Wow, I nearly fell off my chair when reading this on the mp4tool mailing list... but where are the docs? Has there something been done on the ones already available at the ENST site? You know, people will want to know e.g. if they can use more than one audio stream in a MP4 container, and how video subtitles can be done etc.
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>Wow, I nearly fell off my chair when reading this on the mp4tool mailing list...
don't hurt yourself, that's only the begining :)
>but where are the docs? Has there something been done on the ones already available at the ENST site?
No doc yet because not really needed. As said on the web page, the authoring side is exteremely basic for now and will drastically change (after some vacation :), hence not documented. But what i can tell you already is that next version will have a draft of the bifs/od/etc encoder in the MP4Box app, and thus some documentation, and likely MPEG-4 tutorials.
>You know, people will want to know e.g. if they can use more than one audio stream in a MP4 container, and how video subtitles can be done etc
well that's what forums are for, right? And the answer is yes of course, anything doable with MPEG-4 must be doable in GPAC (at least for 2D applications for the time being). The current release supports a good amount of MPEG4 tools, including dynamic stream selection (subtitle or audio streams) and control (pause / fast forward).
But once again, the main effort for weeks to come will be porting of the player, until then authoring will be performed with mp4tool from ENST
jean
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By th way, is it possible to download just the main program and only install the input plugins you really need or want like the (updated) FAAD2 plugin for an audio-only usage of Osmo4? I'm asking, because I still use Win95 on an old PC with a small HDD as well as CPU and RAM resources...
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Yes, codec management is done through plugins loaded at run-time, all you need to do is copy the desired plugin in the appropriated directory (on windows, the main exe directory).
BTW don't hesitate to send feedback since the player has never been tested on win95. You may have to recompile the DirectDraw/DirectSound module if you don't have DirectX 7 or later.
Also note that on win95, the 2D rasterizer used is the soft one, not gdiplus, and performances may not be impressive since the rasterizer is a bit slow...
jean
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I think I will try my luck with the main app and the FAAD2 plugin from RareWares then, because the ~8 MB download for all plugins is a bit too much for my HDD at the moment. ;-) I don't know which DirectX version I have, but at some time there was something new installed with the Internet Explorer 5.5 that I use now.
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>I think I will try my luck with the main app and the >FAAD2 plugin from RareWares then
oops there's a misunderstanding there: GPAC and IM1 have completely different architectures, and old plugins from Osmo4/IM1 cannot be used in GPAC.
You really have to recompile the FAAD2 plugin by hand, but you don't have to download the full extra lib package of course. The simplest solution is (I just tested it to be sure) :
1- get the GPAC tarball
2- recompile your favorite FAAD2 codec as a static lib and copy the output in gpac/extra_lib/lib/w32_debug or w32_release (or edit by hand the linker settings). FAAD2 shall be compiled with Multithreaded DLL C run time and no optimizations (cf VC project settings)
3- Remove dependency to M4Systems in codec_pack (only needed for xvid). Open codec_pack project settings, add to the preprocessor settings M4_BUILD_FAAD if not present and remove all other M4_BUILD_XXX. Also remove unneeded libs from the link settings (libxvidcore, libjpeg, libmad, libpng and zlib), and recompile.
The new codec_pack.dll should be in gpac/bin/Debug or Release - rename it to "whatever_you_want.dll" to avoid overwriting the codec_pack.dll and copy to the install dir of Osmo4/GPAC and rerun the player.
BTW if you manage to do this you're 1 inch from having SBR too, since the API of FAAD2 used by GPAC has not changed - copy the lastest FAAD.h in gpac/extra_lib/include/faad and do as above, it should work right away.
jean.
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Thanks for this explanation, I hope someone with a compiler will understand it and provide a binary for me. ;-) I will put a link to this thread over at Audiocoding.com, so people can read how to do it.
In the meantime I tried to install the new Osmo4/GPA version, but as expected it stopped with "Microsoft GDI+ cannot be installed on Windows 95 and older systems". So this is refering to the lack of DirectX 7 or newer, right? Is it possible to download only the necessary components from Microsoft, or would I have to install the whole Windows Media Player for that?
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No, it's just that there is no support for GDIplus on NT4 and lower, nor Win95 - this has nothing to do with DirectX.
What this also means is that there is a bug in the installer: it should not abort, but just pop up a warning.
