ALAC Codec support!

Posted by: mlord

ALAC Codec support! - 05/03/2005 21:59

Okay, time for somebody here to integrate Apple iTunes codec support into our players! This can be done as an internal Hijack filter: reading the Apple format from a FID and feeding it to the player software as if it were a .WAV.

Volunteers?
Posted by: loren

Re: ALAC Codec support! - 06/03/2005 00:42

The ALAC decoder works. I just ran in on some files and made WAVS. Sweet. Now if I only had a clue how to program something like that. All the time and none of the knowledge =]
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: ALAC Codec support! - 06/03/2005 00:57

Well, I would say implementing flac or ogg in 2.0 would be more of a priority. It's easy enough to convert ALAC to flac losslessly, so there really isn't any point.

The big feature would be aac with fairplay drm, but that's a rather large can or worms to open.

Matthew
Posted by: mcomb

Re: ALAC Codec support! - 07/03/2005 20:15

Quote:
The big feature would be aac with fairplay drm, but that's a rather large can or worms to open.


Actually, aac without fairplay would be pretty useful as well since there are existing tools that can strip fairplay.

I'd agree that ALAC isn't very useful as it isn't used by much and can be losslesly transcoded. Although being able to convert to ALAC and stream to an Airport Express would be kind of fun if the empeg is fast enough.

-Mike
Posted by: hybrid8

Re: ALAC Codec support! - 09/03/2005 19:51

Do any of the solutions simply strip the DRM or do they in fact transcode the AAC while by-passing the DRM? If they transcode, then you can just output into an MP3 (or OGG) instead of another AAC and be done with it.

Bruno
Posted by: tman

Re: ALAC Codec support! - 09/03/2005 20:07

They strip the DRM and you end up with an unencrypted AAC file so you can just transcode after that. Some of the tools have the transcoding step built in.
Posted by: mcomb

Re: ALAC Codec support! - 10/03/2005 16:46

Quote:
you end up with an unencrypted AAC file so you can just transcode after that


Right, but the idea would be not to transcode so that you don't lose audio quality. That is where unencrypted AAC on the empeg would be handy.

-Mike