Topic: File type not displayed properly for m4a wrapped ac-3

[sveakul]

I have an AC-3 audio file in a M4A wrapper and extension.  Plays great (using the xmp-ac3.dll plugin), displays embedded cover art, etc.  However audio type shows on skin as "MF?" instead of AC-3.  Can this be fixed?  Attached is the display from the skin and the zipped MediaInfo readout from the file.

[Ian @ un4seen]

"MF?" indicates that Media Foundation is decoding the file and it isn't AAC or ALAC. The AC3 plugin doesn't support M4A wrappers, so it won't be able to handle the file. If you upload the file, I'll check if a proper format name can be displayed for it instead of "MF?".

   ftp.un4seen.com/incoming/

[sveakul]

"MF?" indicates that Media Foundation is decoding the file and it isn't AAC or ALAC. The AC3 plugin doesn't support M4A wrappers, so it won't be able to handle the file. If you upload the file, I'll check if a proper format name can be displayed for it instead of "MF?".

   ftp.un4seen.com/incoming/

Thanks Ian, I was unaware that xmp-ac3.dll wasn't even seeing the file due to the wrapper--chose M4A due to the tagging flexibility and to avoid "MP4" for confusion with video files.

I tried ftp.exe a couple of times and could get logged in but never got a successful data transfer.  This isn't a big deal now that I realize what is going on so just consider it for a future update.

[Ian @ un4seen]

Did you definitely enter "cd incoming" to change directory before trying to upload? If you still have no luck with FTP, perhaps you can upload the file to a free file hosting site (eg. ufile.io) instead?

[saga]

Windows Explorer can also serve as a basic FTP client. Just paste ftp://ftp.un4seen.com/incoming/ into the address bar and then copy&paste your file there.

[sveakul]

Windows Explorer can also serve as a basic FTP client. Just paste ftp://ftp.un4seen.com/incoming/ into the address bar and then copy&paste your file there.

Thanks Saga this worked fine, didn't know that option existed!

[sveakul]

Did you definitely enter "cd incoming" to change directory before trying to upload? If you still have no luck with FTP, perhaps you can upload the file to a free file hosting site (eg. ufile.io) instead?

Ian:  the file is there now thanks to Saga, "sample-3.m4a."  There may be partials there also like "sample/sample-2" left over from my previous attempts.  Looking forward to see what you can do.

[Ian @ un4seen]

Yep, got it. Here's an update that should display "AC3" instead of "MF?" for that file and others like it:

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmplay.exe

This update also enables Media Foundation support for regular AC3 files (not in an MP4 container), so that the AC3 plugin isn't really needed on Windows 8 or above (when AC3 support was added to Media Foundation), although they do seem to have slightly different output. Not sure which is better.

[sveakul]

Thanks Ian!  Works great.  BTW, does the revised XMPlay automatically use xmp-ac3.dll if it is present, and only shifts to Media Foundation when it is not?  Interesting what you said about the output differences..

[Ian @ un4seen]

Yes, plugins always have priority. Media Foundation is only tried when neither XMPlay itself or the plugins can handle a file.