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Topic: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder (Read 313250 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #376 –
"Free 21 day trial"
burn in hell

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #377 –
Quote from: m14u on
burn in hell
 
 A bit rough on the edges, huh?

Why using such unnecessary colorful language - specially towards another fellow member - whether they've been here for a couple months or eons!?
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #378 –
I believe they are telling the opportunist software developer to burn in hell, not the poster who brought the news of said software.

Lest they also forget that Spoon is also an opportunist software developer, and he develops dBPowerAMP, and he keeps the lights on for our forum, and he also employs Peter to work on his software as well, for such tasks as maintaining the macOS and Linux ports of Asset UPnP and the macOS port of dBPowerAMP.

Never forget, this software that has to be paid for to perform a task easily, that you yourself could do for free with alternative choices, was probably not made for you. It was made for people who will happily pay for such a solution to their problems, without even knowing that alternatives exist, alternatives that may or may not be harder to set up once, or even set up every time they use them.

You're welcome to continue teaching people how to use the free solution, as long as you're willing to put up with being their technical support whenever problems arise with that solution. This developer who is charging money, also has to act as support for anyone using their software, lest word get out that they're not supporting their users, and their reputation tanks. They can also act as a support distillery, reducing the amount of redundant bug reports that find their way to this Chris. Assuming they don't intend to just keep all their personal fixes and not share them upstream to Exhale. Does the license require them to share any fixes they make upstream?

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #379 –
I meant that if you have "extra" money, then there are great examples of free/open software that could be sponsored. without any "21 day trial". I didn't mean any people.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #380 –
Right, and if there were an open source equivalent to that, I'm sure its authors would be happy to accept donations.

A closed source alternative, right now, is foobar2000's converter component, coupled with a compiled copy of Exhale, which itself is open source, from this topic.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #381 –
Yeah, got it totally t*ts up. Sorry!
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #382 –
I must have stumbled into the flame room.  :))
EZ CD Audio Converter / FLAC or WavPack

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #383 –
I hope not, although I have different points of view. My interest in Exhale is aimed at distributing spoken content; as xHE-AAC is patented I need a license. Fraunhofer and Via Licensing responded to my inquiries with the list of their partners.

So despite having compiled Exhale many times to test it, my needs are as an end user and if I buy the software provided by Poikosoft (which I verified to be Via's licensee, see https://www.via-corp.com/licensing/aac/licensees/ ) I don't need to get any more licenses to distribute my content, I pay 30 euros once and I'm fine forever.

There are no patent license fees due for the distribution of bit-streams encoded in AAC, whether such bit-streams are broadcast, streamed over a network, or provided on physical media. This is not the first time I buy an encoder just for the license, it costs me less than having unnecessary litigation in the future.

As you may have noticed from my posts, I don't use Windows and I prefer the CLI (which I can manage with simple scripts), so I buy it because it is the cheapest way to satisfy my license needs (which is not included in open source software).

Regarding Poikosoft, probably the use of Exhale will be only temporary, in the forum of the company it reports to be in discussion with Fraunhofer about possibility to license their xHE-AAC implementation and I guess I won't be able to use it again without Windows.

I tried EZ CD Audio Converter and I can confirm that it has made some improvements, in particular at low bitrate it produces smaller files and provides combinations between sample rates and bitrates excluded by Exhale.

On the developer you define as an opportunist, I believe that to do this job he must give his users what they may need and he achieves the purpose with the EBU R128 loudness normalization (necessary for those who make podcasts but at different level). The free 21 day trial for me it is just an advantage that allows to understand what you are buying.

In my opinion the developer proves to be intelligent: he understood that the licensing conditions offer a 15x advantage for small entities with fifteen or fewer employees and with annual gross revenues of less than US $1 million.

So I'm the first who wants to financially support Christian R. Helmrich, but my help alone cannot be enough to make Exhale an encoder capable of withstanding the comparison with Fraunhofer's. Poikosoft is a good systems integrator but to improve Exhale it is necessary that Dr. Helmrich can devote more time to them, to make them proactive and to complete the missing parts of USAC. It will not be the contribution of one person that will make him change his mind.

