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Poll

Do you think high quality open source AAC codec is needed?

Yes,  I do.
[ 84 ] (81.6%)
No. Commercial AAC encoders are enough good.
[ 19 ] (18.4%)

Total Members Voted: 134

Topic: High quality AAC codec with open source? (Read 33753 times) previous topic - next topic
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High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #25 –
Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on
I can be made to pay to use it, thus it is literally proprietary.  If there was no ownership, then I couldn't be made to pay.


When one takes the literal meaning of proprietary, yes, AAC is a proprietary format.  However, one normally regards a proprietary format as being tied to one company and one standard such as ATRAC3, WMA, RealAudio, etc.  There are multiple AAC encoders on the market which normally means that the format isn't proprietary.  It is true that a party privately owns certain copyrights on the AAC format thus making companies pay to make their own AAC encoder.  With that regard though, one can look at mp3 as being proprietary as FhG owns many copyrights on that format.  Hence, I wouldn't regard AAC as being proprietary anymore so than mp3 or OGG.

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #26 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
It is true that a party privately owns certain copyrights on the AAC format thus making companies pay to make their own AAC encoder.


AT&T, Fraunhofer, Dolby and Sony all claim rights to PATENTS on parts of AAC.


Perhaps Lucent, unsure on that.

Not copyrights.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #27 –
Quote from: kornchild2002 on
Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on

I can be made to pay to use it, thus it is literally proprietary.  If there was no ownership, then I couldn't be made to pay.


When one takes the literal meaning of proprietary, yes, AAC is a proprietary format.


Literal in this case appears to be a synonym for "correct".

Quote from: kornchild2002 on
However, one normally regards a proprietary format as being tied to one company and one standard such as ATRAC3, WMA, RealAudio, etc.


Perhaps you do, but this isn't correct, since assets can be jointly owned.

Quote from: kornchild2002 on
There are multiple AAC encoders on the market which normally means that the format isn't proprietary.


Given that there are multiple WMA encoders made by different groups, it would seem your definition contradicts your assertion that WMA is proprietary.  Unless you're willing to argue that WMA isn't proprietary, perhaps you should reconsider your definition.

Quote from: kornchild2002 on
It is true that a party privately owns certain copyrights on the AAC format thus making companies pay to make their own AAC encoder.  With that regard though, one can look at mp3 as being proprietary as FhG owns many copyrights on that format.


MP3 is proprietary regardless of how one looks at it.

Quote from: kornchild2002 on
Hence, I wouldn't regard AAC as being proprietary anymore so than mp3 or OGG.


Well sure you can argue anything, but doing so is often quite stupid.

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #28 –
Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on
Quote from: kornchild2002 on

Hence, I wouldn't regard AAC as being proprietary anymore so than mp3 or OGG.


Well sure you can argue anything, but doing so is often quite stupid.


In context, there is absolutely no difference between the "proprietariness" of AAC and MP3.  Both require patent licenses to make both encoders and decoders legally.

Both are ISO Standards, and as such, the bitstream format and decoder are not in the slightest proprietary in any usual sense of the word, meaning that the design is privately held and secret. There is not a bit secret about the bitstream format or decoder. Nothing. Zero.

This is a simple, testable, vefifiable fact.

So what's your objection?
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #29 –
The point is that there are 2 different ways to look at this:

*the industry way:
The industry ecosystem consider every mpeg standard (as backed up by ISO and ITU) as open standards because they are internationally recognized as such by national standard bodies, and are not tied to a specific single company.

*the Free Software (with capital letters) way:
They consider anything covered by patents without any explicit royalty exemption as being proprietary.

Both camps will probably not agree anytime soon, but I don't think intentionally and explicitly ignoring the POV of the other camp will lead to anything else than a flame war.

Btw, this is related to patents, which cover technology usage license, not copyrights, which cover technology implementation.

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #30 –
I do think there is a need for a free aac encoder, and definitely a market too. I already need to encode lots of movie content to mp4 container, and having to rely on commercial encoders makes things a bit harder, as mp4 allows only aac audio. Nero and Quicktime are both annoying to get to work on linux and other platforms.

I don't use it for music though, and I don't see much demand for it there. But AVC&AAC in MP4 is rapidly becoming the standard to encode video in, as support for it is already quite widespread (ipods, psp, ps3, xbox360) so an open source encoder for the audio would definitely help.

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #31 –
Quote from: ddawg on
I do think there is a need for a free aac encoder, and definitely a market too. I already need to encode lots of movie content to mp4 container, and having to rely on commercial encoders makes things a bit harder, as mp4 allows only aac audio. Nero and Quicktime are both annoying to get to work on linux and other platforms.

