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DVD & Blu Ray software?????

What software do you guys use to rip your dvd movies to install on your phones and why?
Here's a short list so far.
AnyDvD
DvD Fab
Handbrake
I'm looking for other suggestions to compare.

Handbrake doesnt actually rip. I use it for reencoding though. I use dvdfab
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

What? Handbrake does in fact rip DVDs. You just need to be running an on-the-fly decrypter like AnyDVD (recommended), DVD43, or DVDFab PassKey. The fact that it can be set up to encode that rip to proper Captivate specs in one step makes it the preferred way to do so in my book.

Personally, I rip through dvd::rip in linux with libdvdcss2 installed to get around copy-protection.
It is illegal to circumvent copy-protection in the United States though, so technically this method should only be done outside the US (where applicable, check your local laws) unless you don't mind the possible legal ramifications.
dvd::rip can be used as a standalone product WITHOUT libdvdcss2, but it will be unable to rip copy-protected DVD's, as you'd expect.

That's all good, but what software do you use to view this videos in captive.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Kaik541 said:
It is illegal to circumvent copy-protection in the United States though, so technically this method should only be done outside the US (where applicable, check your local laws) unless you don't mind the possible legal ramifications.
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Oh, yes, thanks for the reminder. Everytime you rip a DVD, God kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens
aksma said:
That's all good, but what software do you use to view this videos in captive.
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If you are capable of ripping DVDs and putting the resultant file on the phone, you should be able to figure this one out yourself.

Personally I thought it was permissible to copy your own dvd to preserve and protect the original copy if you choose to.
What version of dvd fab do you use Max? I downloaded the trial version and it looks like you can only rip to mp2.

Shwiggie said:
What? Handbrake does in fact rip DVDs. You just need to be running an on-the-fly decrypter like AnyDVD (recommended), DVD43, or DVDFab PassKey. The fact that it can be set up to encode that rip to proper Captivate specs in one step makes it the preferred way to do so in my book.
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What handbrake settings are you using? I just downloaded handbrake.

Short instructions for Windows users
If you are going to rip Bluray or any other HD medium you must first get AnyDVD HD it will counter any of the protection schemes that Bluray and HDDVD disks use as well as DVD. If all of your sources are DVD then AnyDVD will do. Of course for BR you must have a BR player installed in your computer.
You need the following tools, at the very least:
AnyDVD HD (Please buy this and don't torrent it, it is that good!)
RipBot264 (it is much faster than Handbrake at re-encoding)
VidCoder (requires Handbrake to be installed but is a better GUI for Windows users)
Simplistic instructions:
Place DVD/HDDVD/BR in drive
Allow ANYDVD HD to scan disk
Right click ANYDVD HD icon and select "Rip Video DVD to Harddisk"
Open VidCoder
Start with the Apple Universal profile and edit is as follows:
Picture > Max Width 800
Video Filters > Denoise Medium
Video > Average Bitrate (kbps) 1500
Audio > Target All, Codec AAC, Mixdown Stereo, Sample Rate 48, Bitrate 128
Make sure you change the Container and extension to .mp4 then Save As... and call it Captivate or any other meaningful name.
If you use those settings any HD (1080) source will likely end up being about 1-2 GB in total size. With the settings saved you can then select a video source, it can be anything that Handbrake supports from VOB to MT2S to MP4 to MKV files. Pick a Destination location and name and start encoding.
I have a Core i7 running at 3.5Ghz with 8GB RAM and a full length movie takes about 2x-3x the run length, so a 120 minute movie will take anywhere from 4 to 6 hours to encode, SD (DVD, 720p HDTV, SDTV) will encode much faster, sometimes even faster than 1x runtime.
You can also to the same with Ripbot264 with the added bonus that Ripbot can handle subtitles, but those instructions are for another day.

Shwiggie said:
Oh, yes, thanks for the reminder. Everytime you rip a DVD, God kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens
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I'm not saying it's an AWFUL thing to do, I'm just letting him know there are POTENTIAL legal ramifications.
Qmotion said:
Personally I thought it was permissible to copy your own dvd to preserve and protect the original copy if you choose to.
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It is 100% legal to copy a DVD for this purpose IF you are not circumventing any sort of copy-protection mechanism on the disc. Let me quote wikipedia on this:
In the case where media contents are protected using some effective copy protection scheme, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to manufacture or distribute circumvention tools and use those tools for non-fair use purposes. In the case RealNetworks v. DVD-CCA[2], the final injunction reads, "while it may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally owned DVD on that individual's computer, a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies."[3] This case made clear that manufacturing and distribution of circumvention tools was illegal, but fair use of those tools was not.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#United_States
It's much like how jailbreaking and rooting has recently been made definitively legal through the DMCA, but the tools to do it and distributing those tools can still be illegal. So if you somehow manage to legally obtain the tools (which, there isn't an actual legal way to do so in the United States), you're right and this would be a 100% legal process. Fortunately, I doubt they'll actually chase you down for pulling the simple "libdvdcss2" file that's necessary (hell, I use it), but I'm just putting the information out there

