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Topic: Can't play m4a files (Read 4203 times) previous topic - next topic
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Can't play m4a files

I may have converted these songs with I-Tunes and not DBPoweramp, but I'm sure sure which..could that be why?  Does I-Tunes put some kind of special protection on them?  The files also won't play with Winamp.  Is there ANY way to get them to play in Foobar?

The message I get upon playing them is
Quote
Could not load info (Unsupported format or corrupted file) from:
"D:\desktop\My Music\Tired of Being Alive.m4a"


Any ideas -- and if I have to convert them, I should probably just re-rip the CD's in lossless, huh?

Can't play m4a files

Reply #1 –
Does anything else play that file?

Can't play m4a files

Reply #2 –
If the songs were purchased from iTunes Music Store they have DRM that will prevent them from playing in anything but iTunes on that comp, and will limit the number of times you can copy them. If you ripped them yourself from CDs, I don't know why they wouldn't play in foobar or Winamp. Musinc ripped using iTunes should play fine.

Can't play m4a files

Reply #3 –
They were ripped from CD's.  It seems they only play in I-Tunes and VLC Media Player.  They don't work in Winamp or Foobar and WMP doesn't support this format natively.

Anyone else have any ideas as to my Foobar/Winamp woes?

Can't play m4a files

Reply #4 –
are they Lossless M4A's?

if that's the case, they're encoded with ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) so you'll need foo_alac

PS: don't use ALAC

Can't play m4a files

Reply #5 –
I just upgraded to 0.9.1 from 0.8.3, but the first thing I noticed was that nearly all of my .m4a files that I purchased from AllOfMp3.com suddenly stopped working.

Foobar2000 reports that it is "Unable to open item for playback (Error parsing MP4 file : attempting to skip past end of file): SONG.M4A" and that it "Could not load info (Error parsing MP4 file : attempting to skip past end of file) from: SONG.M4A".

A few files are playable whereas most are not.

They were encoded as lossy MPEG4 AAC at 128bps.

One thing that I noticed by looking at the files in a hexeditor is that unplayable songs have a 128 byte "TAG"-section at the end of the file, and that TAG is missing in the once that do play ok.

An example of this data:
TAGThe Invisible Man            Queen                        Greatest Hits I, II & III (Th 2001http://www.allofmp3.com   




Temporary Solution:
Remove the 128 byte extraneous data, beginning with "TAG", from the end of the unplayable files. The song is now playable again.

Perhaps I should write a simple cleanup utility, that would at least fix things for me, but it seems to me that this is due to a bug in the MP4 decoder and ought to be fixed by the Foobar2000 coders.


Hope this will help someone else with the same problem.


Edit: moved the image

Can't play m4a files

Reply #6 –
Well, I don't know if this has to be considered a bug in the MP4 decoder, but ID3v1 tags are not allowed on MP4 files.
 

Can't play m4a files

Reply #7 –
Yes, that is indeed true. It's not a bug, it's a feature 

However, a more forgiving decoder (as was the case in 0.8) might be preferable given the fact that some user´s mp4 files have somehow had an ID3v1 tag added to them. Perhaps the decoder could simply warn (using the console) that there is extraneous data, but play the song anyway..

In my case this happened when I wanted to add additional details to the information in the purchased mp4 files. I used Foobar2000 0.8.3 to do this, so either Foobar or some plug-in ("File Info"?) was to blame.

I was lucky not to have burned a dvd with all the songs I have bought, because then I would not have been able to fix the problem. I do not want to reinstall the 0.8 series, now that 0.9 is stable. It is a very competent application and I like it a lot. I sat down, pondered and wrote a little utility that fixed all my 600 songs, and now they all work again!

If someone would like a simple Win32 console program that removes the TAG section at the end of your mp4 collection, please leave me a personal message.

Best regards,
  Fredrik