View Full Version : Problem Playing WMA Lossless
BabyBenz84
2008-12-09, 22:18
From what I understand according to http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Codec_and_Format_requests I should be able to play WMA Lossless. When I try to play any WMA Lossless through XBMC nothing happens which is really a problem since that is the format I use for virtually all of my music. All other music plays fine.
Any ideas what could be the problem?
I guess WMA9<>WMA9 Lossless.
Why don't you use FLAC? It's free and quality is exactly the same.
BabyBenz84
2008-12-10, 01:17
I use WMA because it works with my Zune. Plus, at this point, it would be a pain to have to convert all my music to another format.,:sad:
Hrmh... I can understand about Zune. Converting lossless to lossless would be totally automated, though. But it wouldn't solve your Zune problem.
Anyway, wait for somebody else, maybe I am wrong and WMA lossless is supported.
It's in their hands: http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=FFmpeg_Summer_Of_Code#WMA_Pro_Deco der
FYI ... WMA Lossless is an option in the Windows Media Encoder v9 package. Which btw is a pretty neet tool, especially at the price ... free.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&displaylang=en
I'm a MCE 2005 user who's been sitting on the fence waiting for an answer on this one as I've also got massive quantities of media using WMA lossless ...
<crosses fingers and toes>
I'm a MCE 2005 user who's been sitting on the fence waiting for an answer on this one as I've also got massive quantities of media using WMA lossless ...Not that I'm one of those "Microsoft is the devil " guys but if you are not tied to specific portable hardware (ie. Zune), I'd really give conversion to FLAC a thought. You would retain tags, you would retain lossless quality and, probably, it would be... 24 hours computing? I don't know about your massive quantities but I managed to convert my FLAC collection (about 650 ripped CDs) to Vorbis, for portable use, overnight.
But ... MS IS the DEVIL!
Truth be told, I'm still running W2k on everything but the HTPC, and that's XP only because of the Media Center shell. Not a big fan of having to beg some server "can I please use MY software?" <grumble mumble gripe>
I suppose mostly it's being a bit gunshy right now about the build.
I mean ... like ... everything's working as is. Which was the devil's own playground to accomplish.
Time to tempt fate? <G>
The FLAC encode is an option, but would involve adding a bunch of tweaks to media player and MCE for support. Not only would I need to add direct show filters to support that (and what the hey, ogg, ape and all that), but way I understand it, I'd have to play with plugins to view the tags from those formats in MP, and then only v10 and above.
Which btw, I finally installed recently. So far, don't see what the buzz wazz on that ...
So, you aware of a one click package that would add support in media player and MCE until I'm ready to switch? I expect XBMC does it native, but ...
Even better if there's a good app out there that would do bulk conversions ... just point it at a source directory and have it start puking out FLACs to a target folder would be way kewl. Disk space isn't a concern ... I got maybe half a T to play with.
... and as I may have mentioned or not ... still not a XBMC user ... that fence thing again. Just checking options.
<edit>
Ah ... forgot ... would you be aware if MCE and XBMC play well together? Seems safer to run both till all the bugs run for the hill. There's that fallback thing again. I've been asking around, but not a lot of REAL TRUTH to be found on the subject. XBMC is <supposed> to be compartmentalized standalone, but I'd be at the very least extremely peeved if I were to install it and lose the Green Button ...
</edit>
From everything I know, XBMC is really "compartmentalized" as you say. It installs in a single directory, has some data in your user directory and that's it. No registry (save for uninstall info, I'd say), no interaction with DirectShow codecs (what MCE uses to playback stuff).
For conversion, look no further than foobar2000. It's free and capable of doing exactly what you ask.
Regarding the one click package that would add support in media player and MCE... this (http://www.xiph.org/dshow/) should be what you are looking for. Never tried it myself but WMP and MCE use DirectShow to playback stuff.
(btw, I thought you were already using XBMC ;))
I got a reply on another thread from one of the gurus ...
http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=40264
Welcome. It doesn't touch the underlying OS. WMA support will be flaky at best - don't use close formats. And yeah, it's not really the place to post this.
