The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,

I've succedeed to compile ffmpeg with libaacplus patch and it's working very well.
Is it possible to run VLC, with some command line parameters, telling it to use ffmpeg{acodec=libaacplus}, meaning can VLC use ffmpeg's ability to encode aacplus? If yes, can anyone please provide just a simple example of the command line?

Thanks in advance.

sorry, typo.. what I meant was: acodec=ffmpeg{libaacplus}
is something like this possible?

if you use acodec=mp4a, it will use FFmpeg. If you ffmpeg defaults the encoding to libaacplus, it will work by itself.

cool.. thank you
btw, how did you know that? i mean is it in the documentation or its a "tips/tricks" kind of a thing?
also, do you know, by any chance, how to make ffmpeg's default encoding to libaacplus?

I know the code, that's all.
No idea about ffmpeg/libaacplus, because I wasn't sure this was legal.

Well, it is legal, since that guy, who wrote the patch for ffmpeg, to enable libaacplus support, made it that way the patch downloads the publicly available source code from 3gpp website, and he did mention that its publicly available, and he used that information to write his code.. During the ./configure or make (im not sure), the scripts download the code from 3gpp website automatically and compile it into that library.. So, I guess the guy didnt just take the code and embedded it into his library.

Quote from http://tipok.org.ua/ru/node/17 :
"3GPP released reference implementations 3GPP High Efficiency Advanced Audio Codec (HE-AAC) Codec (3GPP TS 26.410 V 8.0.0).
Reference implementations are available as a source code, but the code uses #define to choose code options. There is a common practice to compile reusable code as a shared library. Packages released here make required changes and provide AAC+ libraries as a shareable code."

Anyway, thanks for your help, I really appreciate it

Well, his code is not distributable, I think, since it is a derivate of 3GPP.

Well, I'm not so much into legal things, so I may be obviously wrong, but I just think it's a shame that VLC doesn't have an option, like --non-free (like ffmpeg does have), so if someone wants to include the non-free parts/libraries, during the compile time, he can do it without any problems.
I'm not being selfish here, because right now I need that for myself, but we have to accept the fact that h264 with AAC+ is a defacto standard for av streaming today and it's too bad that the most popular video tool (VLC) doesn't have out-of-the-box support for such popular things.

As far as we know, the 3GPP copyright license on that code is not compatible with the (L)GPL. So the VideoLAN projet and Linux distributions are not allowed to distribute it in their VLC builds. You have to compile everything yourself (and keep the result for you).

Well, isn't that what ffmpeg's option --non-free (when doing ./configure) does?
When you compile ffmpeg with that option, you get the message that your binaries will not be redistributable. And if we are fine with that, why not have such an option.
I'm just trying to point out that we are missing the support for the most popular audio codec, right now. But, I won't be trying to pursuade you to do anything, I was just asking how does ffmpeg team deal with that? Can you somehow use the same practice for VLC too?

There's nothing to change in VLC. This is non-redistributable, so nobody can compile it for you. The point is, you need to compile it yourself.

I would be more than glad to do it if I could know what exactly I need to do.. Is there any way I could find any tutorial/docs explaining how to do that?
Thanks in advance

how to do it? i mean can you say clear?

if you use acodec=mp4a, it will use FFmpeg. If you ffmpeg defaults the encoding to libaacplus, it will work by itself.

Hi
When we use FFmpeg there are four aac encoders available:-
1 -acodec aac -strict experimental
2 -acodec libfaac
3 -acodec libvo_aacenc
4 -acodec libaacplus

burek above was trying to find out how to make VLC choose when using "acodec=mp4a".
I would like to know how to do this too, if it's possible.

yes, and you can, supposedly, do it using: but, it appears that vlc ignores this (it's a bug), so you'll have to wait for the bug fix, I guess..