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Topic: Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player (Read 206332 times) previous topic - next topic
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Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #25
For iTunes there is a QT Component that allows the playback of Ogg Vorbis and FLAC in iTunes.  Than you only have to grab the plugin for WMP.  Bingo! Done.
Zune 80, Tak -p4 audio library, Lossless=Choice

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #26
For iTunes there is a QT Component that allows the playback of Ogg Vorbis and FLAC in iTunes.  Than you only have to grab the plugin for WMP.  Bingo! Done.

Too bad that iTunes cannot read the tags and add Ogg/FLAC in the library.

The only fully-usable lossless format (ie, both playback and tag support) shared between iTunes and WMP (and foobar, and Winamp) is Apple Lossless. iTunes plays it out-of-the box, for WMP you need ffdshow and WMPTSE as add-ons. Ironically, the most closed format of them all.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #27
Too bad that iTunes cannot read the tags and add Ogg/FLAC in the library.

The only fully-usable lossless format (ie, both playback and tag support) shared between iTunes and WMP (and foobar, and Winamp) is Apple Lossless. iTunes plays it out-of-the box, for WMP you need ffdshow and WMPTSE as add-ons. Ironically, the most closed format of them all.


Stupid question - how? I have no problems getting ffdshow to decode lossy AAC/MP4 files (with WMP 11), but no ALAC...which version of ffdshow or which ALAC DirectShow decoder do you use?

Thx

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #28
Stupid question - how? I have no problems getting ffdshow to decode lossy AAC/MP4 files (with WMP 11), but no ALAC...which version of ffdshow or which ALAC DirectShow decoder do you use?

You have to update to daily builds, and live on the bleeding edge. There will occasionally be crashes.
http://www.ffdshow.info

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #29


I have got an ALAC directshow filter working in WMP 10, and hence also in Media Center 2005. It took code from three different developers to accomplish. I also use a plugin called WMPTSE to let WMP read the metadata from ALAC (MPEG4) audio files.


That is great. Can you provide the link, or the file?


The author is Milenko Mitrovic and his website is http://www.dsp-worx.de you will need to ask the author for the link to the file.

Just dropped him an e-mail, hope he still has it.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #30
Stupid question - how? I have no problems getting ffdshow to decode lossy AAC/MP4 files (with WMP 11), but no ALAC...which version of ffdshow or which ALAC DirectShow decoder do you use?

You have to update to daily builds, and live on the bleeding edge. There will occasionally be crashes.
http://www.ffdshow.info

I tried build ffdshow_rev621_20061203-sse2.exe with the Matroska Splitter to no avail...any suggestions?

Thx

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #31
make sure to enable ALAC in the audio configuration or else it won't work.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #32
make sure to enable ALAC in the audio configuration or else it won't work.


Mangix,

None of the ffdshow codecs mentions ALAC...which one is decoding ALAC?

Thx

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #33
now that i just saw it, i can't seem to find it. Either it's not implemented in the GUI configuration or the daily-builds are using an old version of libavcodec(which i doubt). either case, you can try some builds made by some other people(such as clsid2 or h_yamagata) at http://www.ffdshow.info

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #34



I have got an ALAC directshow filter working in WMP 10, and hence also in Media Center 2005. It took code from three different developers to accomplish. I also use a plugin called WMPTSE to let WMP read the metadata from ALAC (MPEG4) audio files.


That is great. Can you provide the link, or the file?


The author is Milenko Mitrovic and his website is http://www.dsp-worx.de you will need to ask the author for the link to the file.

Just dropped him an e-mail, hope he still has it.

Still haven't recieved a reply

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #35
now that i just saw it, i can't seem to find it. Either it's not implemented in the GUI configuration or the daily-builds are using an old version of libavcodec(which i doubt). either case, you can try some builds made by some other people(such as clsid2 or h_yamagata) at http://www.ffdshow.info


Libavcodec does now include ALAC support (in fact it has done so for a while). FFMpeg and MPlayer are two examples of Unix/Linux/Mac OS X programs which use Libavcodec and can therefore process ALAC files.