And if we pay him the initial $ 1,000, he could also finance himself in the future by selling licenses. If you do not leave me alone I am willing to finance the development of Exhale, I am waiting to read your intentions, but I have not found any page of the Ecodis website (see http://www.ecodis.de/index.htm) indicates how financing the author, so I believe that it won't be easy.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #384 –
comrades! my careless comment caused a "fire" that created a "flood". I suggest you ignore it and stop.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #385 –
I don't see any "fire" and no "flooding", I just follow Exhale's license (see http://www.ecodis.de/exhale/license.htm ).

Licensor's Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2018–2020 Christian R. Helmrich, ecodis (Licensor). All rights reserved.
Quote
Patent licenses required for the use of this Software to generate digital bit-streams according to any specifications of ISO/IEC 23003-3 may be obtained through Via Licensing and/or the corresponding patent holders individually.

If Poikosoft manages to make an agreement with Fraunhofer it will be very expensive for him and he will surely have to raise the prices of his software, so I wasted no time and bought a license that will allow me to use Exhale in the future.

As you can see I want to use Exhale now and in the future and I am waiting to know if there are other people among us interested in financing its development. Surely it would be better to be able to help Christian R. Helmrich also in writing the code, but in any case, financial support is better than nothing and will allow a person who has proven to have a lot of talent to be able to devote more time to the development of Exhale.

So it is not time to ignore your message and stop, if anyone really want to support open source projects can join to me and have to make them grow well by obtaining all the necessary conditions. If someone wants to move from words that cost and produce nothing to something more substantial, now is the time to step forward, otherwise Dr. Helmrich will soon be content to have created Exhale for educational purposes only.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #386 –
I am confused. Isn't exhale open-source application, and why would you need a licence to encode stuff with it? I understand if you want to use Fraunhoffer's software and you pay for it, but this is free; to play it, you need software which can decode that stream, free or non-free. Can someone explain to me?
Error 404; signature server not available.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #387 –
Patent covers ideas and gives to its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of years in exchange for publishing an enabling public disclosure of the invention. It's very simple and I want to distributing spoken content so it's not something that can remain hidden in my data. I have pay the right to making and use the encoder, now I'm free. Time is also a non-renewable resource.

I like open source software but at the same time where I live only people have rights (software can only be free like a beer) and those covered by patents need to be payed for some years, fortunately not much in this case. Patents for ACELP (AMR-WB) will expire in 2021 and xHE-AAC or USAC plans to use them, even if they are not implemented in Exhale at this moment.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #388 –
Let's go back to talking about Exhale in its alleged distributions, the first of Ecodis and the second of Poikosoft.

<- click to download
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '20200823-Ecodis.m4a': 1.969.641 byte
Metadata:
major_brand     : mp42
minor_version   : 0
compatible_brands: mp42isom
Duration: 00:08:07.35, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 32 kb/s
Stream #0:0(und): Audio: aac (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 32000 Hz, 1 channels, fltp, 31 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
handler_name    : crh

<- click to download
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '20200823-Poikosoft.m4a': 2.028.191 byte
Metadata:
major_brand     : mp42
minor_version   : 0
compatible_brands: mp42isom
replaygain_originator_code: 011011000000
replaygain_track_gain: -5.88 dB
replaygain_track_peak: 0.900042
title           : 20200823
artist          : Giuseppe Sala
album_artist    : Comune di Milano
album           : Rimini
date            : 2020
Duration: 00:08:07.35, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 33 kb/s
Stream #0:0(und): Audio: aac (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, 1 channels, fltp, 31 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
Side data:
replaygain: track gain - -5.880000, track peak - 0.000021, album gain - unknown, album peak - unknown

In my opinion there are no substantial differences; the version created with Exhale provided by Ecodis has been resampled to 32kHz, while the version created with Exhale provided by Poikosoft is apparently sampled at 48kHz but the content seems to be the same (but I should hear it again tomorrow, now I'm very tired and don't want to do many test, the last time I did this I confused the files and came to completely wrong conclusions).

It probably behaves like Opus, eliminating data in the upper bands to always show the same sample rate. This is a good idea because you can use it for any destination (even as an audio track of a video) without having to resample it to 48kHz. In general with xHE-AAC I can use the same container for storage and the same content for emergency warning functionality, music, next TV audio (MPEG-H is based on USAC), DRM (next digital LW, AM and FM), podcast, HTML 5 audio tag, and I'm sure even the next DAB (until now called epic fail). Also can be used for fMP4 streaming and for extend the autonomy of mobile devices.

I am writing this only because I believe it is important to finance the development of what will be an essential format for the years to come. But it makes sense to do it now, not when the patents expire.

