play mp4 he aac from the server

2004-01-18 09:26:31

Hi All
It is the question I cant ever find in these forums. How can I make mp4 he aac playable directly from the server. I tryed to encode the file using nero aac codec (20 kbit/s, 44.1 kHz mono). I also played with the option "Create Hint track (for streaming server)", but the result does't depent on it. It is the same whether it's enablet or not. If it did not work I thought that problem might be on the decoder side. So I installed newest foobar2000, newest mp4 input plugin into winamp 5, and klite codec pack including 3ivx directshow filter, AAC Parser DirectShow Filter and also Core AAC Audio Decoder. Fb2k's console wrote that doesn't support unseakable streams, winamp and Windows media player played nothing. What else can I do???
O one more thing I uploaded the file to a windows server...

play mp4 he aac from the server

Reply #1 – 2004-01-18 09:38:00

From Nero AAC settings click the Export ISO 13818-7 AAC Track.
You can easily directly stream the .aac stream from a server for example with Foobar normally (with http addy).

But you can't use http to stream .mp4 directly (with http it downloads the whole stream first). In order to stream .mp4 directly, you need to do it using RTP/RTSP protocol with a software like Apple Darwin Streaming server (and you want the hint track in mp4 also).
Check how to set it up here.

I believe Menno is working on foobar mp4 plugin which allows RTP protocol reading. Don't know if there are any aac-he capable player yet which support RTP, so hopefully Menno can get this to work soon...
QuickTime should work otherwise except that it won't play the SBR frequencies of HE-AAC MP4.

play mp4 he aac from the server

Reply #2 – 2004-01-18 11:59:47

MPEG4IP has a nice RTP implementaton for AAC streaming (RFC-3016) and uses FAAD for AAC decoding.

Technically, it would be possible to use MPEG4IP engine as a Foobar  RTP decoder (just wrap it as a plug-in) - you just point to SDP location - and RTP session should start.

I am not familiar with Foobar plug-in architecture, so some additional work might be needed in order to tailor MPEG4IP player engine to Foobar plug-in pipeline -  MPEG4IP player is rather complex, so the other idea would be just to reuse the RTP code and write a separate liteweight plug-in as well.

play mp4 he aac from the server

Reply #3 – 2004-01-18 23:09:24

Small correction, seems that Peter is implementing the RTP reading for Foobar, but in addition he is planning even to implement RTP serving for Foobar also!