Topic: AAC+ Streams -- should MC be able to play them? (Read 4934 times)

lalittle · « **on:** October 31, 2006, 03:20:15 am »

I've noticed that none of the AAC+ streams on Shoutcast work in MC -- you get an "unable to play" message when you try one. Is this a "bug," or does MC simply not support this type of stream at this point?

Thanks,

Larry

JohnM · « **Reply #1 on:** December 09, 2006, 01:15:45 pm »

Hi!
Did you ever get any answer to your question? Can one listen to AAC+ streams with MC? If yes, how?
BR John

hit_ny · « **Reply #2 on:** December 09, 2006, 02:30:07 pm »

Seems like an oversight, AAC+ gives the best compression of the streaming formats. Whether its easier to deploy than the others reamains to be seen.

lalittle · « **Reply #3 on:** December 09, 2006, 06:24:50 pm »

Quote from: JohnM on December 09, 2006, 01:15:45 pm

Hi!
Did you ever get any answer to your question? Can one listen to AAC+ streams with MC? If yes, how?
BR John

I never got an answer. I also just tried it again, and they still don't play. It appears that MC does not support AAC+ streams at this point.

Larry

Matt · « **Reply #4 on:** December 09, 2006, 07:58:28 pm »

MC does not natively support AAC+, although MC can use DirectShow filters and some Winamp 2 input plugins.

Let us know if you find a DirectShow filter you think should fit the bill. We may need to tell MC to try DirectShow for AAC+ in that case.

Thanks.

JohnM · « **Reply #5 on:** December 10, 2006, 10:30:46 am »

Well, there seems to be a filter (CoreAAC) and an input-plugin (in_mp4.dll) http://rarewares.org/aac.html that should do the trick... but how?

I installed (and registered) the CoreAAC filter and installed the plugin with MC's PlugIn-manager but I still get an error message (something about the path) when trying to play AAC+-streams. aac is checked in the File Assoc. and Direct Sound is my output mode.

Any ideas?
John

JohnM · « **Reply #6 on:** December 10, 2006, 02:28:37 pm »

I just found the DirectShow filter options for different file types in MCs options. Tried different settings for aac-files... Always the same error: MC encountered... and then something about a path to the library ?

What is the difference between source filter and other filter in the "Choose DirectShow filters" window?
Should the source filter for ordinary (audio)streams (ie shoutcast .pls) be StreamBufferSource?
These things (and terms) seems to be a little tricky to understand. A parser, splitter, muxer, filter, wrapper, encoder, decoder etc. ?

Have to go to sleep now (gmt +2). Good night!
BR John

Matt · « **Reply #7 on:** December 10, 2006, 04:36:26 pm »

We'll take a closer look this week.

Thanks for your investigation.

fidelio · « **Reply #8 on:** January 04, 2007, 04:58:24 pm »

Hi,

I'd highly appreciate the AAC+ support for playing streams, since more and more radio stations are now changing to this format ...

Any news from MC12 team?

Yaobing · « **Reply #9 on:** January 04, 2007, 06:58:05 pm »

The most recent build supports AAC+ stream (at least the ones on Shoutcast) with Orban filter.

To play AAC+ stream from Shoutcast, you need DirectShow filters that can handle it. FFDShow or other AAC decoders are not enough. You need a parser. So far I have only found one filter that will work, and I actually had to change MC a bit to adapt to its requirements. The filter is actually a parser and a decoder in one. It is available here:

http://www.orban.com/plugin/

Click on the words "GET IT HERE" at top-right or the logo right below it to download.

There is a chance that a Winamp plugin for aac could also work. I have not yet tried it.

lalittle · « **Reply #10 on:** January 04, 2007, 07:18:16 pm »

Quote from: Yaobing on January 04, 2007, 06:58:05 pm

http://www.orban.com/plugin/

Click on the words "GET IT HERE" at top-right or the logo right below it to download.

Thanks for posting the specific instructions Yaobing. I did as you said and the SHOUTcast AAC+ streams play now. I did noticed a couple issues, however.

First, all the AAC stations I tried had a tendency to "jump" or "pause" quite often. I would normally chalk this up to the station/connection, but ALL of the AAC+ streams I tried did the same thing, while NONE of the mp3 streams do this, so it seems specifically related to AAC+ streams. It seems like this could be due to the fact that the AAC streams don't "cache" like mp3 streams do -- i.e. I cannot back up at all, and the slider stays all the way to the left. The bottom line is that this was enough of an issue that it effectively prevented listenning to any of the AAC stations -- even if it didn't happen all "that" much, it was still annoying enough to make me stop listenning.

Second (and this is a much more minor issue), there is no "bitrate" display for AAC streams. Is this something that can be added, or is this a problem with AAC streams? I like to see the actual bitrate in MC since the info posted on the Shoutcast site is not always accurate.

