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Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Free Encoder Pack (Read 46144 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #100 –
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/fbfa19de37cd5619bad57e44f12a9ff1e53c582eddad886b472923c8289acaef/behavior

Do not report this as a false positive. Requesting for a kernel privilege is not something that could be falsely reported as a malicious behavior of just a driver installer. The same for attempting to take a camera shot. The same is for a System.dll dropping from an external online host.

It's devs' responsibility to make an installer as simple as possible. Does your installer scan Apple's registry tree on purpose? Does it scan the autocompletion registry trees on purpose? Does it spawn a taskhost on purpose? Are all these essential for just extracting and copying some DLLs?

And please don't use any tool that runs itself from %TEMP%. Software Security Policies were developed by MS just for that thing: to prohibit any crap from being run from an improper directory. Your installer won't run on a properly configured host.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #101 –
Have you verified that all of that is true yourself, or are assuming that what is the amalgamation of the output of 10 different tools into one report is absolutely accurate?

The autocomplete is simply the box where you enter the installation path.
.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #102 –
Quote from: santjago on
Requesting for a kernel privilege is not something that could be falsely reported as a malicious behavior of just a driver installer. The same for attempting to take a camera shot. The same is for a System.dll dropping from an external online host.
If you did report this as a possible false positive to a vendor you trust, you would get a reply that it's harmless.

The behavior analysis you see there is nonsense. It tracks all sorts of background activity of the machine and accounts that as coming from the installer.

The installer does not request kernel privileges. And it does not attempt to take camera shots.
System.dll is NSIS installer component that is used to create the graphical interface. Just because its name is "system" does not make it malicious. It isn't dropped from external online host, it is inside the installer.

Quote from: santjago on
It's devs' responsibility to make an installer as simple as possible. Does your installer scan Apple's registry tree on purpose?
It does, to see if user has Microsoft Store installed iTunes so it can copy the needed DLLs for QAAC to function.

Quote from: santjago on
Does it scan the autocompletion registry trees on purpose? Does it spawn a taskhost on purpose? Are all these essential for just extracting and copying some DLLs?
Autocomplete registry key must be accessed by the operating system as the installer requests it to be enabled. Taskhost is not touched by the installer, it must be some background activity.

Quote from: santjago on
And please don't use any tool that runs itself from %TEMP%. Software Security Policies were developed by MS just for that thing: to prohibit any crap from being run from an improper directory. Your installer won't run on a properly configured host.
The installer only uses temp to extract temporary files. Any exe you see running from there is not the installer's doing.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #103 –
Updated 2024-03-03 with WavPack 5.7.0, qaac 2.81 and refalac 1.81.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #104 –
Hello, thank you for the very useful package!

A question that has always arisen in my mind: is it an exclusively 86bit or 64bit package?

I know it runs on all versions of foobar2000 (x64, x86). I'm just curious to know the nature of the binaries contained in the package: 64bit or 86bit?

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #105 –
They are all 32-bit (x86 not "86bit") except for the single 64-bit file qaac64.exe, for which there is also a 32-bit version supplied (qaac.exe).

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #106 –
Thank you!

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #107 –
Any Eta on when libOpus/opusenc 1.5.1 will be in the encoder pack? Was a bit of bad luck that it got released one day after your last release it seems.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #108 –
The timing indeed was less than ideal. I'll need to do some more testing before I'm comfortable bundling a new encoder.