Try handbrake.  It's free and works really well.  You may get it to work in linux to, nut I wouldn't know.

Personally I don't think a open source AAC encoder is needed as Nero's encoder is free, in development, easy to get, high quality, and command line based making it work with a large range of rippers and encoding software.  Sure it maybe commercial but will a true open source competitor change anything to what we already have with Nero's encoder.

Also seeing that x264 is an open source Mpeg4 codec, what audio encoder is used with that?

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #32 –
Quote from: ddawg on
I do think there is a need for a free aac encoder, and definitely a market too. I already need to encode lots of movie content to mp4 container, and having to rely on commercial encoders makes things a bit harder, as mp4 allows only aac audio.

Wrong, MP4 allows: MP3, MP2 and a few others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP4#Data_streams

Quote from: ddawg on
Nero [is] annoying to get to work on linux and other platforms.
Nero give you a linux static binary, how is that annoying?

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #33 –
Quote from: senab on
Wrong, MP4 allows: MP3, MP2 and a few others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP4#Data_streams

Ah yes of course, I was only thinking of multichannel audio. MP3 works fine with stereo, true.

Quote from: senab on
Nero give you a linux static binary, how is that annoying?

Oh, I wasn't even aware of that. Damn I'm blind.

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #34 –
Quote from: senab on
[Nero give you a linux static binary, how is that annoying?

Because it's only an executable and there is no library, thus forcing you to parse the output before multiplexing it?
Because it's x86 only and thus can't be used on PPC or ARMs?
Because its license is obviously only granted to end users?

The Nero command line encoder is perfect if you want to rip some CD and convert the tracks to AAC, but if you consider other use cases, it's not a proper solution anymore.

If Winamp is using Lame as its mp3 encoder, it's not likely because of its sound quality vs FhG encoders, but rather because it saves them 2.5 bucks per encoder. Why couldn't this apply to AAC?

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #35 –
Quote from: Gabriel on
The point is that there are 2 different ways to look at this:

*the industry way:
The industry ecosystem consider every mpeg standard (as backed up by ISO and ITU) as open standards because they are internationally recognized as such by national standard bodies, and are not tied to a specific single company.

Anyone can buy the standard and learn how parse a bitstream and make a decoder. In ITU an encoder is also standardized in most cases. (but not always)  These are non-proprietary standards, I don't have to go to a particular company to get a secret sauce that is the decoder. The information is out there in public.
Quote
*the Free Software (with capital letters) way:
They consider anything covered by patents without any explicit royalty exemption as being proprietary.

This is a misuse of the word "proprietary". I've had this argument with both Richard and John before, and calling an open standard "proprietary" is simply attempting to play both with the langauge and people's heads.

As much as "information wants to be free", when it's all free, nobody will bother to make any good information.  We're already seeing some effects of that right here in our own little field, aren't we, now?

Now, all of the ISO MPEG standards are non-proprietary.  The owners of the IP in the standards have agreed to RAND (Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory) licence the IP.

The encoders, to some extent, are a different story, because they are not part of the standard (beyond the "reference model" for which we can agree is not very interesting), and there may be additional IP in the reference model that is not RAND.

In that sense, a particular ENCODER for AAC can be both proprietary and not free to use.  So there is potential for a proprietary issue in AAC encoders. There can be a "secret sauce".  You might have to get it from a particular vendor.
Quote
Btw, this is related to patents, which cover technology usage license, not copyrights, which cover technology implementation.


Copyright covers the code. We're all talking about patents here, indeed.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #37 –
Quote
Also seeing that x264 is an open source Mpeg4 codec, what audio encoder is used with that?

i often use nero  , but you can easily use FAAC if you really want to...
PANIC: CPU 1: Cache Error (unrecoverable - dcache data) Eframe = 0x90000000208cf3b8
NOTICE - cpu 0 didn't dump TLB, may be hung

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #38 –
This feature list says nothing about the quality. Video is no different than audio: lossy compression must be evaluated in blind comparison.

J7N: I replied to an off-topic post that went to the recycle bin.

High quality AAC codec with open source?

Reply #39 –
I am very grateful that the Nero team has made their encoder available for use for free. The quality is very good.

But over the years, it seems every open source project rapidly develops into the best available. Lame, Xvid, Open Office and H 264 are all examples.

There is something about the collaborative nature of open source that makes it attractive to me as well. When a group of individuals devote their time and skills for the development of a tool to be used by all, without seeking financial benefit, this makes me want to use the results and help tune them if I can.

$.02