The version created with Exhale provided by Poikosoft added some metadata (you can also do it differently and later) but analyzed the mitigation to be applied in general on content optimized to be used on mobile devices (see https://www.aes.org/technical/documents/AESTD1004_1_15_10.pdf ) and therefore with a maximum peak level -1 dBTP (EBU R128) and a target loudness for podcast too (-16 LUFS).

I see more of the work of a systems integrator than substantial changes to the Exhale code, but surely there are people among you who are more competent than me to understand it from the two examples that I hope I have attached correctly.

Goodnight, I'm going to dream that I'm not the only one who wants to create a fund for the development of Exhale.
 

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #389 –
Software patents and those who hold them are the scum of the earth.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #390 –
Quote from: kode54 on
Software patents and those who hold them are the scum of the earth.

There are software patents, we can't hide this just because we have lost.
Okay, let's think about something else because this wound still burns.

The result is that the patents now pay off only for a few years (see https://www.iso.org/standard/59635.html ).
I prefer to look ahead, today many developers active in open source software are paid by patent holders (IBM has been the first for 27 years), which is why I think the developers who are passionate about it in their spare time should be supported.

Christian R. Helmrich don't own any patents, but without Exhale and without the time it took him to build the skills to make it today I would have had to pay a much higher bill, about $ 1,000 more.

At the same time, I recognize that he now has to devote time to his family and the work that allowed him to write Exhale in his spare time, and at least half of the benefit it gave me I want to go back to him.

So Helmrich will be able to dedicate more time to Exhale and create other benefits for me and for other users, starting from those who cannot pay for a license even at a low cost.

Unfortunately my effort alone will be in vain, a community that supports a project even with small amounts creates a considerable leverage for developers and it's also a public admission that you love what you have.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #391 –
Quote from: jarsonic on
Quote from: ani_Jackal3 on
Wanna try this but I'm confused on what the Foobar encoder settings are?.

Something like this.

Also, for reference:

CBR mode 1 = ~64 kbps (stereo)
CBR mode 2 = ~80 kbps (stereo)
CBR mode 3 = ~96 kbps (stereo)
CBR mode 4 = ~112 kbps (stereo)
CBR mode 5 = ~128 kbps (stereo)
CBR mode 6 = ~144 kbps (stereo)
CBR mode 7 = ~160 kbps (stereo)
CBR mode 8 = ~176 kbps (stereo)
CBR mode 9 = ~192 kbps (stereo)
hi @jarsonic
i will start to make some blind tests with qaac
thanks for the infomartion  , cbr mode 9 is the max ,isn't it?



Quote from: john33 on
Intel compiles of exhale-v.1.0.7-051900fe:

www.rarewares.org/files/aac/exhale-v.1.0.7-051900fe_x64.zip

www.rarewares.org/files/aac/exhale-v.1.0.7-051900fe_x86.zip

I have elected to name these as 1.0.7 but I'm sure I'll be told if that is incorrect!! ;)
hi @john33
you are number 1 , thanks for the compiled version , i have tried several time to compile lame without luck
thanks again!

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #392 –
I don't know why the author doesn't mention it, but I'll take the "sin" - the last commit has mode #0 ~48kbps at <=32khz

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #393 –
Quote from: kode54 on
Software patents and those who hold them are the scum of the earth.
 
 




Family estates and ad hoc wealthy heirs and lawyers living off royalties from long-deceased family members they merely see now as their cash cow, whilst contributing absolutely nilch to society, are the Earth's pariah, IMHO.




Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #394 –
Everything we have comes from expired patents, the point is that you have to start working on them first to be ready at the right time; Speex also derives from CELP, of which ACELP is only an improvement. Go on.

I tried to compare the voice rendering between Exhale and AMR-WB that comes from ACELP, a part that Helmrich plans not to implement.

Honestly now I can't blame him (sadly I'm a bit slow to understand), AMR-WB encodes a mono sampled 16kHz file in just under 24kbps. The quality of AMR-WB is superior to what is achieved with AAC or HE-AAC.

Exhale performs better in the 0 mode at 24kHz for just over 24kbps and in the mode 1 at 32kHz for just over 32kbps; at the moment it doesn't make me regret other options.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #395 –
Quote from: m14u on
I don't know why the author doesn't mention it, but I'll take the "sin" - the last commit has mode #0 ~48kbps at <=32khz
Yes, I've noticed that too  :-X
I did some blind tests and exhale 1.0.7 beta @48 kbps, stereo  outperforms best HE-AAC encoders such as FhG Winamp, Nero, Apple and FDK.
I don't understand how exhale managed to outperform  without SBR.  Probably tuned PNS does a good job there.