Unfortunatelly all the office crew is on vacation hence no update of the installer for Win95 for the time being - really sorry about that :(
jean.
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OK, that gives me time to clean up my HDD a bit - too many WAV test samples still waiting to be checked, but it's no fun to sit in my apartment the whole day with the headphones on at 30+ degree celsius. ;-)
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I would like to report that I just successfully installed GPAC v0.1.1 on my Win95b system that I had updated with DirectX Media 6.0 Runtime (enduser.exe, also necessary for the new 3ivx filter suite) and DirectX 7.0a in the meantime. This is the last DX version that installs on a PC with a 486 CPU while DX8 checks for a Pentium or equivalent processor.
GPAC seems to work fine so far, it even plays the 3ivx video part of a semi-broken MP4 file that 3ivx's own splitter can't handle yet (v4.5.1a3, but supposed to be fixed in the next alpha version). The audio track is not decoded, because it's AAC done with QuickTime and I don't have an AAC plugin for GPAC yet.
Another related question: I read on the new website that MP4Box doesn't support the import of "raw AAC" yet. Does this mean all AAC files, also the ones with ADIF or ADTS headers, or only the ones without any header?
Would it be possible to import a standard audio-only MP4 file done with FAAC in MP4Box, or is the only supported audio format MP3 at the moment? So I would have to use mp4tool (or IBM's Toolkit) for muxing AAC with a MPEG-4 Systems file, right? Does this tool (and the available GUI from Cyril) still need an installed Java VM?
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That's great, so FAAC's -w switch is good for something at last... ;-) I'm gonna download MP4Box.exe now.
By the way, the installer seems to define a wrong link to the license text file, because it can't be found in the Windows program group. This can be easily repaired manually of course, but the text file also has the wrong CR/LFs it seems. Who needs license text files anyhow? ;-)
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That's right, I'm fixing that in the install script right away. Thanks for the tip.
And you DO need license files, but only if it is open-source license :)
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After a month or so of code clean-up, i'm pleased to annouce the first release of GPAC and open this forum on GPAC tips and tricks.
This forum will be dedicated to compilation, porting, configuration and usage of tools provided by GPAC, and futur past of the Norwegian Blue parrot.
cheers,
jean
Wow, I nearly fell off my chair when reading this on the mp4tool mailing list... but where are the docs? Has there something been done on the ones already available at the ENST site? You know, people will want to know e.g. if they can use more than one audio stream in a MP4 container, and how video subtitles can be done etc.
>Wow, I nearly fell off my chair when reading this on the mp4tool mailing list...
don't hurt yourself, that's only the begining :)
>but where are the docs? Has there something been done on the ones already available at the ENST site?
No doc yet because not really needed. As said on the web page, the authoring side is exteremely basic for now and will drastically change (after some vacation :), hence not documented. But what i can tell you already is that next version will have a draft of the bifs/od/etc encoder in the MP4Box app, and thus some documentation, and likely MPEG-4 tutorials.
>You know, people will want to know e.g. if they can use more than one audio stream in a MP4 container, and how video subtitles can be done etc
well that's what forums are for, right? And the answer is yes of course, anything doable with MPEG-4 must be doable in GPAC (at least for 2D applications for the time being). The current release supports a good amount of MPEG4 tools, including dynamic stream selection (subtitle or audio streams) and control (pause / fast forward).
But once again, the main effort for weeks to come will be porting of the player, until then authoring will be performed with mp4tool from ENST
jean
By th way, is it possible to download just the main program and only install the input plugins you really need or want like the (updated) FAAD2 plugin for an audio-only usage of Osmo4? I'm asking, because I still use Win95 on an old PC with a small HDD as well as CPU and RAM resources...
Yes, codec management is done through plugins loaded at run-time, all you need to do is copy the desired plugin in the appropriated directory (on windows, the main exe directory).
BTW don't hesitate to send feedback since the player has never been tested on win95. You may have to recompile the DirectDraw/DirectSound module if you don't have DirectX 7 or later.
Also note that on win95, the 2D rasterizer used is the soft one, not gdiplus, and performances may not be impressive since the rasterizer is a bit slow...
jean
I think I will try my luck with the main app and the FAAD2 plugin from RareWares then, because the ~8 MB download for all plugins is a bit too much for my HDD at the moment. ;-) I don't know which DirectX version I have, but at some time there was something new installed with the Internet Explorer 5.5 that I use now.