Thanks,

Larry

JohnM · « **Reply #11 on:** January 05, 2007, 03:19:18 am »

Well, aac-streams play but as Larry found out, not properly.
Some more info: Some streams skip (a lot) and some streams is just static. Found one that seemed to play ok (I'm not shure though). On my computer the aac-streams (128k) hog memory until MC crashes. MC starts with about 30M main memory amd 30M virtual memory. When MC eventually crashed the memory usage was 500M/1500M (main/virtual). Note that MC still hogged memory even when I stopped (paused) the stream. My buffer setting was 1 second.

HTH John

lalittle · « **Reply #12 on:** January 05, 2007, 11:19:54 am »

Quote from: JohnM on January 05, 2007, 03:19:18 am

Well, aac-streams play but as Larry found out, not properly.
Some more info: Some streams skip (a lot) and some streams is just static. Found one that seemed to play ok (I'm not shure though). On my computer the aac-streams (128k) hog memory until MC crashes. MC starts with about 30M main memory amd 30M virtual memory. When MC eventually crashed the memory usage was 500M/1500M (main/virtual). Note that MC still hogged memory even when I stopped (paused) the stream. My buffer setting was 1 second.

I didn't notice the memory hog issue, but I have been unable to find ANY AAC streams that play properly. Some seemed to skip a bit more than others, but they all skipped enough to be too annoying to listen to. I don't know if this is due to MC or to the "Orban" plugin, but the bottom line is that it's still not working properly.

Larry

JohnM · « **Reply #13 on:** January 05, 2007, 11:58:46 am »

How about this one http://www.shoutcast.com/sbin/shoutcast-playlist.pls?rn=865412&file=filename.pls (Boomer Radio) Seems to play OK (no skips). Been listening to this station for about 5 mins now. Main memory usage starts from 30M goes up to 120M then down to 8M rises to about 140M then drops to 8M again. Goes up to 150M drops down again and so on. BUT the virtual memory (swap) never flushes it just keeps building up. After 10 mins listening Vm is up to 700M and keeps rising. The stream is 32 kbs.
John

JohnM · « **Reply #14 on:** January 05, 2007, 12:15:44 pm »

Investigated a little more...
This 32 kbs aac+-stream seams to hog about 1200 k of memory each second (I think Task Managers default update speed is 1 sec) the stream plays (mem delta column in Task Manager) where as a mp3 stream of 128kbs takes only about 16 k. 128 kbs aac+-stream hogs about 4 times the 32 kbs stream, i.e about 5 megs of memory each second of play. No wonder it skips.

John

Yaobing · « **Reply #15 on:** January 05, 2007, 12:19:06 pm »

Quote from: JohnM on January 05, 2007, 11:58:46 am

How about this one http://www.shoutcast.com/sbin/shoutcast-playlist.pls?rn=865412&file=filename.pls (Boomer Radio) Seems to play OK (no skips). Been listening to this station for about 5 mins now. Main memory usage starts from 30M goes up to 120M then down to 8M rises to about 140M then drops to 8M again. Goes up to 150M drops down again and so on. BUT the virtual memory (swap) never flushes it just keeps building up. After 10 mins listening Vm is up to 700M and keeps rising. The stream is 32 kbs.
John

The link you gave above has a 32 bitrate. All stations I tried on Shoutcast with 64kbps or below works flowlessly. Most 128 kbps stations do not work well (play intermittently). I believe this is a problem with Orban plugin/filter. There is no much I can do. We will have to wait until a better DirectShow filter comes along. An alternative is to try using Winamp plugin (in_aac.dll or in_mp4.dll or something like that). I do not have time to investigate this route right now. MC does support Winamp input plugins, but there maybe some hassle getting the plugin registered with MC so MC would recognize it. You guys can either wait for me to get around to it, or investigate into it yourself.

I can not reproduce the issue with memory usage. MC's usage is at most 40M depending on which station is played (it is at 22M after playing the Boomer Radio you linked above for 10 minutes). Page File usage does not increase at all (actually decreased a bit during the time I have been typing this reply).

Yaobing · « **Reply #16 on:** January 05, 2007, 12:29:43 pm »

Quote from: JohnM on January 05, 2007, 12:15:44 pm

Investigated a little more...
This 32 kbs aac+-stream seams to hog about 1200 k of memory each second (I think Task Managers default update speed is 1 sec) the stream plays (mem delta column in Task Manager) where as a mp3 stream of 128kbs takes only about 16 k. 128 kbs aac+-stream hogs about 4 times the 32 kbs stream, i.e about 5 megs of memory each second of play. No wonder it skips.

John

While the same station is playing, the memory usage by MC on my computer has decreased to 13M. Mem Delta value goes up and down, with both positive and negative values.

