AAC output plugin for Winamp?
 

Hi everyone,

I'd like to be able to encode files on my hard drive into AAC, but I cannot find functional MP4/AAC output plugin for Winamp anywhere!! I found one after much searching, but it refused to show up in the output plugins list. I can't find anything else. Does such a plugin exist?

Thanks!

Shayne

AAC Output Plugin for Winamp 2 and Winamp 5 @ RareWares

Re: AAC output plugin for Winamp?
 

That's right, this is a known problem with the out_aac.dll version from RareWares.org, because it has been compiled with a link to the external id3lib.dll. So if you don't have this and/or two other DLLs in your \windows\system\ directory, out_aac.dll will not show up in the output section of Winamp. I summarized this issue in a thread on 3ivx.com recently where someone wanted to broadcast AAC with Shoutcast or other streaming technologies:

http://forums.3ivx.com/cgi-bin/ikonb...ic=129&start=0

Excuse me if this sounds a little obvious, but since WA5 can rip and encode CD's in MP3 and AAC on the fly, why is it so difficult to encode WAV files into MP3 and AAC using WA's built in encoders (ie. those that are already being used for ripping/encoding from CD)?

Apart from the ease of use angle, I feel that WA's encoders (particularly AAC) stand head and shoulders above others I've heard and used (for example Easy CD-DAE).

Output plugins, apart from being cumbersome for newbies to WA, also use 3rd party encoders instead of those built into WA.

What would be very nice is to be able to right-drag a bunch of WAVs onto WA and get the options "Play, Enqueue and Encode using WinAmp"

Thoughts?

Seb :)

I think Nullsoft only licensed the AAC codec for CD ripping, that's why. Concerning the "head and shoulder" thing with Easy CD-DA Extractor (also using FAAC) there are no public listening tests available which would compare these two codecs, because the Winamp codec wasn't included in the last AAC comparison. So it would be good to post the version and settings that you used and probably a sample file encoded with Winamp, too, e.g. taken from the samples of this last listening test.

A native transcoding api was planned by Justin/Christophe for Winamp 5.x . . . but that was before they both resigned. The code is there though :/

The AAC Output plugin just requires microsoft msvcp60.dll runtime library to be present in the %system% dir.

Output plugins are fairly easy to use, imho, but that's probably because I'm used to them, and have been using them for more than 5 years.

Until a time that the Winamp Transcoding API is implemented (if ever), newbies should maybe use more dedicated software, eg. dBPowerAmp Music Converter (extra codecs here, incl. aac/m4a)

Not if you use the one available on RareWares from July 14, 2004, because it definitely needs id3lib.dll, msvcp60.dll and msvcrt.dll. I just checked it again, out_aac.dll will not show up without these external DLLs on your system. You can also use a tool like eXeScope to analyze DLLs and look under "Import" after loading the DLL. But maybe you have an older version or compiled it yourself from the source code, then this dependency is non-existant.

I don't think that simply copying an output plugin to the plugin directory is more complicated for newbies than installing and learning a new application for transcoding some files to AAC/MP4 with Winamp. ;) By the way, the next version of out_aac.dll will also import tags from the input files and automatically tag the output files with them, independent from the tagging and/or file format. At the moment the input tags are used for renaming the output files to the "track number - artist - title" scheme.

Yeah, it's pretty straight-forward once you know what you're doing.

<3 out_aac.dll :)

Hmm, msvcrt.dll is included by default with Windows (most, if not all Os's).

I don't have id3lib.dll anywhere on my system, and out_aac appears and works just fine. What does id3/id3lib have to do with aac anyway? Is it just used for importing any existing id3 tags if going from mp3 to aac?

Hmm, what's the latest version of out_aac? It doesn't say on rarewares. Mine is v1.3. Let me just install the latest version....

edit: ah, it's now v1.5
and sure enough, it doesn't appear in the Output list.... but does after placing id3lib.dll in the %System% dir. That's pretty funky, if you ask me :/

Heh.

Cheers :D

The problem with the current RareWares compile is that John33 added this dependency to the external id3lib.dll, although the original source code does not use it, maybe to keep out_aac.dll smaller than it would be without this dependency.

At the moment I'm testing v1.6 of out_aac.dll (not available in the FAAC CVS snapshot yet). As far as I know, the plugin is supposed to read ID3 tags from input files and also use them for tagging if the output format is AAC and not MP4, like the Nullsoft codec does it. The difference would be that it can also use iTunes-compatible tags on MP4 files with .mp4, .m4a or .m4b file extensions.

If this id3lib.dll busines is a known bug, then the people at rarewares should mention it on the download page so that people know to get the extra files. As it stands, the thing is completely useless because it won't work without the files, and they aren't telling anyone that they need to GET the files. I can understand wanting to set it up like that so as to keep the filesize down, but I can't understand not telling people.

EDIT: What makes the situation worse is that I just realized this thread is almost 2yrs old (I found it while googling for an aac plugin for winamp). That means this problem has been known for at least 2yrs, and they still haven't so much as let anyone know of it's existance (let alone actually fix it).

Alas, there's nothing that anyone here can do about it.
We are not affiliated in any way to rarewares, out_aac, or id3lib.

At least by reading this thread, you know that out_aac requires both id3lib.dll and msvcp60.dll to be in the system dir, and that there's even direct links for downloading them all. That's the least we can do. Well, actually, it's the most we can do, heh.

Uses the libmp4v2 library from the MPEG4IP package [http://mpeg4ip.sourceforge.net/]