(and I'm afraid to reply with "wazza close format?" ...) <G>
I did a bit of gooooooooooogling and couldn't find anything onnit. Methinks it'd be a DRM or ASF package kinda thing, but ... ?
And no ... I'm still straddling the fence on XBMC. Mostly about the WMA thing, but some other minor concerns as well. Visualizations would be pretty important on an HTPC and I understand the options there are still sparse. One of the biggies would be any potential degradation converting from WMA to FLAC ... different algorithm running on an already altered spectrum could be ... interesting. Especially in my case ... I'm a freak of nature ... I can hear bats bark, doncha know ... dang shame I didn't keep the original uncompressed WAV rips when I did my vinyl. At least I was smart enough to do the OS and media files on separate drives ... I only gotta clone the 80gigger I use for OS and apps if I want to jump in without messing with what I know for a fact works.
Thanx and a tip o'the hat on the programs (unfortunate connotations with the whole foobar thing ... and isn't it spelled fubar?). I'll have to check those out. In the meantime, I may just jump AFTER cloning the current drive. Worse comes to worst, I can always switch back to where I am now.
jmarshall
2008-12-18, 02:17
WMA is a closed format in that it's not openly documented. If you're using WMA lossless, then there's no loss at transcoding from WMA to FLAC (it's also lossless).
In either case, XBMC will not interfere with MCE in any way.
Skizo, WMA Lossless --->FLAC is comparable to .zip--->unzip--->rar--->.rar
A lossless format decompressed gives you back the same exact .wav file.
Which you then could recompress however you pleased. It's just that with the appropriate program this is transparent to you.
Found me ... I musta left a trail of breadcrumbs or you've set the system to call you whenever it finds "guru" ... <G>
I'll go ahead and get a copy of Foobar and transcribe a few of my favorites and give them a listen, then if the ear approves, do a bulk conversion. I've had problems in the past (LAME to WMA for instance) that had issues, so I'll keep my fingers crossed. Still wish I woulda kept the original wavs from my vinyl tho. Gotta love them big data drives, but a few gigs per album (uncompressed) even eats those up quick.
Skizo, WMA Lossless --->FLAC is comparable to .zip--->unzip--->rar--->.rar
Hmmmmmmm ... not all that sure it's as simple as that. Twist the reasoning a bit, and it almost sounds like you could uncompress a RAR using an unzip utility that doesn't support the format natively and get the original file ...
Each process uses it's own unique algorithms to compress the file. Granted, the same spectrum, more or less, would be tossed using either package to reduce the file size, but seeing as they spy on the fly, I imagine it'd be hit or miss as to how perfect the compressed then converted then uncompressed file would be bit for bit. For instance, what's the attack/decay curve for either format for each specific range and how is the way that range is processed affected by the surrounding material? I'm thinking the audio version of video interpolation. JPEG has the same issues ... recompress or export the image and there's bound to be degradation. And it's been mentioned, WMA isn't open source, so the FLAC people would be hard pressed to know exactly what's going on internally in the WMA structure. In any case, it boils down to how much inconsistency is introduced and how it's percieved, especially by someone who can hear bats fart. <G>
Not that I'm against tweaking the original ... I already filter hum and wow, depop and declick, enhance imaging and repeak the original analog/digital conversion before creating the WMA. Pretty successfully too ... I've got a bunch of duplicates in vinyl and cd format, and in many cases, it's the vinyl version that gets kept for the HTPC library.
Now just don't get me started on tube vs transistor ...
Jpeg is lossy compression, FLAC is lossless.
Trust me (or read anywhere on the internet), you could go WAV--->WMA lossless--->FLAC--->WAV--->FLAC--->WMA lossless--->WAV--->FLAC--->WMA lossless--->WAV (ad libitum) and end up with the same exact WAV file.
Identical, bit per bit. If you don't trust me, you could actually give it a go. There are tools to compare waveforms.
There is *nothing* subjective or esoteric, it's mathematics.