WheresWaldo said:
If you are going to rip Bluray or any other HD medium you must first get AnyDVD HD it will counter any of the protection schemes that Bluray and HDDVD disks use as well as DVD. If all of your sources are DVD then AnyDVD will do. Of course for BR you must have a BR player installed in your computer.
You need the following tools, at the very least:
AnyDVD HD (Please buy this and don't torrent it, it is that good!)
RipBot264 (it is much faster than Handbrake at re-encoding)
VidCoder (requires Handbrake to be installed but is a better GUI for Windows users)
Simplistic instructions:
Place DVD/HDDVD/BR in drive
Allow ANYDVD HD to scan disk
Right click ANYDVD HD icon and select "Rip Video DVD to Harddisk"
Open VidCoder
Start with the Apple Universal profile and edit is as follows:
Picture > Max Width 800
Video Filters > Denoise Medium
Video > Average Bitrate (kbps) 1500
Audio > Target All, Codec AAC, Mixdown Stereo, Sample Rate 48, Bitrate 128
Make sure you change the Container and extension to .mp4 then Save As... and call it Captivate or any other meaningful name.
If you use those settings any HD (1080) source will likely end up being about 1-2 GB in total size. With the settings saved you can then select a video source, it can be anything that Handbrake supports from VOB to MT2S to MP4 to MKV files. Pick a Destination location and name and start encoding.
I have a Core i7 running at 3.5Ghz with 8GB RAM and a full length movie takes about 2x-3x the run length, so a 120 minute movie will take anywhere from 4 to 6 hours to encode, SD (DVD, 720p HDTV, SDTV) will encode much faster, sometimes even faster than 1x runtime.
You can also to the same with Ripbot264 with the added bonus that Ripbot can handle subtitles, but those instructions are for another day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great Stuff.
So you like AnyDvd better than DvD Fab?

Qmotion said:
Great Stuff.
So you like AnyDvd better than DvD Fab?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes
@Kaik541, Thank you so very much for the civics lesson, but it did not answer the question the OP asked. Nor did the OP state that he was illegally duping disks, you were presuming something you had no evidence to support.

I've been downloading movies for god knows how long. Now just reading your question and the replies so far made me want to reply.
Now my ans is none, no software what so ever, never used one and don't think I'll ever use on. If am burning a dvd then yes but to watch on my ph. or device, nope. Why? Because to me the best quickness and easiest way is to just down the rip version of the dvd. Now off course if u don't like downloading "copy protected" materials then I respect that, just gonna make ur task more time consuming. But for those of us that like our rip versions then this is the BEST WAY. u download ur movies, ANY format is perfectly find, that is. Avi,. Mpeg4,. Wmv,. Mkv etc. Now once you have your downloaded movies or ur rip movies that's it. Mission complete just drag the file to a video folder on ur SD card.
Here u go, u gonna need either rock player or yx player. Install any or both app. Both can play multiple video formats. Yx player plays ALL format including Mkv files.
Simple as that, no riping, converting or any thing like that. To me converting 1 movie is too much. The length of time it take one to rip or convert 1 movie equates to about 3-5 movies downloads for me using RapidShare.
Sent from my EVO using XDA App

I think you need a faster machine... i can rip a DVD in about 15 minutes. I don't think I download 8GB in that time.
As for others that are "Offended" by the civics lesson, it is point of fact, like it or not. I rip my own DVDs for viewing on my phone - and I consider it fair use. This is quite a bit different then downloading content you didn't pay for.
I use DVDFab and it works great. I make backup copies of my DVDs, then I create mobile formats when i need them. 300MB to 700MB per movie gives me a great picture - that even looks good if I play it back on a PC.

That's why I said it's not for every 1. It's def. Ly s matter of choice. I get about 6 movies in 10- 12 mins, (30 mbps down) so to me it's no biggie..
But u are rite, some like ripping their own movies, play the "fair game", all is well. Just give a different alternative.
Sent from my EVO using XDA App

I'm not quite sure why everyone is thinking I'm telling him not to do this, I even openly admitted to doing this very thing when I'm clearly from the United States where it's illegal. I also download movies for the same reason. And I'm sure more than half of us commenting here have downloaded movies that we don't even physically own just because we want to see them. (Streaming them on non-approved sites like hulu or netflix is essentially the same thing) But I honestly don't have a problem with this, I figured he should just be AWARE of the things you're suggesting to him.
I simply started my commenting as the fact that I use dvdrip which allows for a module known as libdvdcss2 to be loaded to circumvent copy protection. And that I use it.
Personally, I see no reason to transcode anything since our phones seem capable of taking just about any format you throw at it, unless you want to save space on the memory card.

