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[rowan]

I'm not sure if this is an issue with the plugin, my settings or something else.

I have a number of tracks hosted on a web server (https).  So going to https://.../x.mp3 downloads the track.  XMPlay handles these very differently depending if they are mp3 or m4a. 

Now for mp3s it says 'opening' for a fraction of a second before changing to 'buffering' for another fraction of a second and then starts playing whilst downloading the rest of the track in the background.

However, for m4a files it just stays on 'opening' until the whole track is downloaded (10+ seconds) and then starts playing. 

Are there any settings I should check?  Is this a known issue with the plugin?  Any pointers appreciated.

[Ian @ un4seen]

I don't think MP4 files can be streamed, so they get pre-downloaded (like other formats that can't be streamed). If you use plain AAC files (without the MP4 container) instead, then it should be possible to stream them.

[rowan]

Indeed AAC files stream fine, but MP4s don't. 

I have done some reading about it and found some sites claiming that this is because most encoders put all the metadata at the end of the mp4 whereas it can be put at the begining.  If it is at the beginning then they are streamable.

They state there are 2 ways round this
1) For the player to request the end of the file first - but I don't know if all simple web servers like mine would support this.
2) Rewrite the MP4 with the metadata at the start.

I will look into the suggested utilities to do move the metadata and see if it works.

[rowan]

I am not entirely certain about this yet, but reading up in it on different forums like doom9 etc I am coming to the conclusion that MP4s should be quite streamable - both audio only and video MP4s.  They do have to have hints in them to make them streamable and not all MP4 writing software puts those in, but the format is streamable.

I tried what was suggested in other forums I found.  That was to use mp4box to rewrite the file.  It puts the metadata and hints at the start of the file and should mean it is streamable. 

eg:   mp4box -inter 300 example.mp4

was the suggested settings.

However, this does not make it streamable with XMPlay.  And neither do a few other suggested ways of rewriting it. 

I am not sure if that is because it is not doing what is needed or if it is because XMPlay and the plug-in are just assuming that it will not be streamable and not trying.  Will the plug-in try and stream it if it finds the hint at the start or not?

[Ian @ un4seen]

I think the AAC plugin will pre-check/process all chunks/atoms in an MP4 file, but I'm not certain about that. If you upload an example of a file that should be streamable, I'll look into it...

   ftp.un4seen.com/incoming/

Btw, have you been able to stream MP4 files in any other software?

[rowan]

I will try and upload something this evening - can't ftp from work.  I haven't yet been able to do it in anything else as I can't install any other players at work to try, and my network is to fast to easily test it at home.  I am going to do a longer/bigger file to test it at home at some point soon.

[rowan]

I have uploaded the rather optimistically named streamable.mp4 for you to have a look at. 

It will probably be a few days till I have a chance to try some other players on it.

[Ian @ un4seen]

Here's an update to try...

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmp-aac.dll

It's a bit experimental, so please report your findings.

[Rowan]

Trying with the files that I have been passing through the utilities to make them streamable, it starts off with Opening... as before.  Then very quickly it then changes to not displaying anything and seems to have given up doing anything with the file... It seems to be deciding it can do some streaming and then stopping (presumably erroring internally).

They play fine locally.

However, playing a file that I have not played about with - just a straight record in iTunes - streams perfectly where the old version had do download the whole thing.  How ironic 

It certainly seems to be getting there.

[Ian @ un4seen]

I only tested with the "streamable.mp4" file that you uploaded, but that seemed to stream OK. Is that file not streaming there? If that's OK but you're having the trouble with other files, please upload another example.

[Rowan]

Strangely they are now all streaming OK.  Not sure what the difference is from before other than a reboot. 

Looks like it works perfectly then    If it finds any it won't stream again I will look into it and let you know.

Thanks for all your help.

[Auren]

Ian, please add support for episodes in m4a-files (iTunes supports them natively). I uploaded a test .m4a-file with episodes to your FTP under the name Chill Out GenreCast - Episode 000.m4a

I need at least song name detection (like in .cue-files now). And it would be much better if covers of the songs are displayed too. But I think that it would be better to address the second request to Barna ;-)

[Ian @ un4seen]

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking for in that file; please describe it

[Auren]

I'd better post a screenshot:



And read this, too: http://www.un4seen.com/forum/?topic=8808.msg60609#msg60609

And this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1597 (about "Enhanced Podcasts")

[r]

Hey Ian,

This article might help you:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2005/07/how_to_make_enh.html (scroll down to "Making the XML File")

Basically, Ian it's an XML file merged into the M4A that you're looking for...

Not sure how to find that! I'm not a coder!

----

AFAIK, there's only one piece of Windows software that creates enhanced podcasts (chapter points for M4As):
http://jrlearnsmedia.com/blog/archive/2007/07/29/enhanced-podcasting-on-windows.aspx

You might want to test that app out and see how the enhanced M4A is compiled.

Hope that helps!

[Barna]

These advanced information are stored in their own MP4 track, so it isn't part of the meta mp4 header as simple text tags are.
The data aren't stored as XML in the MP4 file anymore, they are joined into the whole MP4 stream to actually stream all the informations (cover images, titles, links) during playing.
One can dump these tracks with mp4box. The titles and the timing they apply to are stored in a text track with fourcc text (track 2 in the one podcast I got from beatport). The dumped rawdata alone isn't much, as it needs the track header which contains the actual offsets and timing information (timescale and durations).

You can get all the informations on how to find what at http://www.geocities.com/xhelmboyx/quicktime/formats/mp4-layout.txt
Yes it's big :-) First I thought I'd look at some libraries others have done... Then I found some huge uber complex libraries and decided to take the dirty route and just write a parser which gets me what I want (cover image data).

[Ian @ un4seen]

Thanks for the info, I see them now. Here's an update to try...

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmp-aac.dll

[Auren]

Hey, that's damn fast, Ian! It works just flawlessly.

[samplah!]

niiiiiiiiiiice!!! finally i can listen to di.fm with aac 

Thanks! 

[Lesmo16]

Thanks for the info, I see them now. Here's an update to try...

   www.un4seen.com/stuff/xmp-aac.dll

Unfortunately this link doesn't work ---> 404 - Not Found.
Where can I download the plugin?

Thanks in advance.