Note that the new low bitrate enhancements are not finalized yet, encoding files with those features makes little sense as the finalized version will just ignore the experimental payload. Quoting the Opus page:
Quote
Beware that DRED is not yet standardized and the version included in Opus 1.5 will not be compatible with the final version. That being said, it is still safe to experiment with it in applications since the bitstream carries an experiment version number and any version incompatibility will be detected and simply cause the DRED payload to be ignored (no erroneous decoding or loud noises).
The new features will also bloat the encoder binary quite a bit. Test compile I made the other day is 5.5 MB, current opusenc.exe is 430 KB.
And there are currently no decoders for the enhancements as far as I can tell. Peter will probably not implement support for them until they are finalized. And the official opusdec.exe doesn't seem to be able to use the features either.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #109 –
Quote from: Case on
And there are currently no decoders for the enhancements as far as I can tell. Peter will probably not implement support for them until they are finalized.
Didn't take him long!  v2.2 preview 2024-03-08 change log:

       Opus decoder updated to 1.5.1

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #110 –
It uses the new library but none of the new experimental features are enabled. They require setting decoder complexity and if I understood some comments correctly, there's no straightforward way to even do that when not using the opusfile helper.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #111 –
Updated 2024-03-08 with Opus 1.5.1. Note that the experimental features to improve low bitrate quality are not included.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #112 –
I installed iTunes and reran the Free Encoder Pack setup (newest version). I confirmed the files were successfully copied to my working foobar2000 (portable) folder, but QAAC doesn't want to work. I did a quick Google search and it looks like maybe something has changed with the newer iTunes versions? Can anyone confirm QAAC should work with the latest iTunes Windows App and the latest Free Encoder Pack?

Error:
Code: [Select]
1 out of 1 files converted with major problems.

Source: "F:\music\Game\Final Fantasy 9\Final Fantasy IX OST\Disc1\18 - Battle 1.flac"
  An error occurred while writing to file (The encoder has terminated prematurely with code 2 (0x00000002); please re-check parameters) : "F:\out\foobar\18 - Battle 1.m4a"
  Additional information:
  Encoder stream format: 44100Hz / 2ch / 32bps floating-point
  Command line: qaac.exe --ignorelength -s --no-optimize -V 82 -o "18 - Battle 1.m4a" -
  Working folder: F:\out\foobar\
  Conversion failed: The encoder has terminated prematurely with code 2 (0x00000002); please re-check parameters
Think millionaire, but with cannons.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #113 –
I just tested on my machine with a clean portable install and latest iTunes from Microsoft Store and everything worked fine.

Do you have 32-bit OS? The error message you pasted shows qaac.exe is used, that's 32-bit. On a 64-bit OS the iTunes in Store is 64-bit version and Free Encoder Pack should have given you qaac64.exe.
The default qaac profile in foobar2000 uses both qaac.exe and qaac64.exe, but it attempts 32-bit version first. If that binary exists, it will get used.
The Free Encoder Pack tries to prevent wrong version from being used. It checks if the install dir already contained different bitness version of qaac and if one exists but there are no QTFiles libraries to go with it, the old binary gets removed.

If your OS is 64-bit, is it possible you have qaac.exe somewhere in path so it got used over the Encoder Pack version?

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #114 –
64 bit Windows 11, 64 bit foobar2000.
I checked and it looks like a long time ago (before I even switched to Windows 11) I had set a dir full of encoders in environmental variables, and sure enough there was an old version of qaac.exe in there. Good call. Removing it fixed the issue.
Think millionaire, but with cannons.
 

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #115 –
Updated 2024-04-23 with Opus 1.5.2, qaac 2.82 and refalac 1.82.
Installer also changed - now no longer asks for admin credentials for regular users. And can query default install dir from the browse dialog for portable install users.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #116 –
Update 2025-02-11. Now bundles FLAC 1.5.0, WavPack 5.8.0, qaac 2.83, and refalac 1.83.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #117 –
FLAC v1.5.0 2025-02-11 has been released.

FLAC v1.5.0 2025-02-11 By: RAREWARES
https://www.rarewares.org/lossless.php

FLAC 1.5.0 2025-02-11
https://github.com/xiph/flac/releases

Are there any changes to the command line in foobar2000 convert?
Nomal and AVX2 x64 version
--------
Encoder: Custom
Extension: flac.exe
Parameteres:
SHURE SRH1840, SENNHEISER HD660S2, SENNHEISER HD620S, SENNHEISER HD 490 Pro Plus, beyerdynamic DT 1990 PRO, HiFiMAN Edition XS, HIFIMAN ANANDA, Bowers & Wilkins P7, FiiO FT5, FiiO FT1 Pro, 水月雨 (MOONDROP) 空鳴 - VOID, SONY WH1000XM5 (made a Upgrade/Balanced Cable by myself)

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #118 –
Quote from: Air KEN on
Are there any changes to the command line in foobar2000 convert?
No, default foobar2000 FLAC profile works perfectly for normal use, where you encode entire libraries or albums at once.

