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Topic: WMA9 under Windows 98? (Read 4161 times) previous topic - next topic
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WMA9 under Windows 98?

Hi,

First post here... looks like a great forum, I look forward to contributing!

Anyway, I've read some promising reports on WMA9, and I'd like to try it for myself. But the encoder download from Microsoft will only install on XP or 2000, and my PC runs Windows 98SE. So I'm wondering if there is any way of compressing to WMA9 (specifically VBR) in Win98?

I've installed the WM9 encoder on my XP machine at work, and taken home the relevant files that have been mentioned in other threads on this forum: wmadmod/e.dll, wmcmd.vbs and copied them onto my machine (the DLLs over the old versions). But when I try to run the encoder, e.g.:
cscript wmcmd.vbs -a_codecs
... I get error messages such as "Cannot locate automation class WMEncEng.WMEncProfile2" and various others depending on which command I try to use.

EAC and CDex both appear to use the above VBS script to encode to WMA9, so no use. I've found another program on the 'net that claims to support WMA9 under Win98 : "Advanced MP3 Converter", but WMA VBR encoding seems to have some bugs and as a result is also not much use.

So... does anyone know how to get the encoder script working under Win98, or know of any other programs that support it which actually work properly?

Thanks!

WMA9 under Windows 98?

Reply #1 –
Windows Media Player 9 is available for Windows 98SE. I am not sure but it must have the codecs! It's large enough 

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...ies/player.aspx

Alternatively you could download the codecs on their own. You can get them from Spoons Codec central for his dbpoweramp Music Converter.

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-wma.htm

Edit: Was bored so I downloaded the above to my spare Win98se machine. It comes complete with the vbr codec but the lossless ones are only available for XP Users.

WMA9 under Windows 98?

Reply #2 –
You can install WMP 9 onto Win98.  You can also just install the codec pack.

However, I don't think they don't have the "Pro" encoder.  From what I gather, that's only in the seperate encoder pack, and it's only for XP.

WMA9 is slightly better than before, but the higher quality "Pro" codecs aren't available for W98, either for encoding or decoding.  WMA9pro is incompatable with all the WMA players, too.  So there isn't much point in it being used.

They could have been made available, but Microsoft doesn't want to support Win9x/ME any more than they have to,in spite of nearly 30% of all computer users still using some version of W9x.  (It's possible the WMA9pro codec might run on Win98se but not Win98 orig, since there are some differences between them in that area.)

Also, I think I heard something about WMP 10 comming out later this year, along with Microsoft's "XP Reloaded" release of XP.  (Bascially xp with sp2 and some extras, to try and entice that 30% of users to finally upgrade to XP.)


As for downloading the codec pack from dBpowerAMP link.... I'd be a bit hesitant about that, if I were you.  You are better off gettting the codec packs directly from Microsoft.  Some places (I'm not saying them, just that it happens) do codec "packs" and sometimes they don't work right or have hidden payloads.

WMA9 under Windows 98?

Reply #3 –
Quote
As for downloading the codec pack from dBpowerAMP link.... I'd be a bit hesitant about that, if I were you.   You are better off gettting the codec packs directly from Microsoft.  Some places (I'm not saying them, just that it happens) do codec "packs" and sometimes they don't work right or have hidden payloads.

This is not fair to dpoweramp and spoon. First of all the codecs are not in packs, so comparing them to codec packs like Nimo etc, which of course means loads of problems, is not fair. And second, the WMA codec you download from spoons site is the official WMA download from Microsoft. I have been using it without any problems whatsoever.

WMA9 under Windows 98?

Reply #4 –
Thanks for the tips... I've now got it working!

I don't know if WMP9 includes encoding... and as pointed out it's a huuuuuuge file and would have taken forever to download at 56k!

Turns out I already had the WM9 codec pack installed - one of the files I'd pulled off my XP machine at work was called "wmfdist.exe", which seems to be the same file (with a slightly different name) as the one on the dBPowerAmp site. I'd already installed that, but it doesn't seem to support the command-line encoder used by EAC and CDex which is why I couldn't get those to work.

Incidentally I never managed to find that codec package on Microsoft's website... they do offer WM9 "codecs" for various versions of Media Player, but the term "codec" seems to be a bit misleading since those packages don't seem to support any encoding whatsoever...

But I've now installed dBPowerAmp Converter and its dedicated WMA9 codec (as well as the Microsoft wmfdist package), and it works nicely. Success  It also claims to support WMA9 Pro although I haven't tried that yet.

Now to try some comparisons and decide whether it was worth the effort... 

WMA9 under Windows 98?

Reply #5 –
db-wmfdist-wma9.exe is an official Microsoft install untouched (just renamed to lessen off site linking).

WMA9 under Windows 98?

Reply #6 –
Quote
db-wmfdist-wma9.exe is an official Microsoft install untouched (just renamed to lessen off site linking).

I wasn't saying that it wasn't legit.

The point I was trying to make is:

Many places do provide "official" codec collections etc. that turn out to be either hacks or warez.  Often with less than perfect results.  And sometimes with a few things included that you don't expect.

If it is indeed a legitimate download, then it's almost always better for the site to just give the official download URL or to link to the official download page, rather than hosting it themselves.  That removes any uncertainties.

When any site hosts what they claim is an official Microsoft file, then that's almost always cause to be suspicious, because Microsoft files are often forged / hacked / trojaned.

If a file is truely an official Microsoft distrib, then, with very very few exceptions, it will be available from Microsoft's own web site and there is rarely a good reason to host it yourself.  You can just give the official microsoft download URL and let it come from Microsoft themselves.