>I think I will try my luck with the main app and the >FAAD2 plugin from RareWares then
oops there's a misunderstanding there: GPAC and IM1 have completely different architectures, and old plugins from Osmo4/IM1 cannot be used in GPAC.
You really have to recompile the FAAD2 plugin by hand, but you don't have to download the full extra lib package of course. The simplest solution is (I just tested it to be sure) :
1- get the GPAC tarball
2- recompile your favorite FAAD2 codec as a static lib and copy the output in gpac/extra_lib/lib/w32_debug or w32_release (or edit by hand the linker settings). FAAD2 shall be compiled with Multithreaded DLL C run time and no optimizations (cf VC project settings)
3- Remove dependency to M4Systems in codec_pack (only needed for xvid). Open codec_pack project settings, add to the preprocessor settings M4_BUILD_FAAD if not present and remove all other M4_BUILD_XXX. Also remove unneeded libs from the link settings (libxvidcore, libjpeg, libmad, libpng and zlib), and recompile.
The new codec_pack.dll should be in gpac/bin/Debug or Release - rename it to "whatever_you_want.dll" to avoid overwriting the codec_pack.dll and copy to the install dir of Osmo4/GPAC and rerun the player.
BTW if you manage to do this you're 1 inch from having SBR too, since the API of FAAD2 used by GPAC has not changed - copy the lastest FAAD.h in gpac/extra_lib/include/faad and do as above, it should work right away.
jean.
Thanks for this explanation, I hope someone with a compiler will understand it and provide a binary for me. ;-) I will put a link to this thread over at Audiocoding.com, so people can read how to do it.
In the meantime I tried to install the new Osmo4/GPA version, but as expected it stopped with "Microsoft GDI+ cannot be installed on Windows 95 and older systems". So this is refering to the lack of DirectX 7 or newer, right? Is it possible to download only the necessary components from Microsoft, or would I have to install the whole Windows Media Player for that?
No, it's just that there is no support for GDIplus on NT4 and lower, nor Win95 - this has nothing to do with DirectX.
What this also means is that there is a bug in the installer: it should not abort, but just pop up a warning.
Unfortunatelly all the office crew is on vacation hence no update of the installer for Win95 for the time being - really sorry about that :(
jean.
OK, that gives me time to clean up my HDD a bit - too many WAV test samples still waiting to be checked, but it's no fun to sit in my apartment the whole day with the headphones on at 30+ degree celsius. ;-)
Hello again... ;-)
I would like to report that I just successfully installed GPAC v0.1.1 on my Win95b system that I had updated with DirectX Media 6.0 Runtime (enduser.exe, also necessary for the new 3ivx filter suite) and DirectX 7.0a in the meantime. This is the last DX version that installs on a PC with a 486 CPU while DX8 checks for a Pentium or equivalent processor.
GPAC seems to work fine so far, it even plays the 3ivx video part of a semi-broken MP4 file that 3ivx's own splitter can't handle yet (v4.5.1a3, but supposed to be fixed in the next alpha version). The audio track is not decoded, because it's AAC done with QuickTime and I don't have an AAC plugin for GPAC yet.
Another related question: I read on the new website that MP4Box doesn't support the import of "raw AAC" yet. Does this mean all AAC files, also the ones with ADIF or ADTS headers, or only the ones without any header?
Would it be possible to import a standard audio-only MP4 file done with FAAC in MP4Box, or is the only supported audio format MP3 at the moment? So I would have to use mp4tool (or IBM's Toolkit) for muxing AAC with a MPEG-4 Systems file, right? Does this tool (and the available GUI from Cyril) still need an installed Java VM?
This is good news, I never could test it on Win95, I'm glad to hear it's working!
MP4Box doesn't support unpackaged AAC bitstreams, but if the AAC is in an MP4 file then you can import it as any generic MP4 tracks.
That's great, so FAAC's -w switch is good for something at last... ;-) I'm gonna download MP4Box.exe now.
By the way, the installer seems to define a wrong link to the license text file, because it can't be found in the Windows program group. This can be easily repaired manually of course, but the text file also has the wrong CR/LFs it seems. Who needs license text files anyhow? ;-)
That's right, I'm fixing that in the install script right away. Thanks for the tip.
And you DO need license files, but only if it is open-source license :)