Hi
couple quick queries about Mpeg 4 audio in Linux


Here is example of M4A files i make from cd's i rip trying to get meta data (tags to work)

faac -q 280 -w --artist R.E.M. --title "Man On The Moon" --album "In Time Best Of" 01*.wav -o /home/carl0ski/Desktop/R.E.M-01.m4a

faac OPTIONS INPUT -o OUTPUT
-w packs AAC stream in m4a mp4 package to allow meta data tags

but XMMS nor AMarok recognise the existance of a tag.
Amarok refuses to add m4a files to database
and both show song tititle as full file name and location


Do these programs support m4a tags?

more importantly is there anything wrong in my command to prevent tags from actually working period in future?

The issue is not with Amarok, XMMS or BEEP, it is rather with taglib. Taglib is a set of libraries that these programs access in order to determine metadata for media files. At the moment, there is not support for M4A files through M4A because their excuse is that there are no GPLed Encoders avaliable (something which is untrue, note faac).

The developers of Amarok and BEEP are working on creating a modular interface for decoding new types of audio files (with or without the use of taglib), although it will take some time to rewrite these applications to make use of these newer formats.

Just keep your eyes out for a 1.2.3 release of Amarok, and you *MAY* have the ability to access metadata for M4A files, and thus keep them in your music database.
Until then, have fon kicking yourself for converting your audio collection to M4A when it is still a bit of a bleeding edge, nitche format.

Yea i have kde 3.4 and Amarok 1.2.3 now still doesnt work with tags

but i found the m4a tags display in WInamp 5.06
:-D

So its all good i'll just wait till amarok finishes implementing m4a support better.