But if you for some reason encode a lot of single files, you can create a custom FLAC encoder profile that uses the new multithreaded encoding. Configure basic settings with the built-in FLAC option, then switch Encoder from "FLAC" to "Custom" and add "-j <thread-count>" to the beginning of the "Parameters" string. Enter the thread count you want in place of the "<thread-count>", you'll probably want to use the number of CPU cores your system has.
And remember to tick the "Do not convert in multiple threads", to prevent extra slowdowns in case you (accidentally) use this setting when encoding more than one track at a time.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #119 –
@Case Many Thanks.
SHURE SRH1840, SENNHEISER HD660S2, SENNHEISER HD620S, SENNHEISER HD 490 Pro Plus, beyerdynamic DT 1990 PRO, HiFiMAN Edition XS, HIFIMAN ANANDA, Bowers & Wilkins P7, FiiO FT5, FiiO FT1 Pro, 水月雨 (MOONDROP) 空鳴 - VOID, SONY WH1000XM5 (made a Upgrade/Balanced Cable by myself)

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #120 –
Quote from: Case on
Update 2025-02-11. Now bundles FLAC 1.5.0, WavPack 5.8.0, qaac 2.83, and refalac 1.83.

Any chance to include Monkey Audio and TAK lossless encoder in package? It's distributed as a free (monkey audio even as open-source). fk2 already has settings for these two codecs since version 2.1

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #121 –
I fear TAK is dead. The last messages from the author weren't promising. Also its license doesn't allow any other form of redistribution except the full zip archive as-is.

Monkey's Audio is updated way too often. Keeping it up-to-date would be a full time job. Back in 2013 and before when it had a sensible release cycle it could have been a possibility.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #122 –
First of all Case, thanks for creating and continually updating this package.
Regarding the Flac encoder version 1.5.0.. the info on the parameters was very helpful, thanks! I assume that, as with version 1.4.3, this is a generic build, compiled with GCC...?

Maybe I'm remembering wrong, so just for my reminder please.. are the Flac encoder builds bundled with this package modified/specific in any way, or do they give an output file that is in every scenario completely identical to the encoder from the standard distribution for any input...? 
One last comment on the distribution of x64 builds, what you've commented on in your post #7 of this thread, if correct. Without being sage or presenting experience on my own hardware (I don't think that's even correct, nor transferable..), I just want to ask directly... Has anything changed in your opinion regarding this after ten years..? Respectively, do you admit that e.g. x64 builds of Flac might already be part of the package? 

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #123 –
The FLAC binary is a custom but generic GCC compile. Sadly. I'd very much prefer to bundle official compile, but dependency on libflac.dll is simply unacceptable. The point of a command line frontend is to be fully self-sufficient. Nothing in the sources has been changed, so unless optimizations can affect some computations the output should be identical to other compiles.

I'm nostalgic, I'd wish all the encoders would still work even on Windows XP. Unfortunately many of them, including FLAC, will now crash on that OS. The qaac has been following host bitness for quite some time already. Perhaps it's time to bundle 64-bit variants for all the other encoders too.

Re: Free Encoder Pack

Reply #124 –
Quote from: Case on
I'd wish all the encoders would still work even on Windows XP. Unfortunately many of them, including FLAC, will now crash on that OS.
Official flac.exe, or in the sense that it is getting hard to compile one?

There is nothing in the changelog about dropping it.
I'm not sure if the "xp" in the item "Add warning on using v141_xp platform toolset with /MT" has anything to do with this XP.