file? What would the parameters look like using foobar's CLI? I think I have to put %s in there somewhere because doing 2-pass won't work through a pipe.

The insanely fast bit is where it is decoding the original file, into wav which is why it is fast.

I have no idea about why you get that error though. Have you tried saving to a different location?



-q 0.1 -2pass -if %s -of %d (for quality 0.1)

Our encoder is fully compliant with the MPEG-4 standard. For support issues about the iPod, please contact Apple: http://www.apple.com/support/

thank you developers!
this is a nice and much appreciated step into the right direction.

now raise hands, who's in for the GUI?

How about adding an option to the AAC Encoder utility to create files with a .m4a file extension instead of .mp4 (for all the iTunes and iPod users out there) to avoid having to manually rename files or having to run an extra program/script to rename file extension fom .mp4 to .m4a? Thanks.

Note that the encoder accepts data from standard input, but you will want to give the -ignorelength option if you do this. So for fastest encoding with foobar or similar frontends, please use

-ignorelength -if - -of %d

I'm using "-q 0.6 -if - -of %d" and it works fine. Use "-" for pipe.

Huh?

Simply specify .m4a as the extension.

Thanks Jim. Worked like a charm. Yeah... I'm definitely digging this new encoder. I just need to see the differences between single/2-pass modes. Anyone plan on doing any new ABX tests?

Use -ignorelength in that case:

-ignorelength : Ignores length signaled by WAV headers of input file.
Useful for certain frontends using stdin.

foobar's CLI can specify the output extension. Or you can use something like ezXTN--a nifty little batch extension converter (just Google it) with drag-and-drop capabilities.

Doesn't work, also with the -ignorelength, as suggested by garf.

"Encoder has terminated prematurely with code -1073741795; please re-check parameters"

I think I'll have to look into a cmd box and see what happens.

EDIT: -q 0.8 -if test.wav -of test.mp4 --> Windows reports a crash, cmd box stays alive, the encoder does only show up "type -h for help" and stuff.

I mean, with the old interface we can set some presets for the quality mode. So, could you provide some equivalent values for the quality levels with this new encoder ?

Thanks.

Thank you. I've actually changed it right after you have mentioned a couple of posts earlier.



You should maybe try to change the location of the encoder's exe, ie c:/encoders/nero/. I sometimes have that kind of issues when I leave the encoder in a folder on the desktop.

The Pentium 3 doesn't support SSE2. I hope there's a regular binary up soon.




Low bitrates (published encoder supports LC-AAC, HE-AACv1 and HE-AACv2)

http://www.mp3-tech.org/tests/aac_48/results.html

Medium bitrates (the new version is better and doesn't have that bug )

http://www.maresweb.de/listening-tests/mf-128-1/results.htm




I don't think it makes sense The new encoder is better and attains the same quality at lower bitrates, but a lot of listening tests would be needed to find a reliably correspondence from old settings to new settings.

Moreover, the old presets had approximate bitrates that were significantly off from what the old encoder really produced. You can find a lot of complaining about it in old threads on this forum. The new one just takes a quality level. Different people have different conceptions about what "Normal" should be, anyway.

Not a fix for your problem, but you can use "-q 0.8 -if - -of %d" since the encoder susports StdIn.

Crap, missed the second page. I should get some sleep.

It will encode on my computer but doesnt write header(?) so I cant play it in Winamp.

Can you provide some more details? How did you encode, with what...

I guess that means users should try out different settings for themselves to determine a q value that they want?

I've been trying this out and i love it. Cant really tell the difference in 2pass yet but having a cli for nero that can output to a m4a is great. (using fb2k) Can we put in a q of say .385 ? or does it have to be just one number (.3/.4/.5)

thanks.

what is minimum bitrate for 5.1 encoding

NeroAACEnc.exe accept fractional value.
-q 0.425 produce around 128kbps.

Pretty much. "It depends on what you want to do and how much quality you want"



You can use fractional values.

BTW. Using 2-pass with VBR makes no sense VBR will just use how many bits it needs.

sure
encoded with commandline: neroaacenc.exe -q 0.5 -if j:\1.wav -of j:\1.aac
now its encoding for about 30sec. original file: 53182kb encoded: 6809kb
dbpoweramp says length: 0:00 size: 0kb original size: 0kb
Winamp crashes when trying to play it
cant transcode with Dbpoweramp

>>EDIT:<< woah I see it it is MP4 container so no AAC extension sorry for confusion

J.M.

Im currently also trying to find a value that produces ~128. And .4 for the stuff i listen to is comming out around 130. Thats why i was saying like .385 or something would produce 128.

Thanks tho



Yeah i guess i was caught up in the moment and thinking video VBR. (2 pass VBR using xvid/divx etc) heheh

edit...

Hmmm using single pass created an audio file of 132kbps while a 2pass was 127kbps. Both sound the same to me ... just curious ...

so that would make your new commandline:

"-q 0.6 -ignorelength -if - -of %d"

correct?