I found 32 kHz (SoX 99% passband) is optimal for exhale@48 kbps ... at least for my ears.
22 kHz and 24 kHz sound  clearly worse and dull!

Results of Exhale vs HE-AAC
Code: [Select]
	48 kbps, stereo
	Exhale_1.0.7beta	FhG_Wnmp_HE-AAC
01 Castanets	3.1	1.8
02 Highway to Hell	3.6	3.5
03 EIG	2.8	1.8
04 Bachpsichord	3.4	2.9
05 Enola	3	2.7
06 Trumpet	2.7	3.2
07 applaud	2.7	2.8
08 Velvet	3.1	2.2
09 Linchpin	2.8	3
10 spill_the_blood	2.4	2.6
11 female_speech	4.4	3
12 french ad	2.6	3
13 fatboy	1.8	2
		
MOS (Mean Opinion Score)	2.95	2.65

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #396 –
Quote from: m14u on
I don't know why the author doesn't mention it, but I'll take the "sin" - the last commit has mode #0 ~48kbps at <=32khz
Quote from: IgorC on
Quote from: m14u on
I don't know why the author doesn't mention it, but I'll take the "sin" - the last commit has mode #0 ~48kbps at <=32khz
Yes, I've noticed that too  :-X
I did some blind tests and exhale 1.0.7 beta @48 kbps, stereo  outperforms best HE-AAC encoders such as FhG Winamp, Nero, Apple and FDK.
I don't understand how exhale managed to outperform  without SBR.  Probably tuned PNS does a good job there.
Well, first I forgot to mention this, then I wanted to wait until the exhale-unrelated discussion stopped. And yes, I was also surprised to hear (for myself) that exhale can now compete with SBRish codecs at CVBR mode 0, which is why I decided to activate this in the exhale application for the 1.0.7 release (the exhale library already supported this since version 1.0.0).

For the record, theres a new commit d2bede2 which fixes a very minor issue in the bit-rate control and updates the release notes (I forgot to mention the CVBR mode 0 thing). This will probably be tagged as the final 1.0.7 release on the weekend.

Btw, technically, it's not PNS that's used in xHE-AAC (it's simply called noise filling, with PNS this performance wouldn't be possible).

Chris
If I don't reply to your reply, it means I agree with you.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #398 –
Probably when the internal SRC reduces the sampling rate from 48kHz to 32kHz, because the user asked to use mode 0 or 1, after the resampling Exhale uses the next mode.


This is the original wave file sampled at 48kHz.


This file is produced by Exhale starting from a 32kHz sampled wave file.

-> exhale 0 spoken-m-32k.wav spoken-m-32k.m4a

exhale - ecodis extended high-efficiency and low-complexity encoder
version 1.0.7 (x64, built on Aug 25 2020) - written by C.R.Helmrich

Encoding 32-kHz 1-channel 32-bit WAVE to low-complexity xHE-AAC at 24 kbit/s
Progress: --------------------------------- Done, actual average 26.6 kbit/s
Input statistics: Mobile loudness -19.67 LUFS, sample peak level -0.96 dBFS


This file is produced by Exhale starting from the original wave file sampled at 48kHz; in this case the internal SRC was used.

-> exhale 1 spoken-m-48k.wav spoken-m-48k.m4a

exhale - ecodis extended high-efficiency and low-complexity encoder
version 1.0.7 (x64, built on Aug 25 2020) - written by C.R.Helmrich

NOTE: Downsampling the input audio from 48 kHz to 32 kHz with preset mode 1

Encoding 32-kHz 1-channel 32-bit WAVE to low-complexity xHE-AAC at 32 kbit/s
Progress: --------------------------------- Done, actual average 32.7 kbit/s
Input statistics: Mobile loudness -19.67 LUFS, sample peak level -0.97 dBFS

The resulting bitrate is completely different and the sample peak level is similar but not the same.

Re: exhale - Open Source USAC encoder

Reply #399 –
Quick question:
I noticed with all x86 binaries that mode 4 (at 44khz sampling rate) is about 10% slower. Probably not a big deal since exhale is focusing on <128kbps.
"Something bothering you, Mister Spock?"