There must be something else that is the issue on your computer.

I am using a build of MC that is a little newer than 139 that you are using. Do not know if this would be an issue.

JohnM · « **Reply #17 on:** January 05, 2007, 12:53:42 pm »

Quote

There must be something else that is the issue on your computer.

I think so too. I played around whith aac-filters earlier. Perhaps I didn't uninstall everything before trying this again... or, worse, then it's the old issue with ContentProtect (parental control) and NOD32 (anti-virus) residing on the same machine (I thougt I had this issue resolved

). Have to try this on our other computer.

Thanks, John

JohnM · « **Reply #18 on:** January 05, 2007, 02:03:57 pm »

No its not NOD32 or ContentProtect or some earlier leftovers. Tried with our other computer. Managed to disable everything except necessary windows components and MC (.139). Yes the mem delta goes up... and down but in much larger chunks (about 100 times larger) than when playing mp3 streams... and the virtual memory kept on growing until it slowed down the computer. Perhaps You fixed this in your version of MC... or then it is the orban thing

John

JimH · « **Reply #19 on:** January 05, 2007, 02:18:45 pm »

Try eliminating all third party software.

Yaobing · « **Reply #20 on:** January 05, 2007, 02:24:49 pm »

Quote from: JohnM on January 05, 2007, 02:03:57 pm

... or then it is the orban thing

My Orban plugin was downloaded a few weeks ago. Just to make sure, I checked their download site again. The download is still the same as before (same version, and the binaries compare the same).

JohnM · « **Reply #21 on:** January 06, 2007, 11:35:58 am »

Testing will have to wait a while... Thanks for your efforts!

I'll be back!

John

JohnM · « **Reply #22 on:** January 08, 2007, 02:00:29 am »

Back again!
Just testing on my work computer which have a Pentium 4 (AMD at home) and more memory than my computers at home. AAC+ seems to play fine except the skipping reported earlier. No excess usage of memory etc. UNLESS you pause (click the pause button) the aac+ stream. The mem delta never goes to zero and the virtual memory starts to build up (no build-up when playing) as if the stream still was pouring in.
I have to completely strip the other computer at home to get a grip on this issue... Any Intel specific optimisation in MC reg. aac+ by any chance?

John

zirum · « **Reply #23 on:** January 08, 2007, 02:14:14 am »

Just a tip, in case you didn't know.
If you need to test excessivly, Microsoft Virtual PC is a good thing to use. Then you don't need to uninstall/strip a computer for testing (unless you dig doing that...

).

Just boot it virtually, install, shutdown virtual pc, copy clean virtual drive, boot again. Then you have a clean windows install, to screw up. Microsoft Virtual Pc is freeware btw.

JohnM · « **Reply #24 on:** January 08, 2007, 02:29:58 am »

Thanks zirum, great idea!

Have been using Virtual PC before, but it didn't occur to me to use it for this.

John

JohnM · « **Reply #25 on:** January 21, 2007, 08:19:58 am »

Excessive memory usage problem solved!
I'm not shure if the problem was fixed with latest MC (.151) or even with the earlier build because haven't had the time to test. Anyway, if there have not been any fixes (reg. aac+ streams) in MC then the problem was with ContentProtect which I updated to the latest build earlier today.

John

lalittle · « **Reply #26 on:** January 22, 2007, 06:30:26 am »

Quote from: JohnM on January 21, 2007, 08:19:58 am

Excessive memory usage problem solved!
I'm not shure if the problem was fixed with latest MC (.151) or even with the earlier build because haven't had the time to test. Anyway, if there have not been any fixes (reg. aac+ streams) in MC then the problem was with ContentProtect which I updated to the latest build earlier today.

What is "ContentProtect"?

Thanks,

Larry

JohnM · « **Reply #27 on:** January 22, 2007, 06:59:30 am »

It's a parental control program. I have 3 kids between 10 and 14 and needed some means to control their web usage. More details: http://www.contentwatch.com/

John

lalittle · « **Reply #28 on:** January 22, 2007, 07:27:46 am »

Quote from: JohnM on January 22, 2007, 06:59:30 am

It's a parental control program. I have 3 kids between 10 and 14 and needed some means to control their web usage. More details: http://www.contentwatch.com/

John

Thanks.

Since I've never used this program, it apparently is/was not the culprit in this case.

Larry

JohnM · « **Reply #29 on:** January 22, 2007, 09:32:37 am »

No, not directly. Since it's filtering/monitoring on port 80 I think it affects the streaming, if the stream uses port 80, somehow. I had problems with memory allocation and the aac+-streams (MC .139) (no mem problem what so ever with mp3 streams) which still does not play as smoothly as mp3-streams.

John

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Author Topic: AAC+ Streams -- should MC be able to play them? (Read 4934 times)