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5th August 2020, 20:42 | #1 | Link | |||||
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Musepack support in Matroska/MKVToolNix please?
I was trying to mux a Musepack encoded audio track into Matroska today, and noticed that it didn't work. So I googled and found these posts in an old MKVToolNix thread, but I'm starting a new thread about this issue, because we need to discuss this separately and properly instead of bumping and drowning it an old thread, because this is actually an important topic.
Anyway, Musepack is a great lossy audio codec that has sort of been left behind because everyone went along with the MPEG-4 craze. Quote:
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Why screw over a great audio codec like that? MKVToolNix is a great software application, and some of us don't want to use AAC, Vorbis or Opus. Anyway, the lead developer of Musepack commented on these patches: Quote:
So a few patches for Musepack support in Matroska, shouldn't be such an impossible mission. And again, SV8 has been released since then, so this should no longer be a separate blocks issue. Quote:
On a side note, sup Liisa, long time no see
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Last edited by Elias; 8th August 2020 at 04:11. |
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6th August 2020, 16:08 | #3 | Link | |
SuperVirus
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that's not going to happen. Below is a text that I pasted onto the "talk page" of the media containers article at Wikipedia: Well, I don't like what they did with last packet - you can't distinguish it from full packet and it does not contain padding data. That's why their decoder tracks the number of samples and that probably will create troubles for other containers since seeking should update number of decoded samples for decoder. It would be nice if someone told them it's wrong to do that way. ( source: http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/...ch/064439.html ) |
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6th August 2020, 23:14 | #4 | Link |
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There's nothing wrong about how Musepack handles start and end packets, it's essential for gapless playback (a dreaded long-standing problem with lossy audio formats), which other lossy audio formats often fail at. Musepack has by far the best gapless playback handling among lossy audio formats.
If anyone thinks that someone "not liking it" is a good enough reason not to support Musepack, good luck with that. He was wrong a decade ago, and he's still wrong. Matroska would have no problem supporting Musepack, and I still have no idea why he was talking about "other containers". There are many commercial software products that support Musepack, and some hardware products. Not to mention ReplayGain, which was supported by Musepack first, natively, and APEv2 tags, developed for Musepack. If you like your commercial hardware products only supporting one or two non-proprietary, open, music-suitable audio formats (like Vorbis, Opus), what can I say? During about 18 years, I've seen countless people dismissing our high quality open format, supporting exclusively proprietary formats, and sometimes pushing obviously inferior alternatives instead. Now in 2020 I think I can say that we've had discussions with Monty (Vorbis etc. developer, good guy), who of course acknowledged Vorbis's vastly inferior transient handling (has always been widely known) and other problems, and we shared ideas. The fact is that eventually, whether your (loved and appreciated by many) open format will be supported or not has almost nothing to do with technical issues. Matroska could have supported Musepack SV8 13 years ago. Also, we have never been approached by any Matroska developer except once, after which a slight misunderstanding was quickly explained. Last edited by ShyK; 7th August 2020 at 03:40. |
7th August 2020, 05:09 | #5 | Link | |
SuperVirus
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maybe you're right, after all :-/ Anyway: I don't think "gapless playback" should be the main goal (or among the main goals) of an audio format, but if their creator thinks it should, well, good luck at convincing other people to store their audio format in containers that are not «audio-only»... Again, just my stupid opinion of course :-/ One thing that I cannot like about Opus is the fact it was designed for the Ogg container, and as everybody already knows, Ogg is very-sucky and totally-evil. Still, one could "find ways" to make Opus compatible-with /accepted-by Matroska, MP4 and TS... {{thinking face emoji}} |
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7th August 2020, 05:33 | #6 | Link |
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Of course it's not. It's just yet another feature that makes it a great lossy audio format. Sample-accurate seeking is another example, as well as sample-accurate cutting. Try that with some other lossy audio formats...