FFDShow is a Directshow filter that use Libavcodec and therefore SHOULD be able to also handle ALAC, hence comments from myself and Mangix to that effect. However when I tried the 'standard' FFDshow package it did not work for me. The theory at the time was that it was possibly due to not having a stream splitter that understood ALAC and could hand it off to FFDShow.

This page may be of interest http://www.irisa.fr/texmex/people/dufouil/...xy/alac_8c.html

Because I could not get FFDShow to work I continued searching and eventually using code from three different programmers got a solution (see below).

The ALAC directshow filter I am using is written using the BASS library see http://www.un4seen.com and an ALAC module written by Maresweb (using BASS) the source for which is here http://www.maresweb.de/projects/bass/alac.php this was then repackaged as a directshow compatible filter by Milenko Mitrovic (using the same technique he had previously used for an MP3 directshow filter version of a BASS module) and his website is http://www.dsp-worx.de you will need to ask the author for the link to the file (which is NOT based on Libavcodec). This directshow filter has its own m4a (MPEG4 Audio) splitter and in order to make things simple it actually handles both ALAC and AAC (unprotected only) and both are decoded (played) by this filter, this removed the need to try and pass AAC to a different codec. I was perfectly happy with this as AAC does work and I have no protected tracks to worry about.

There is now another possible option listed here http://www.mcetunes.com this works by allowing Media Center to play AAC (even protected iTunes store tracks) and ALAC files using QuickTime.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #36

now that i just saw it, i can't seem to find it. Either it's not implemented in the GUI configuration or the daily-builds are using an old version of libavcodec(which i doubt). either case, you can try some builds made by some other people(such as clsid2 or h_yamagata) at http://www.ffdshow.info

The ALAC directshow filter I am using is written using the BASS library see http://www.un4seen.com and an ALAC module written by Maresweb (using BASS) the source for which is here http://www.maresweb.de/projects/bass/alac.php this was then repackaged as a directshow compatible filter by Milenko Mitrovic (using the same technique he had previously used for an MP3 directshow filter version of a BASS module) and his website is http://www.dsp-worx.de you will need to ask the author for the link to the file (which is NOT based on Libavcodec). This directshow filter has its own m4a (MPEG4 Audio) splitter and in order to make things simple it actually handles both ALAC and AAC (unprotected only) and both are decoded (played) by this filter, this removed the need to try and pass AAC to a different codec. I was perfectly happy with this as AAC does work and I have no protected tracks to worry about.

I emailed him two days ago and he still hasn't replied, got your PM, and now I'm miffed at having to wait a while for him to get around to it

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #37


now that i just saw it, i can't seem to find it. Either it's not implemented in the GUI configuration or the daily-builds are using an old version of libavcodec(which i doubt). either case, you can try some builds made by some other people(such as clsid2 or h_yamagata) at http://www.ffdshow.info

The ALAC directshow filter I am using is written using the BASS library see http://www.un4seen.com and an ALAC module written by Maresweb (using BASS) the source for which is here http://www.maresweb.de/projects/bass/alac.php this was then repackaged as a directshow compatible filter by Milenko Mitrovic (using the same technique he had previously used for an MP3 directshow filter version of a BASS module) and his website is http://www.dsp-worx.de you will need to ask the author for the link to the file (which is NOT based on Libavcodec). This directshow filter has its own m4a (MPEG4 Audio) splitter and in order to make things simple it actually handles both ALAC and AAC (unprotected only) and both are decoded (played) by this filter, this removed the need to try and pass AAC to a different codec. I was perfectly happy with this as AAC does work and I have no protected tracks to worry about.

