MediaCoder FAQ
From MediaCoderWiki
Contents |
General Questions
What is MediaCoder?
MediaCoder is an open source software distributed under GPL license. I decided to make this software (and make it open source) because I found out there are many audio/video converters without all the functions I needed but cost large sums of money. Some of them even steal from the open source community (I'm considering putting out a list of these). I favor open source culture. So I did it. A few people doubt and slander both me and this MediaCoder. My response to such people is: "shut up and go away".
Why is there not any complete users manual or development document existing
The author is really sorry for this. This makes a painful start-up for new users or technology amateurs. Some developers like me are just interested in implementing new features but hate to do documentation. Completely documenting everything is nothing but a painful job for me. Unfortunately, few is standing out to contribute some documents to the project. As MediaCoder is totally free, I won’t choose to hire people to do this job. So this remains the biggest problem of the project.
Why is MediaCoder using 100% of CPU time when it is working
Some people complain about this and claim that some other software only takes 30% of CPU time when encoding. The answer is simple. Actually, the ability to fully utilize the CPU power is the advantage of a software. A software which only uses 30% or 50% is not a software that has better design or implementation. On the contrary, it might be a poorly implemented software which can not make your computer compute as fast as it can. MediaCoder supports dual-core for many popular formats, so that the processor utilization can reach up near 100% in most cases. If you just don't want your CPU time to be used up, you can adjust either the encoder process priority option or the CPU time utilization percentage option.
Can I use MediaCoder for commercial use?
Generally you can use MediaCoder for any purpose, as long as you follow the MediaCoder's license agreement. To get some service for using MediaCoder in a commercial application, you can refer to this page.
Features
What audio/video/container formats are currently supported?
The Main Page has listed the formats MediaCoder supports.
Can MediaCoder be invoked from command line?
Yes-- see the command line options page for the specifics of how to run MediaCoder from a command line.
Can MediaCoder be launched from USB storage on different PCs
MediaCoder can be made into a portable application that can be launched from USB storage on different PCs with several steps. For more information about this, please refer to this page.
What does the built-in HTTP daemon do?
The only use of the tiny built-in HTTP daemon is to generate web-based user interfaces which are rendered by Gecko engine (no XPCOM stuff is needed in this manner). This HTTP daemon is derived from another open source project of mine, called MiniWeb. By default it only listens on 127.0.0.1. It never acts as spyware or anything else (I hate spyware to death), and if anyone is suspicious of it, I suggest they inspect the source code.
Can MedicaCoder function without Firefox
MediaCoder does not reply on Firefox to perform transcoding (that doesn't make any sense). However some extended user interfaces (developed with XUL) depend on Firefox (more accurate, its Gecko engine). If you don't need those UI, you don't have to install Firefox. Neither do you need to be online to use MediaCoder.
Decoding/Encoding
How to rip audio from a video file
Set your desired target audio format in Audio tab and set video format to Bypass in Video tab. Mostly you can leave the mutiplexer option to None to use audio encoder's default container format. You should be able to rip audio then.
How to use Winamp DSP plug-ins to filter audio data
MediaCoder is able to filter audio (including audio stream from a video file) with most Winamp DSP plug-ins. Multiple DSP plug-ins can be used together.
- Put Winamp DSP plug-in DLL (dsp_*.dll) in MediaCoder's "plugins" folder.
- Start MediaCoder.
- Choose menu, Options -> Configure DSP plug-ins, to see a list of loaded DSP plug-ins.
- Click the check boxes to enable/disable loaded DSP plug-ins.
How to make CT-AAC+ audio encoder work
- Copy enc_aacplus.dll and nscrt.dll from plugins folder in Winamp installation folder to codecs folder in MediaCoder folder
How to decode mp3PRO files
To decode mp3PRO files with best quality, you need to set Audio Source to Winamp Input Plugins.
Downloading MediaCoder
Where can I download the latest version of MediaCoder?
You can get the latest version of MediaCoder by visiting this page: http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/download.htm
How can I obtain the source code for MediaCoder?
The latest complete source code is in SourceForge Subversion repository. As the code is changing almost everyday, I can't release a source code tarball often. So the SVN is the recommended place to get the source code. Feel free to modify the code for your needs and patches are welcomed (you can either email it to me or submit on the forum). The Subversion repository can be checked out through SVN with the following instruction set:
svn co https://mediacoder.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/mediacoder mediacoder
Please be noted that the source code is totally AS-IS and no support is provided.
Known Issues
WMA tags (metadata) are not transferred
WMA tag reading support may be added at a later date. See this forum thread: http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=925
Troubleshooting
MediaCoder doesn't work at all for me
MediaCoder does work for many people but maybe it is not working
