mp4 / m4a / flac support?

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jdeligiannis
Posts: 34
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2005 1:50 am

mp4 / m4a / flac support?

Post by jdeligiannis »

Is there any way to get Goldwave to recognize mp4 / m4a / flac files, without losing quality?
JackH
Posts: 100
Joined: Sat Mar 27, 2004 3:27 pm

Post by JackH »

Goldwave will open flac and m4a; I've not tried mp4. It doesn't save in m4a format. With flac, you can edit and re-save as much as you like without losing quality due to repeated compression, since it is lossless compression.
DougDbug
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Location: Silicon Valley

Post by DougDbug »

I haven't tried MP4 or M4A. You may need an additional CODEC.

These are lossy compression formats. In order to edit these files, they have to be decompressed first.* If you re-save them as MP4/M4A (or other lossy format), they must go through a 2nd lossy compression step. (The quality loss might not be audible if the bitrate is high enough.)

If you can't get GoldWave to work directly with these formats, you can use a 3rd-party conversion tool to convert the files to WAV before editing, and then back to MP4 after editing. This will be a little extra work, but there is still only one additional lossy compression step.

Here are a couple of FREE conversion programs:

XRECODE (audio only)
SUPER (audio/video)



* There are a couple of special-purpose MP3 editors that can do some simple editing without decoding (cutting, pasting, changing volume). I'm not aware of any similar MP4 editors, but I haven't looked for one.
DewDude420
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Post by DewDude420 »

m4a and mp4 are ALMOST the same thing.

in essence, both are merely container formats (much like WAV or AVI). the real nitty gritty with these formats is the fact they contain mpeg-4 AAC. m4a is supposed to indicate an audio only file where as an mp4 may indicate audio/video in one file.

now here's the kicker, there really is no such thing as an MP4/M4A decoder, and likewise, an AAC decoder has no clue what to do with an mp4 file...yeah, it's AAC, but it's not raw AAC.

this magic is solved by a codec...or, in this case, a codec pack. the K-Lite codec pack includes both FFDShow which will add an AAC decoder (libfaad) AND mp4/m4a demuxers. All you need is the basic version of the codec pack.

so after you install this codec pack you might notice your .mp4 and .m4a files don't show up under supported files, that's normal..it did the same thing on mine. All i did was display all files, selected one, and it loaded.

HOWEVER, I will say this. Some formats like AAC+ (specifically my files which are AAC (HE) SBR) will ONLY load at half-sample rate. Apparently the K-Lite pack and others don't support the SBR extensions.

if you absolutely need to open these files in goldwave and work with them, i'd actually suggest getting something like dbpoweramp and letting it decode because you'd at least get the SBR back.
Alexufo
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Post by Alexufo »

Goldwave do not full decode mp4 from nero digital. Quick times format mp4 decode well but mp4 from Nero digital by half.
A am using foobar2000 to convert mp4 to wav.
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