I emailed him two days ago and he still hasn't replied, got your PM, and now I'm miffed at having to wait a while for him to get around to it


Sorry, been busy in the last weeks. The Filter is now available here http://files.dsp-worx.de/dsmp3source_aac_alac.zip

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #38



now that i just saw it, i can't seem to find it. Either it's not implemented in the GUI configuration or the daily-builds are using an old version of libavcodec(which i doubt). either case, you can try some builds made by some other people(such as clsid2 or h_yamagata) at http://www.ffdshow.info

The ALAC directshow filter I am using is written using the BASS library see http://www.un4seen.com and an ALAC module written by Maresweb (using BASS) the source for which is here http://www.maresweb.de/projects/bass/alac.php this was then repackaged as a directshow compatible filter by Milenko Mitrovic (using the same technique he had previously used for an MP3 directshow filter version of a BASS module) and his website is http://www.dsp-worx.de you will need to ask the author for the link to the file (which is NOT based on Libavcodec). This directshow filter has its own m4a (MPEG4 Audio) splitter and in order to make things simple it actually handles both ALAC and AAC (unprotected only) and both are decoded (played) by this filter, this removed the need to try and pass AAC to a different codec. I was perfectly happy with this as AAC does work and I have no protected tracks to worry about.

I emailed him two days ago and he still hasn't replied, got your PM, and now I'm miffed at having to wait a while for him to get around to it


Sorry, been busy in the last weeks. The Filter is now available here http://files.dsp-worx.de/dsmp3source_aac_alac.zip

  Yay!

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #39

Sorry, been busy in the last weeks. The Filter is now available here http://files.dsp-worx.de/dsmp3source_aac_alac.zip

  Yay!

Hmm, the filter can't seem to play any Lossless files encoded with iTunes 5 (5.0.0.35 to be exact), but it can play all of the Lossless files I encoded with iTunes 7 (7.0.0.70, 7.0.1.8, and 7.0.2.16). Anyone else having the same problem?

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #40
now that i just saw it, i can't seem to find it. Either it's not implemented in the GUI configuration or the daily-builds are using an old version of libavcodec(which i doubt). either case, you can try some builds made by some other people(such as clsid2 or h_yamagata) at http://www.ffdshow.info

In case anyone cares:

I went through the libavcodec source code used at www.ffdshow.info and it does NOT contain the ALAC decoder. I contains one reference, but not the required classes/files (alac.c for example) to perform the required functions. However the libvcodec tree at ffmpeg (which contains the official version of libavcodec) does indeed have the ALAC decoding funtionality included.

So it does appear that ffdshow uses an either old or modified source tree for libavcoded...

Cheers.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #41


Sorry, been busy in the last weeks. The Filter is now available here http://files.dsp-worx.de/dsmp3source_aac_alac.zip

  Yay!

Hmm, the filter can't seem to play any Lossless files encoded with iTunes 5 (5.0.0.35 to be exact), but it can play all of the Lossless files I encoded with iTunes 7 (7.0.0.70, 7.0.1.8, and 7.0.2.16). Anyone else having the same problem?

Anyone have any info on why it may be having trouble with iTunes 5 ALAC files? I never envisioned compatibility problems arising with older files, only newer ones.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #42
as an alternative, you can use foobar2000 with the foo_alac plugin, convert to a lossless format(like WAV or FLAC), and play the file.

you could also convert it to WavPack, download CoreWavPack, and start playing it in WMP.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #43
as an alternative, you can use foobar2000 with the foo_alac plugin, convert to a lossless format(like WAV or FLAC), and play the file.

you could also convert it to WavPack, download CoreWavPack, and start playing it in WMP.

That'd be quite a bit of work for 1000+ ALAC songs, and I'd either need to keep two lossless copies (talk about redundancy) or ditch being able to use lossless files on my iPod.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #44

Hmm, the filter can't seem to play any Lossless files encoded with iTunes 5 (5.0.0.35 to be exact), but it can play all of the Lossless files I encoded with iTunes 7 (7.0.0.70, 7.0.1.8, and 7.0.2.16). Anyone else having the same problem?

