"enhanced" aac podcasts

[NicolasP]

I still have a podcast that doesn't work. It's pretty heavily enhanced with pictures and chapters. Even "mp4creator -optimise" (from mpeg4ip) doesn't make it work, so I have to extract the audio track, create a new MP4 file from it, tag it and then optimise it in order to be able to listen to these files on my H320. I've made a script for it but it would be really nice if i could just copy the original files over to my DAP
You can download the latest episode here.
It's M4B, but just rename it to M4A

[Lear]

You can download the latest episode here.

"Server not found"...

[NicolasP]

You can download the latest episode here.

"Server not found"...

That's strange, it works fine for me...
I've uploaded it to one of my web spaces : link.
Thanks for having a look

[Lear]

I tried again (from another computer) and then it worked... Anyway, that file should play now.

[NicolasP]

Sweet ! Thanks a lot
Most of the episodes work fine now, but i still have some problems.
There are a few which load fine but produce a horrible noise. You can get one of these here.
Also there is one that doesn't load at all : link.

And there's one last thing I'd like to mention, it's that your commit said "accept M4B files". Maybe it's not what you meant but I thought I would actually be able to play files with an M4B extension... Maybe as most of them are now playable you could add support for that extension in the browser ?

[Lear]

Sweet ! Thanks a lot
Most of the episodes work fine now, but i still have some problems.
There are a few which load fine but produce a horrible noise. You can get one of these here.
Also there is one that doesn't load at all : link.

The hiss is a side effect of the decoder running out of memory... The other one is a file parsing problem; don't know what just yet.

And there's one last thing I'd like to mention, it's that your commit said "accept M4B files". Maybe it's not what you meant but I thought I would actually be able to play files with an M4B extension... Maybe as most of them are now playable you could add support for that extension in the browser ?

No, that M4B thing I referred to is something that can be found inside the file. Adding support for the extension could be a good idea.

[NicolasP]

How come the decoder runs out of memory on some files and not others ? This is even more surprising as these episodes used to play fine after being modified by my script...

[Lear]

How come the decoder runs out of memory on some files and not others ? This is even more surprising as these episodes used to play fine after being modified by my script...

The size of various tables used for seeking (and playback). Your script can change the file layout, and also make some tables more compact. This can reduce the size of the tables, making it possible to load the file.

Btw, the file that didn't load fails because the file isn't streaming friendly (which Rockbox currently requires); the metadata comes after the audio data.

[NicolasP]

Thanks for the explanation Is there any chance these files will work in the future, or should I just run them through my script ?
Also about the one that wasn't streaming friendly, foobar corrected it perfectly so now it works fine.

Now there is something else I noticed, about replay gain : the value is taken into account (there is a distinct volume jump when I enable/disable replay gain), but in the ID3 info screen, the value shown under "track gain" is the track title I haven't tried album gain...

Finally, would you have any idea on how to read the bookmark time tags stored in these M4B files ? It would be a very nice feature to add and maybe I'd try doing so.

[Yotto]

Do the producers of the show not produce a non-enhanced version of their show?  As a podcaster (though as one who does not produce an enhanced version) I can't imagine producing ONLY an enhanced podcast, and not also provide a good old fashioned mp3 file as well.

[NicolasP]

No, sadly they don't. They seem to think everyone listening to their podcasts has an iPod and iTunes
It goes as far as making it almost mandatory to use iTunes to even subscribe to the podcasts...

[Lear]

Thanks for the explanation Is there any chance these files will work in the future, or should I just run them through my script ?

Possibly. I have some ideas on how it could be fixed, at the expense of some seek accuracy on long files (a 1 hour file can have about 120.000 seek points, which is a little excessive, IMHO). Not sure if it will work though, and getting it right could be a little tricky...

Now there is something else I noticed, about replay gain : the value is taken into account (there is a distinct volume jump when I enable/disable replay gain), but in the ID3 info screen, the value shown under "track gain" is the track title I haven't tried album gain...

Interesting bug. I did know that piece of code hadn't been tested, but I thought it should work. It almost did... Fix committed.

Finally, would you have any idea on how to read the bookmark time tags stored in these M4B files ? It would be a very nice feature to add and maybe I'd try doing so.

Nope, I don't know anything about those parts. I haven't tried to find out what kind of data it is, or how it can be used.

[Yotto]

No, sadly they don't. They seem to think everyone listening to their podcasts has an iPod and iTunes
It goes as far as making it almost mandatory to use iTunes to even subscribe to the podcasts...

Then I would email them, asking for an alternative, and if they would not provide one, I'd seriously consider unsubscribing.

There are tens of thousands of podcasts out there.  I bet there are dozens that do what this show does, and don't lock you into iTunes.

[NicolasP]

Lear, thanks for your last two commits, now it's much easier to listen to podcasts

Yotto, I've started a discussion on the forum related to this podcast about providing an alternative in the form of an MP3 version, but I'm not very optimistic about the chances of getting it. The thing is this podcast is simply the most important when it comes to french electronic music so I don't really want to consider the option of unsubscribing
Thankfully, the compatibility is now almost perfect, so it's not really a problem anymore, but I'll still try to push to get an MP3 version