[Toolame-devel] Mp2 in a .wav file format and parallel encoding

[Jesse S. <sc...@gm...>]

Firstly, I have very little C programming experience, and very little
experience with audio.  I do have a good background in java, *nix, and
perl, so please forgive me if these questions are obvious and please
let me know if there is a better forum in which to ask.

I have a requirement to do some encoding from .wav file that is
encoded in a .wav format to several outputs:
    .mp2 (mpeg audio layer 2 256Kbit/s CBR) 
    .wav (mpeg 2 same CBR and bitrate) 
    .mp3 (I can use lame for this).  

Xdelta shows that there is only a very small difference between the
.wav and .mp2 files, I assume only the frame headers. and the id3 tag

The source file is from a proprietary format (Prophet Systems) which
has the .wav file, a ASCII .dat file containing track information, and
a binary .vid file.  I have no clue what the .vid file is, and I'd
very much like to know.  Our current process uses 3rd party software
that takes the .wav and serialy processes the different outputs.

What I'd like to know is 

1.  How can I figure out what format the source file is.  Is there a
header reader out there I can download and compile?  I've read the
specs on the MPEG frame header, but I don't have much experience
dealing with binary file formats.

2.  Can I process 1 frame of the input file and output the 3 different
format framse to my 3 output files in parallel (threaded).  I realize
that this only saves me the overhead of the initial read but I'd have
to guess it would improve my transcoding time.

Any help/feedback is appreciated