MP3? Screw that. I have been converted

gekko · 01-08-2003, 08:50 PM

Bond has converted me to the ways of MPEG-4. Well, I tried to get him to watch the MacWorld keynote, and he only got audio, but he commented how good it was. I showed him some sample audio tracks in MPEG-4, and now he wants more.

So I set out to find a way to export in MPEG-4. And of course, I did. Using QuickTime 6, I was able to export audio tracks to .mp4. Hot damn.

MPEG-4 gives you MPEG-2 (DVD quality) video, and uncompressed audio quality in a compressed form. Imagine having all of your MP3s sound just as good as the .AIFF files on your CD, without taking up 40MB on your HD. It's real.

Using the "You Know You're Right" song from Nirvana's recent album as my demo. In .AIFF file, it's 36.6MB. In 192kbps MP3 form, it's 4.9MB. Nice, but you lose sound quality.

In MP4 format, without losing sound quality, in 192kbps, it's 5MB. In 256kbps, it's 6.8MB. In 128knps, 3.3MB. No loss in sound quality at all.

Talk about sweet. I'm going to convert my most-listened-to CDs, cause this kicks ass.

Not sure if you can do it without QuickTime Pro (buy it, only $30), but you open up the original file from the CD in QuickTime 6, then go to File > Export. Movie to MPEG-4. Adjust the options as you wish, and export.

Not impressed?

Go here and click quicktime by the song you want to here, make sure you have QuickTime 6:

http://www.totallyhits.com/index.mgi2?P=qt6

Lovely!

Some additional info:

http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/aac/

Bond · 01-08-2003, 08:54 PM

Erm, Yes, MPEG-4 is very nice. As is Yao Ming.

Happydude · 01-08-2003, 09:50 PM

can anyone summerize that please?

and how do i gt mp4 files and stuff...

Null · 01-08-2003, 09:56 PM

trick and question is whether it will catch on for audio files or not.

video files sure. But people who get mp3's are picky.

they dont want to interupt thier whole collection with a differnt format.

There have been new formats before that sounded better then MP3 and used less space. i havnt heard anything from them in years.

would be interesting if it cought on. have to see.

gekko · 01-08-2003, 10:39 PM

Well the only reason MP3 really caught on was because of the Napster movement. Considering most of the pirated MP3s are 128kbps, I doubt those people are interested in audio quality. But for the people ripping from CDs, it might catch on, and from there become popular.

Thing is, on the Mac, I can see MP4 making it. On the PC, where it's not even easy to find a way to rip your songs to MP3, I doubt we'll see much MP4, because you need licensing, and the cheesy no-name MP3 players used on PC won't likely get licensing. Maybe MusicMatch, but I doubt we'll be seeing the free ones support it. Hell, Windows Media Player 9 doesn't even support MPEG-4.

Null · 01-08-2003, 11:14 PM

mp3's were popular long before napster. napster started the file sharing revolution. not the mp3 one.

mp3's cought on years before napster.

i remember back when scour.net was top place..... then moved to FTP servers. searching to lists and lists of peoples songs to find what you wanted. FTP after FTP.

people dont like change. and many dont see any prob with mp3's
and for the diff in quality from what i have to MP4 i dont see me changing 2000 songs into a diff format or redownloading them. i dont have many 128mp3's. most i find these days are 160 and 192.

i personally dont see anything new catching on / replacing mp3 untill you get CD quality songs under a MB in size.

not sure what you talking in that 2nd paragraph. i always found it was too easy to rip songs to mp3.

Then on a side note..... If you view the properties of a DIVX file. its listed as MPEG-4 ...i have video editing programs that list saving the video as a DIVX MPEG-4 file.......... Whats the delio with that? nothing to do with mpeg 4 or what?

gekko · 01-08-2003, 11:21 PM

No clue. Cause you need the DivX codec to play the movies, not the MPEG-4. Good question.

Cyrax9 · 01-09-2003, 12:10 AM

Gekko, I'm wondering f I can use MP4 in a Linux environment should I do a Linux Windows Me Dual-Boot, also what types of "playlists' does MP4 save itself as? I have something called a B4 playlist, and I want to know fi that's the format for MPeg-4, I know my DivX player (cleverly integrated with WinAMP3) suporst MPEG-4 but I haven't seen it anywhere nor do I kow of a way to encode it, but I'd like one, I'd also consider converting some MP3s into MP4 too much anime music and not enough quality, as for filesharing quality? I only sahre "Old" Sogns and I'd want quality over 160Kbps if possible and I'm only using 128Kbps for now, If I could re-Download everything I have in MP4 and Play iot, guess what forma I'd use? I'm an Audiophile so I need MP4, ASAP

GameMaster · 01-09-2003, 03:09 AM

MP3 is fine for me. When as much MP4 content is available as MP3, I'll convert.

sdtPikachu · 01-09-2003, 08:52 AM

All bow down to the king of music formats, ogg vorbis.

Beats the stuffing out of anything else I've heard for comparable sizes, plus it isn't encumbered with all the ridiculous patents that MPEG compression has to live with.

gekko · 01-09-2003, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Cyrax9
Gekko, I'm wondering f I can use MP4 in a Linux environment should I do a Linux Windows Me Dual-Boot, also what types of "playlists' does MP4 save itself as? I have something called a B4 playlist, and I want to know fi that's the format for MPeg-4, I know my DivX player (cleverly integrated with WinAMP3) suporst MPEG-4 but I haven't seen it anywhere nor do I kow of a way to encode it, but I'd like one, I'd also consider converting some MP3s into MP4 too much anime music and not enough quality, as for filesharing quality? I only sahre "Old" Sogns and I'd want quality over 160Kbps if possible and I'm only using 128Kbps for now, If I could re-Download everything I have in MP4 and Play iot, guess what forma I'd use? I'm an Audiophile so I need MP4, ASAP

I'm not familiar with Linux, so I don't know. I know the delay for releasing QuickTime was getting the license for MPEG-4. iTunes 3 can play it, but cannot encode it. So I'm really not 100% sure how it all works. iPod also can't play .mp4 files, of course a software update could fix that, at this time it doesn't.

Converting, you would have to re-rip. I doubt think it would be possible to convert, seeing that once you lose quality, you can't add it back.

Cyrax9 · 01-21-2003, 12:55 AM

I wouldn't mind re-ripping, I just want my Quality intact, and my Audio, the stuff I DL is Low-Qiuality anyway, and usualy Cr@p not available on an Audio CD anymore, otherwise I'd buy it. MP4 is the neww revolution, and ogg vorbis is good but their isn't enough of it, I've been usoing MPEG-2 DVD Movies but now I'm getting into DivX for Quality form Conversions and smaller, mroe accessable files.