MediaCoder FAQ

From MediaCoderWiki

Contents 1 General Questions 1.1 What is MediaCoder? 1.2 Why are there not a complete users manual or development documentation? 1.3 Why is the MediaCoder Wiki missing pages? 1.4 Can I use MediaCoder for commercial use? 2 Features 2.1 What audio/video/container formats are currently supported? 2.2 Can MediaCoder be invoked from command line? 2.3 Can MediaCoder be launched from USB storage on different PCs? 2.4 What does the built-in HTTP daemon do? 2.5 Can MedicaCoder function without Firefox? 3 Decoding/Encoding 3.1 How to rip audio from a video file 3.2 How to use Winamp DSP plug-ins to filter audio data 3.3 How to make CT-AAC+ audio encoder work 3.4 How to decode mp3PRO files 4 Downloading MediaCoder 4.1 Where can I download the latest version of MediaCoder? 5 Known Issues 5.1 WMA tags (metadata) are not transferred 6 Troubleshooting 6.1 MediaCoder doesn't work at all for me

General Questions

What is MediaCoder?

MediaCoder is a free audio and video batch transcoder which uses various open source audio and video codecs and tools to transcode different audio/video formats and has many extra features. Common uses for the program include compression, file type conversion and extraction of audio from video files. Many formats are supported, including MP3, Vorbis, AAC, Windows Media Audio, RealAudio, WAV, H.264, Xvid, DivX 4/5, MPEG-2, AVI, CD, and DVD.

Why are there not a complete users manual or development documentation?

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 are 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 the MediaCoder Wiki missing pages?

Recently, the wiki database was corrupted and we are in the process of trying to restore the it. In the meantime, much information is missing and we need your help to update this wiki.

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 rely on Firefox to perform transcoding (that doesn't make any sense). However some extended user interfaces (developed with XUL) depend on Firefox (or more accurately, 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: [1]

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. Please search the forum for your problem before submitting a bug report on the forum or on Sourceforge.