Anyone have any info on why it may be having trouble with iTunes 5 ALAC files? I never envisioned compatibility problems arising with older files, only newer ones.

I started ripping all mine from iTunes 6 onwards (now using iTunes 7) so I have not seen this problem. However a quick workaround (assuming you are now using iTunes 6 or 7) would be to get iTunes to convert them all to AIFF (it should preserve the meta tags including Artwork), and then delete the bad ALAC versions, and then convert the AIFFs back to ALAC. This will be lossless to lossless conversion and should keep all the meta tags.

To get iTunes to convert to a different format, you set the iTunes import preference to the format you want to convert to (AIFF first, then afterwards Apple Lossless), then in the Advanced menu (in iTunes) select "Convert Selection to...".

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #45


Hmm, the filter can't seem to play any Lossless files encoded with iTunes 5 (5.0.0.35 to be exact), but it can play all of the Lossless files I encoded with iTunes 7 (7.0.0.70, 7.0.1.8, and 7.0.2.16). Anyone else having the same problem?

Anyone have any info on why it may be having trouble with iTunes 5 ALAC files? I never envisioned compatibility problems arising with older files, only newer ones.

I started ripping all mine from iTunes 6 onwards (now using iTunes 7) so I have not seen this problem. However a quick workaround (assuming you are now using iTunes 6 or 7) would be to get iTunes to convert them all to AIFF (it should preserve the meta tags including Artwork), and then delete the bad ALAC versions, and then convert the AIFFs back to ALAC. This will be lossless to lossless conversion and should keep all the meta tags.

To get iTunes to convert to a different format, you set the iTunes import preference to the format you want to convert to (AIFF first, then afterwards Apple Lossless), then in the Advanced menu (in iTunes) select "Convert Selection to...".

No need for the intermediate AIFF conversion, I can just do ALAC to ALAC. The problem is I've got 525 iTunes 5 ALAC files (compared to a measly 239 I've made with 7) and I'd also have to go and rename the files like their EAC created counterparts (make spaces into underscores) and then copy them over the older versions in order to keep my play counts, dates added, etc. I'd also have to go and properly rename any songs with titles longer than iTunes can handle as far as filename is concerned.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #46
Quote
Anyone have any info on why it may be having trouble with iTunes 5 ALAC files? I never envisioned compatibility problems arising with older files, only newer ones.


http://www.maresweb.de/projects/bass/alac.php

Quote
BASS_ALAC is an extension based on David Hammerton's reverse engineered ALAC decoder which enables the playback of ALAC files through BASS.

Please notice that the current version of the add-on does not support MOV demuxing. Only unprotected MP4 files are supported.


Maybe your older Files are "just" in an old (mov) Container. However, i have no idea if there's a mov2mp4 converter.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #47
mov and mp4 should be generally the same thing. there should be a few differences, but AFAIK, mp4 was based on mov.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #48
Quote
Anyone have any info on why it may be having trouble with iTunes 5 ALAC files? I never envisioned compatibility problems arising with older files, only newer ones.


http://www.maresweb.de/projects/bass/alac.php

Quote
BASS_ALAC is an extension based on David Hammerton's reverse engineered ALAC decoder which enables the playback of ALAC files through BASS.

Please notice that the current version of the add-on does not support MOV demuxing. Only unprotected MP4 files are supported.


Maybe your older Files are "just" in an old (mov) Container. However, i have no idea if there's a mov2mp4 converter.

Nope, container's the same (M4A/MP4). I didn't know Apple ever made big changes to ALAC itself, it's gotta be what's causing the problem.

Finding a lossless format for itunes and windows media player

Reply #49
In case anyone is interested, VLC has libavcodec properly implemented and can play Apple Lossless files (both iTunes 5 ALAC files, and iTunes 6/7 files); doesn't help me get it working in Windows Media Player though.