FAAC
The FAAC project includes the AAC encoder FAAC and decoder FAAD2. It supports several MPEG-4 object types (LC, Main, LTP, HE AAC, PS) and file formats (ADTS AAC, raw AAC, MP4), multichannel and gapless en/decoding as well as MP4 metadata tags. The codecs are compatible with standard-compliant audio applications using one or more of these profiles.
| Tags | Internet Web Communications Internet Phone Ham Radio multimedia Sound/Audio Capture/Recording CD Audio CD Ripping Conversion Players MP3 Speech Archiving Compression |
|---|---|
| Licenses | GPL LGPL |
| Operating Systems | BeOS SymbianOS Windows POSIX Unix Mac OS X |
| Implementation | C |
Recent releases
- 01 Nov 2004 22:08
Changes: The Winamp and CoolEdit/Adobe Audition output plugins now support ID3 and MP4 tag importing from input files, so they won't get lost during batch encoding to AAC/MP4. Their code was cleaned up, and common files are now located in the Cfaac subdirectory of the CVS repository.
- 21 Oct 2004 10:32
Changes: The new branch for the AAC decoder FAAD2 was added to the FAAC project in order to document its future releases independently from the encoder FAAC.
- 18 Oct 2004 03:18
Changes: This version includes updates of all text files in the main FAAC CVS folder: ChangeLog, News, Install, Readme, Authors, and ToDo.
- All comments
Recent commentsRe: Knowledge Base/Wiki page about FAAC
And now clickable... FAAC Wiki page (http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/wiki/?page=FAAC)
Re: Licenses
A summary with more links and excerpts from the official overview of the MPEG-4 standard as well as related FAQs of the AAC license pool administrator Via Licensing.com is available here:
License Information (http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4)
Re: Dependencies
I also added some Freshmeat projects as optional dependencies that use other or no AAC codecs at all (IBM Toolkit, Apple QuickTime and iTunes, Real/Helix Player and Producer), because they are nevertheless related to FAAC or FAAD2 and could use them in the context of the MPEG-4 standard. That way you'll get an overview of their download links on one page.
Knowledge Base/Wiki page about FAAC
A user documentation about FAAC with recommended settings, resulting bitrates of the VBR quality mode, compatibility and so on is available in the Wiki of Audiocoding.com:
http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/wiki/?page=FAAC
If you don't know some of the abbreviations used there, you should click on the related Wiki links for more, e.g. to AAC, MP4, HE AAC, LTP, TNS etc. There's also a page for FAAD2 and of course a forum where you can ask about anything related to these codecs.
Licenses
The codecs are released under different licenses: while FAAC and FAAD (the outdated first release of the decoder) use the LGPL, FAAD2 is GPL. For more information see the homepage and/or the Readme files in the source code package or CVS, also about patent issues related to the AAC format.