WMA v9 Codec Beta 1

[Spoon]

An early beta with about 75% of all the stuff done I want to do. This codec adds - Windows Media v9 Standard (CBR and VBR), Windows Media v9 Professional (CBR and VBR), Windows Media v9 Lossless and Windows Media Voice options to dBpowerAMP Music Converter and dBpowerAMP Audio Player (see www.dbpoweramp.com).



Download:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/dBpowerAMP-codec-wmav9.exe

4.1MB

Thing yet to be added - 2 pass VBR encoding, make decoding crossfade compatible with dAP, smaller distribution package.

[SOT]

Just in case, I´ll post this DLL here, because I couldn´t run AMP and Music converter after I installed WMA9. Just put this DLL (Msvcrtd.dll) on you dbpoweramp dir.


Download HERE

THX

[Spoon]

Whoops my mistake, anyhow I have updated it to Beta 2 which is now crossfade compatible with dAP, download:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/dBpowerAMP-codec-wmav9.exe

4.1MB

[Nex]

Using beta 2, when transcoding from an mp3 vbr file to a wma 9 vbr file I get skips. The higher the bitrate, the fewer the skips.

More info later as this was late last night and I won't have a chance to try anything else till tonight. Nex

[STAR]

hate to ask a stupid question.. but is there any way the codec could be used on a windows 95 machine like mine? I hate being behind the times and everything.. but I can't run anything more than 98.. which I refuse to run because I've had nothing but nightmares when I ran it before...
I hope its possible.. cause as of now it wont let me and that really sucks :(

[Nex]

Now that last post of mine was a lousy one, wasn't it? Posted half asleep and 3/4 out the door.

I haven't had a chance to reproduce it yet, but at least let me give the details I know:

I'm using XP home. I do not have the full install of beta 9 on my system, just what dbp installed.

When I said the higher the bitrate the less a song will skip, I meant the *target* bitrate, and always in beta 9 vbr. The original transcoded files were also vbrs, but mp3s. Skips were most pronounced in quality 50 (the lowest I tried).

Sorry about the paucity of info in that first post. I posted mainly to see if anyone else was getting the same thing - at least I think that's what was slowly crossing my sleep-deprived brain this morning.

I'll try to reproduce this later tonight or tomorrow, whenever I have the time. Nex

[Unregistered]

Why not give option for 2 pass CBR?

[Spoon]

You mean 2 pass VBR? I wrote it on Friday, just need a chance to test it myself before releasing Beta 3.

[totalXSive]

The codec dialog looks very confusing. Is there any way you can simplify it somewhat? Perhaps you could create a second options page, like with the Lame codec, so that there is more space for the options.

Seems to work okay, though. Using XP Pro SP1.

[Spoon]

I don't like how everything is in the two boxes, but I didn't find away easily to extract that stuff and have seperate frequencies, bitrate etc...

[Marco]

No. I can make 2 pass CBR in Windows Media Encoder, so this option exists.

Originally posted by Spoon
You mean 2 pass VBR? I wrote it on Friday, just need a chance to test it myself before releasing Beta 3.

[Spoon]

Beta 3 is out, it adds 2 pass encoding for 'Power Pack' users:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/dBpowerAMP-codec-wmav9.exe

4.1MB (don't worry about the size, it will drop after the beta testing)

[decarteret]

Problem with final bitrate property

problem: bitrate property is invalid

reproduce: convert any file to WM v9 (I used VBR 75 Quality 1-pass) and then check the metadata for the bitrate property

result: I'm typically showing in the 16,000,000 range.

expected: somewhere in the 90,000 - 190,000 range

Otherwise, this product is excellent! I like your efforts so much I purchased the Power Pack (which I didn't really need but I wanted to support your development)

[Spoon]

I think this one is a Microsoft Bug, the bitrate label is written by WMA its self, it looks like they are 10x out You could work out the average bit rate by deviding the file size by length in seconds then * 8 to bits.

[decarteret]

Spoon,

Thanks for your quick reply.

I did some further testing... I started with a WAV file and encoded it into WM v9 VBR quality 75 using a few different programs. Following are the output results:

WMP v9 build 2903 -- 104bps
Easy CD-DA Extractor 5.0 -- 104bps
dbPowerAmp v9 beta add-in -- 11613bps

I understand the WMFSDK handles the writing of the bit rate metadata to the header but I can't understand how it might be screwed up. Ideally, I'd like this to be working because I rely on this metadata to populate some fields in my media file indexing software.

I plan on writing a conversion sample myself for a side project but I won't be able to get to it until I have some free time, which will be NEVER!!! Man. I can't complain though.

If you could look into this a little more that would be amazingly helpful.

Thank you!!

Jason