Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder
Do decode from the command-line, you can use an FFmpeg build with the latest FDK-AAC included. If you know how to compile FFmpeg yourself with the "non-free" extensions enabled, I recommend you do that. You can take it a bit further if you want. Compile ffmpeg (and ffplay) with --disable-decoder=aac --disable-encoder=aac --disable-decoder=aac_fixed --enable-libfdk-aac This disables all of ffmpeg's internal AAC decoding - so you'll never get any error codes about AOT 42 even if you don't remember to pass -acodec libfdk_aac to ffplay or prefix your ffmpeg -i with -c:a libfdk_aac. "It just works." ffmpeg will now also default to libfdk_aac, libopus, and libvorbis in any context where it needs to encode for output. USAC playback is drag/drop to ffplay without needing to write an admittedly simple .bat script to handle it, and if you build mpv from here, it'll work there too. You can apply that to a lot of other codecs that have "iffy" ffmpeg implementations (opus/vorbis) or have faster alternatives (dav1d) as long as you're including the appropriate external library. Disable some MP2 encoders too while you're at it...--disable-encoder=opus --disable-decoder=opus --enable-libopus --disable-decoder=vorbis --disable-encoder=vorbis --enable-libvorbis --disable-encoder=mp2 --disable-encoder=mp2fixed --enable-libtwolame --disable-decoder=av1 --disable-decoder=libaom --enable-libdav1d