MP4 will be the next generation of audio compression. Well, I hope so, anyhow. Last I heard it was supposed to come out around X-mas '98. Then mp3 exploded in the media and I haven’t heard a damn thing about mp4 since. Anybody got the dope on this one ?
.mp3 is not “MPEG ver. 3.0”; it is MPEG layer III (compressed audio). That doesn’t prevent someone from coming out with an improved or extended version of MPEG layer III and calling it “.mp4”, since folks would comprehend it to mean “next/better version of that audio compression thingie”, but there may or may not already be an MPEG layer IV which may or may not have anything to do with sound at all — it may be 3D animation sprites or something.
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This link explains what I’m talking about here.
Mp4 is audio, video, and all that good stuff with a better compression rate, and better quality. Notice the “end of 1998” availability date on the page.
I saw a site from Australia that had (what they claimed were) MP4s for download. They were audio files that did not have a .mp4 filename extension but rather a .exe extension and did not require a separate player as the player and audio track were both contained in the .exe. I remember downloading a Public Enemy song (not a very good one either) that was in this format. There were several drawbacks with this format compared to MP3- you had little to no control over the track and sound quality, no options for the audio output (sound vs. converting to .wav), and although the compression rate for the audio file was better, having to include a player with the file bumped the size up compensating for that gain. Basically it sucked. I do not know if this was officially MP4 though.
There seems to be some sort of debate though: http://www.mp3.com/news/028.html
I’ve seen a few full length movies encoded in MP4. Not sure if what I have is final spec, but Dogma fit in less than 400 megs.
http://www.madpoet.com
There’s a million fine looking women in the world, dude, but not all of them will bring you lasagna at work. Most just cheat on you.
I saw that Australian site a few months ago, and at the time it pretty clearly stated that it wasn’t the “official” MP4 from the motion picture expert group.
Say MadPoet, could you share some web sites with MP4 players, and media?
I have no problem emailing out the media player codec if anyone really wants it., but you’re on your own on the media… alt.binaries.movies is the place to go I think.
http://www.madpoet.com
There’s a million fine looking women in the world, dude, but not all of them will bring you lasagna at work. Most just cheat on you.
I know the opening thread is asking about a new mp3 audio compression, but are you sure some of you aren’t talking about the mpeg 4 video codec here? I have never ever seen anything called mp4 before, but the various versions of microsoft’s mpeg 4 codec are standard for .asf video and are also used for some .avi (the new versions of the codec have been changed to disallow avi encoding, but the older versions will do it). Just want to clear that up.