Trouble with .m4A files

#1

Hello All,
I am a newbie. I have tried to search and find the answer to my problem but have not had luck.
I know this has been discussed before (Sorry) but I still could not find the answer.

I put a bunch of my own older CDs into itunes library. When I look at the files they have the extension .m4A. They are encoded with itunes v7.6.0.29, Quicktime 7.4.1 (not sure what this means…just found it on get info) These will not play on TVersity on the PC or on the HR20. I see them in the library but when I click on one the message below appears…

ERROR MESSAGE FROM TVersity
“Timeout loading this track. Please make sure tversity is running(IT IS), the audiotrack exists (IT DOES), it will play on itunes(IT DOES) and can be converted to mp3(I DONT KNOW?). Are you missing a direct show filter?”

So via searches here I found one thread that mentioned downloading directshow filter which I did. I downloaded (per the thread’s included link) CoreAAC 1.2.0.575 rev.3

However…being rather ignorant about all this stuff I was not sure where to extract it to… I put it in tversity’s Codec pack folder? Not sure if this was correct place? Anyhow…it did not fix the problem after restarting computer.

Any help or direction you might provide would be greatly appreciated!8)

#2

It sounds like it may not be registered if you just copied it to a folder.

just open a command prompt and the command is:

regsvr32 c:\the\path\where\you\copied\coreaac.ax

#3

I am sorry to be dense but I am not sure what you mean. When the file downloaded it created a folder that needed to be extracted. When I extracted it I did not know where to send it… i.e. leave it in the Temp directory. So I sent it to the TVversity coden folder.

I can download it again but when I extract it where should I direct it to install/extract to?

Thanks again.

#4

[quote="pjsluna"]I am sorry to be dense but I am not sure what you mean. When the file downloaded it created a folder that needed to be extracted. When I extracted it I did not know where to send it… i.e. leave it in the Temp directory. So I sent it to the TVversity coden folder.

I can download it again but when I extract it where should I direct it to install/extract to?

Thanks again.[/quote]

Sorry I am being a little dense - you meant the zip file was extracted to the folder.

Do have one small question - did you try the aac decoder in ffdshow first ?
It should work fine for DRM free stuff.

If you open ffdshow>Audio Decoder Configuration from your start menu - and select codecs - select libfaad2 for AAC and OK. That should enable ffdshow to handle the files.

#5

Yes I did mean that the downloaded file was a zip folder. I extracted all files (The executable was CoreAAC 1.2.0.575 rev.3) and sent them to the tvversity codec folder (I also tried to put it in Tvversity folder with no fix)

Do have one small question - did you try the aac decoder in ffdshow first ?
It should work fine for DRM free stuff.

Answer: No I did not as I would not have known how with my limited skills.

However, I hopefully will be able to follow your recommendation below and figure out… Will the ffdshow come up on the start menu (I hav never seen it before) or is in the startup area? Control panel?

I am at work now (and I don’t see ffdshow on the start menu at work) so will try tomorrow AM and let you know either way.

Thank you so much for your continued input

"If you open ffdshow>Audio Decoder Configuration from your start menu - and select codecs - select libfaad2 for AAC and OK. That should enable ffdshow to handle the files. "

#6

Yes just in the windows start menu>All Programs you should have a ffdshow folder and it has the audio configuration ‘applet’

#7

Dear Bill
I do not have any ffdshow folder. I did a search as well and found none
I find that after I ran the coreAAC executable it put a file coreAAC.ax in c:\windows\system32\

This makes me think I need to install some main ffdshow program?

Continued help would be greatly appreciated… :oops: Patty

#8

[quote="pjsluna"]Dear Bill
I do not have any ffdshow folder. I did a search as well and found none
I find that after I ran the coreAAC executable it put a file coreAAC.ax in c:\windows\system32\

This makes me think I need to install some main ffdshow program?

Continued help would be greatly appreciated… :oops: Patty[/quote]

Sounds like maybe you didn’t install the TVersity Codec Pack ? FFDShow should have been installed as part of that. If not you can re-run the codec setup from (default location):
C:\Program Files\TVersity\Media Server\TVersityCodecPackSetup_1_1.exe

That should give you ffdshow and a couple of file splitters.

#9

Bill

:D

YAHOO!
Its workiing!

I think when the codec pack tried to install it failed. Yesterday I did it and it failed then I repeated it and it worked…

Now the itunes non DRM files are playing on my computer so I expect and hope they will play on the HR20 DVR too…

Thank you so much for your help!

Patty

#10

[quote="pjsluna"]Bill

:D

YAHOO!
Its workiing!

I think when the codec pack tried to install it failed. Yesterday I did it and it failed then I repeated it and it worked…

Now the itunes non DRM files are playing on my computer so I expect and hope they will play on the HR20 DVR too…

Thank you so much for your help!

Patty[/quote]

Cool - I think you may have to select the HR20 profile manually to get it to work. I think the auto detect may not be working based on what other folks are posting here and over at dbstalk.

#11

hi there. i’d like to piggy-back here, if i may:

so, i’ve decided to rip and serve all of my classical music to my hr20-700. i could encode in mp3-320, which sounds pretty good, but i’d rather use aac-256 (better codec, smaller files). so, i ripped a test into aac-256 and rescanned my share, but no love. my test files just don’t show on my hr20. restarted the service, still no love. so, i came here and found this thread.

well, i reinstalled the codec pack, making sure aac was enabled. i guess i’ve tried everything, including changing the decoder from libfaad2 to realaac, still no love. i also notice that not only do my files not show on my hr20, but they don’t show in my tversity library. (i imagine that when i get them to show there, they will then show on my hr20).

can anoyone offer any guidance?

thx!!

wxp sp3, tversity 0.9.11.4, itunes 7.6.2.9

#12

Possibly - the only other thing I can think of is what is actually producing the DVR-MS files ? Maybe there is some setting in it that maybe causing it ?