m4a/mp4 itunes files

[Jochen Issing]

Hi Matrin,

On Friday 18 November 2005 23:48, Martin Aumueller wrote:
> Hi all, hi Scott,
>
> [...]
> Taglib 1.4 offers the possibility to register handlers for new file
> types. The plugins found in kde's svn repository for amaroK use this
> possibility and are based on code posted to this mailing list in May
> 2005. And they should not require any modifications in order to work
> with any taglib application using taglib.
Alright, so they are not built in taglib, but additional plugins.
>
> Wma support within amaroK lacks write support, while mp4/aac support
> is feature complete (tag reading and writing). Handling of aac tags
> requires libmp4v2, either from faad2 or from mpeg4ip. Faad2 fails to
> read the tags it has written itself (except when cleaning and
> rewriting all tags), whereas with mpeg4ip everything works nicely. But
> as there are no distribution packages for mpeg4ip, I would welcome it
> very much if there was support for mp4 tags within taglib not based on
> any external libraries to make dependency hell a little friendlier a
> place. And if you implemented mp4 tags independent of any external
> library it would fit taglib much better and I would not hesitate to
> include it within amaroK.
This sounds like good deal. I think it should speed up the tagging as well, 
although I got no experience with the existing version yet. But I fear, that 
they do lots of useless parsing for simply modifiying the included tags.
>
> As I read on this mailing list, Scott Wheeler is reluctant to include
> support for mp4/aac as there are no formal standards for metadata on
> these files and as he does not use this functionality and thus would
> not be able to test and support it.
Yes, I know that there are no formal standards on the metadata used in itunes' 
m4a files, but I think there are lots of users having support for m4a on 
their wish list. IIIRC ID3 was not a standard either, or am I wrong? I think 
the itunes files are already state of the art for tagging mp4 files and 
MPEG-21 will not get that popular ;-)
>
> Perhaps a solution for this situation is to extend the current plugin
> architecture in a way such that taglib would automatically load shared
> objects in certain places, so that implementing additional formats
> becomes completely transparent to the application. And if taglib could
> include a contrib directory for unsupported formats that would be even
> nicer. Scott, what do you think of such an approach? Would you
> consider extending the plugin architecture if I send you a patch?
Would be Ok for me as well.
Anyway, thanks for the comprehensive answer!

Greetings,

jochen
-- 
 jochen issing
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