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JoeBorn
Neuros Audio Team
Administrator
801 Posts |
 Posted - 06/11/2005 : 1:37:12 PM
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Apparantly the encoding license fee for mp3 is pretty high, and apparantly AAC is not.
Is AAC audio (as part of a video steam) widely enough supported to play everywhere? Obviously we don't want to wind up in another g.726 situation.
Is aac supported well on Linux? Palm? PocketPC?
Any feedback would be appreciated.
jborn (at) neurosaudio.com |
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jeffman8(at)hotmail.com
Likes to Post
15 Posts |
Posted - 06/11/2005 : 1:55:19 PM
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There's always Ogg Vorbis, I believe Ogg is completely free for commercial and non-commercial use. But I don't know if it's possible to pair the Ogg Vorbis sound codec with MPEG4/DivX video codec.
The developing open source video codec designed to be used with Ogg is Theora.
http://www.theora.org
Making the next Neuros video recorder using Theora instead of DivX would be very interesting. Your Licensing costs would be solved, but you would run into folks wanting an easy way to convert and playback. I don't know if there are many Theora players out there.
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Donny662
Just Posting
6 Posts |
Posted - 06/25/2005 : 11:07:59 PM
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In my opinion, mp3 is the most widely supported format for audio when paired with any of the popular mpeg-4 codecs. So, supporting mp3 encoding is the best way to ensure the video and audio can play on the greatest variety of hardware.
AAC seems to be getting more popular in computer-based applications. Many computer media players will be able to play video with AAC audio, provided the right codecs/filters are installed on the system. Although, support with standalone set-top DVD/DivX(MPEG-4) players seems to be sparse if there is any at all. You could easily allow customers to play their files recorded with AAC audio on their computers by packaging for them the right software, but I don't think they will be able to play it on most if not all other devices.
I'm not sure about Palm or PocketPC, but Linux seems to have tools that allow encoding/decoding of AAC. FAAC is one I just came across; although, I have not had any personal experience with Linux and video and audio.
Personally, I would like to see more Ogg Vorbis implementation because I support the ideals of the project and I'm happy with the quality. Ogg Vorbis support is the reason I purchased a Neuros. Yet, I will admit that there isn't much hardware support for it. In computer implementations, Ogg Vorbis with video does best in a container other than AVI. OGM (Ogg Multimedia Format, or something like that it stands for) is one of the first containers to allow Vorbis audio, but it is not supported by the folks at Xiph. Although I saw mentioned that a few standalone MPEG-4 players could play OGM, I also read that most, if not all, can't. Another popular container for Vorbis audio with MPEG-4 video is Matroska, which is completely open source. Again though, computer support, including on Linux, is good but standalone support is non-existent.
Another popular audio format for DivX/Xvid movies is Dolby Digital or AC3. AC3 can work in the AVI container and many standalone set-top MPEG-4 players support it because the support for AC3 on DVD is already built into the player. But, licensing for AC3 is probably even more expensive than mp3.
Anything you decide to implement could easily be supported on your customers computers, but if you want to give them portability to other devices, you will be hard pressed to find a more convenient solution than mp3.
I hope my feedback is useful and what you are looking for. I don't personally use video encoded in an MPEG-4 format, so I have not actually used AAC or Ogg audio with video; I generally backup movies and TV shows using SVCD/DVD formats. Although, I do like to keep up on the news of computer video by reading the forums/news at VideoHelp and Doom9. If you have the time you may want to check out the forums at either of those sites if you are looking for more information about support, compatibility, etc. VideoHelp attracts more beginners, and Doom9 seems to attract more dedicated hobbyists. |
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spudmonkey
Just Posting
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MP3 v. AAC
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