Last edited by ShyK; 7th August 2020 at 05:37. |
8th August 2020, 04:09 | #7 | Link | ||||||
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I honestly don't get it, that it's still not possible to mux Musepack into Matroska in 2020. And I can't believe you're actually arguing against Musepack support in Matroska. I mean, can you give me one valid reason why it would be a bad idea for Matroska to support Musepack? Anyway, to answer your question, there are plenty of software products that support Musepack, at least if you by commercial mean proprietary closed source, and of course also open source software products: A list of applications that support Musepack: https://musepack.net/index.php?pg=pro I still don't understand how this is a valid argument to exclude Musepack from Matroska though. Please elaborate since when, why and how codec support in Matroska should be based on usage in commercial software products? Matroska itself isn't a commercial product, lol. Musepack is a high quality open source audio codec, and that alone should be the single criteria for inclusion in Matroska. Nothing else really matters as far as I'm concerned. Besides, we need alternatives and some diversity to the few lossy audio codecs Matroska supports. Matroska can only become better by supporting Musepack. Fewer alternatives clearly wasn't a good thing last I checked. Not really a fan; I just recognize quality when I see and hear it, and Musepack is a damn smart audio codec. Sure, at lower bitrates Musepack is clearly inferior to AAC, Opus and probably also Vorbis, but who in this day and age encodes music at below 128 kbit/s? We have much faster connections and way larger hard drives today than we did back in 2005. If anything it's sort of pointless to use lossy audio codecs today, but that doesn't mean Musepack should be excluded from Matroska. Personally I'd rather use Musepack in Matroska than AAC. Now, at 170+ kbit/s and around 200+ kbit/s, Musepack is clearly number one among lossy audio codecs, and gives pretty much transparent audio quality indistinguishable from lossless to most if not all ears, and I'll challenge any "audiophile" to hear a difference between a 200+ kbit/s Musepack encoded song from the lossless source. There are multiple reasons for this, and one of the reasons is that Musepack is based on mp2, and because of this, unlike newer codecs, Musepack doesn't destroy audio information to the same extent as low bitrate optimized codecs such as AAC and Opus do. Or something like that; I'm not a codec developer but this is the impression I've gotten from reading up on Musepack over at Hydrogenaudio and so on. Either way, I personally can't hear the difference between high bitrate Musepack and lossless. And anyway, it's not just me who's a "fan" of Musepack, check out this thread: Just discovered this old gem of a codec. https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=117174.0 ^^ Musepack is great stuff. But that's not really why I like Musepack. The main reason I like it is because it's open source GPL, whereas Vorbis and Opus are licensed under BSD, and AAC is technically proprietary/patented (but still sort of allowed under open source development for non-commercial use). Also, all Opus files are upmixed to 48kHz, which is retarded. Quote:
Look, if Musepack was a proprietary or heavily patented codec, sure, I could understand the reluctance to include support for Musepack in Matroska. But right now, nothing is in the way from adding Musepack support in Matroska. Quote:
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Anyway look, Musepack really is a great lossy audio codec, and that's not "fan" me saying it; that's just what Musepack is. Shy and others have put in a lot of hard work on Musepack, and I for one think their contribution to lossy audio quality shouldn't be squandered, and instead given recognition. The least the open source codec community can do is to add a few necessary patches in MKVToolNix and Matroska, so that we can finally start using Musepack in Matroska. At some point in the future, everyone is going to be using lossless audio codecs anyway, especially the day we get DNA hard drives (huge storage). But even so, lossy audio codecs will probably always be in use, especially for online streaming where a lot of bandwidth can be saved by using lossy audio codecs instead of FLAC (no one can really hear the audio quality difference between FLAC and Musepack at high enough bitrates, but a lot of bandwidth will be saved with Musepack). Personally I think it was a mistake of Google to use Opus in WebM instead of Musepack, but I'm not Google.
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Last edited by Elias; 8th August 2020 at 04:30. |
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8th August 2020, 07:00 | #8 | Link | |
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All I read here is assigning blame to "the open source community", but if you want something done, do it, don't complain that noone else did it. Thats how this entire community works, everyone works on what they are personally interested in or find an interesting task.
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LAV Filters - open source ffmpeg based media splitter and decoders Last edited by nevcairiel; 8th August 2020 at 07:04. |
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9th August 2020, 07:01 | #9 | Link |
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In my experience, threads like this don't encourage developers.
The developer is willing to support the implementation. That's why he asks for proper patches. He is not willing to do all of the work, but is willing to maintain it, if someone else shows interest and submits a proper patch. A patch isn't the be all and end all. The codebase supporting musepack will still need to be maintained. And guess who will be left to maintain said code.... edit: It's far easier for a developer to filter threads like this out of his life, then to do what is requested.
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13th August 2020, 16:46 | #10 | Link |
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Good to hear about Musepack in any case.
Hearing of a .mp2 relative (which I found useful until Dolby used their influence to wipe .mp2 off from the list of DVD-Video compulsory audio codecs) I would herewith encourage any support by an open container like .mkv/.mka Others and me may be using more .mkv. and mka (besides .m2ts) if these can hold all nuts & nails, dirt & dust, gases & liquids.
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21st August 2020, 21:41 | #11 | Link |
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No need to "find ways" for Opus in Matroska; Opus is officially supported by both Matroska and WebM. MKVToolNix can handle it just fine.
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21st August 2020, 21:52 | #12 | Link | |
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From my point of view nothing's changed. I still don't care about Musepack. MKVToolNix already supports a wide range of both lossless and lossy audio codecs (including a lot of completely free ones such as Opus, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, TTA). It's not like there isn't much choice. That being said, I'd still be happy to have Matroska support Musepack, and I'd still be perfectly happy to accept patches to the MKVToolNix source code that implement muxing & extracting of Musepack audio. Note, though, that I have to insist that the Matroska specification be updated first (that's some more work that would have to be done by those writing the patches; I can give pointers how to get started with proposing updates to the specification). Personally I have more than enough stuff on my plate to work on: from things users have requested time and again (support for HDR & 3D video), that actually really matter to the industry (supporting the upcoming VVC codec), things that matter to me personally and that actually make Matroska more versatile (support for BCP-47 style language tags) and general maintenance & bug fixes, just to name a few. What you're writing and the way you're writing it, you're coming across as rather angry and entitled. To paraphrase: "Why doesn't anyone else do the work?", "why does no one implement the things that I care about?", "why is everyone so mean to my beloved pet project?", "why are you such bad human beings?". Using words like "retarded" is also a pretty much turn-off in my book. The way you write is really not helping you make your case, you know. We're not your personal genies in a bottle.
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23rd December 2023, 19:01 | #13 | Link | |
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