Mpeg 4 audio - wrong or right ?

vincej wrote on 9/4/2007, 8:00 PM
In my naivety I grabbed a couple of songs out the ITunes folder on my C drive - the actual extension is m4a.

They play fine inside Plat8. and a single tack is only about 3mb

Now I notice that Plat8 will extract audio only in a wav format - 30mb for a track !

The user manual says nothing about Mpeg4 support, nor does this forum.

So is using these files a problem ??

Why would I actually want to use wav ?

Is there a problem if I mix the file types in the same project or must I rip out the Mpeg 4's and replace them with wav ?

Many thanks Vince

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 9/4/2007, 8:21 PM
"They play fine inside Plat8."

I think that pretty much answers your questions. If they work, they work, so go ahead and use them. You wouldn't gain anything by converting them to .wav.
Ivan Lietaert wrote on 9/4/2007, 10:41 PM
As far as I know, VMS can't use iTunes songs. One way around this, is to burn an audiocd in iTunes,, and then rip that cd to mp3 or any other filetype Vegas can handle. (ogg is a really good one).
cmcdonald wrote on 9/5/2007, 8:15 AM
Just curious. I know that VMS would not use the typical iTunes song without converting it, but now iTunes has the option of downloading the songs in the old format or in an unprotected format for a little more money. Does anyone know if this impacts the way VMS handles the songs?
vincej wrote on 9/5/2007, 11:10 AM
let me clarify:

These tracks are not purchased downloads off the ITunes store. I simply use the application "ITunes" to rip tracks off a CD onto my C drive and play them on my PC.

In so doing ITunes default is to import them as M4a ( Mpeg-4)

I am concerned in that I have a faint memory of seeing something about the Mpeg plug-in will only render these files 20 times and then presumably something unpleasant happens.

Additionally I am concerned about building a project with AVI video & audio and Mpeg4 music on the time line. My concern is something unpleasant will happen when it comes to the render stage.

Chienworks seems to suggest that life should be good - and I trust him, but it just seems odd that the manual has nothing to say about Mpeg audio.

thanks Vince


rustier wrote on 9/5/2007, 2:31 PM
Is the cd an original cd or is it a copy?
Why not rip the music using windows media - in a format which is friendly to VMS? I don't know anything about a render limit - I guess the Itunes manual has nothing to say about that? It seems to me if the music is rendered out and you need another copy you would simply copy the rendered (compressed) file and not start over with the source - or am I missing something?

As far as the project timeline - I would say if you got that far I see no reason why it wouldn't render. I believe the only reason VMS would attempt to recompress (a compressed audio format) is if you tell it to or if the project was so big it had to try to fit to disk - but I am thinking this is a different codec anyway.

I believe the advantage to using a wave file is it offers the least degredation should the need for compression arise - like ac3 or something like that.

VMS has a list of formats it supports so there really should be no guesswork there. Perhaps you were looking in the wrong area? I think the full manual is available to download which has more information than the basic manual.

Good luck with your projects.
big daddy wrote on 9/5/2007, 9:31 PM
>These tracks are not purchased downloads off the ITunes store. I simply use the >application "ITunes" to rip tracks off a CD onto my C drive and play them on my PC.
>In so doing ITunes default is to import them as M4a ( Mpeg-4)

Right, iTunes defaults to AAC encoding (.m4a extension) for audio CD rips. BTW, if you want you can change the iTunes rip encoding to mp3. These files are just like mp3 files and can be used at your own discretion. FYI, .m4p files are iTunes encrypted audio files and can only be played via iTunes client.

So go full steam ahead and use the m4a files and don't look back.

BigDaddy