I rent movies from Netflix. I don't always have time to watch them right away. I can be ripping them while I do other things and then watch them later on my phone if I'm away from home. I also have a large collection of movies that I've purchased. A couple of my favorites I wouldn't mind storing on my phone.
I just got the idea to install a movie on the phone to see how well it plays. I'm aware that the Vibrant came with Avatar. Too bad AT&T didn't think to give us something to show the video capabilities of the phone.
I also thought this might be an interesting post to make because I'm sure others might have interest in doing so. Many have never had a phone capable of viewing movies prior to owning a Captivate or simular device.
I think that anyone seeking advise from this thread won't be as concerened about any moral issues as much as just trying to learn what the best software that available to do the job. There are tons of software out there and it can be confusing trying to find what's best and how to use it.
If anyone knows of any other choices that works for them please feel free to add it and posibly explain how that particular software works.

Xilisoft suite works best for me, it's fast and easy, it's also one of the few that will actually max out all the cores in my cpu (i7-930),
others will use multiple cores, but my cpu graph shows that they won't max them out like xilisoft
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Reason to transcode
The Captivate cannot play all HD content. If you are content with SD then you can rip your DVD's to MKV or MP4 but you are still transcoding from the multiple VOBs to a single file. If you are using HD sources like Bluray then you must transcode to lower the resolution. I cannot nor have I seen anyone able to play 1080p content directly on the Galaxy S phones, 720p can be played but why rip to 720p for your phone when it can't display it without reducing the size, nor can you play it with the TV out! Since you are transcoding anyway might as well make it fit the display size and code to a max width of 800 pixels.
Then you have file size issues, a BRD may have a movie in a single m2ts file or multiple m2ts files and most current movies exceed 20GB in size. DVD at a lower resolution can have main movies that uncompress to 4-8GB in size. How the heck are you going to fit them on a microSD card. If you say that your downloaded files aren't that big, it's because someone else transcoded it for you. I like to know what I am getting so personally I would rather transcode it myself, rather than let someone else make those choices for me. Since most of my movies are 1080p I have no other choice but to transcode. I do not want to carry around more than 2 or 3 movies at a time but I also carry about 8GB worth of music. Can't do both unless it is transcoded.

WheresWaldo said:
The Captivate cannot play all HD content. If you are content with SD then you can rip your DVD's to MKV or MP4 but you are still transcoding from the multiple VOBs to a single file. If you are using HD sources like Bluray then you must transcode to lower the resolution. I cannot nor have I seen anyone able to play 1080p content directly on the Galaxy S phones, 720p can be played but why rip to 720p for your phone when it can't display it without reducing the size, nor can you play it with the TV out! Since you are transcoding anyway might as well make it fit the display size and code to a max width of 800 pixels.
Then you have file size issues, a BRD may have a movie in a single m2ts file or multiple m2ts files and most current movies exceed 20GB in size. DVD at a lower resolution can have main movies that uncompress to 4-8GB in size. How the heck are you going to fit them on a microSD card. If you say that your downloaded files aren't that big, it's because someone else transcoded it for you. I like to know what I am getting so personally I would rather transcode it myself, rather than let someone else make those choices for me. Since most of my movies are 1080p I have no other choice but to transcode. I do not want to carry around more than 2 or 3 movies at a time but I also carry about 8GB worth of music. Can't do both unless it is transcoded.
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Click to collapse
Just to clarify, when trans-coding with Handbrake for Captivate (Blu Ray):
Picture: 800 x 480 (max)
Video: Codec can either be mpeg 4 (ffmpeg) or H.264 (x264) <---any difference?
Video: Bitrate (kbps) 1500 <---can you go higher (maybe 1800 or 2000) ?
Frame-rate FPS: 30
Audio:
-Codec AAC (faac)
-Mixdown: Stereo
-Sample-rate: 48
-Bitrate: 128
Is that about right? Did I miss anything?
P.S. I own all of my Videos that I trans-code, so there's no need for sacrificing Kittens....lol....

Need all your Help to push MS / avi transcoding issue

Hi Everyone,
I m kindly asking you to help me push MS into fixing the avi/xvid issue since conversion times are too long.
edit Several members have also raised concern that the Zune software transcodes videos where there is really no need!
ruscik said:
a 720p Family guy blue harvest in divx (my own copy) was converted to mp4 but resolution was not lowered.
A 720p family guy something dark side in mp4 was converted to mp4 but resolution was not lowered or audio adjusted.
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Click to collapse
I have created a post on the official MS support forums and the fellow users have supported the post but MS is trying not to give a proper answer on the issues unless people reply enough or click the "I would like an answer too" button. The post seems to be ending up unanswered and pushed back. I need to let the post grab MS attention!
I would like MS to escalate the issue internally but I need more input! So please be so kind!
I suggest that we could do this for other issues as well!!!
Their forum relies on Live IDs so it is just about entering your username. (Doesn't take long)
http://social.answers.microsoft.com...7/thread/b71af2ac-9f72-4b10-a5ee-eaa29c1933e7

It can be fixed quite easily.
1) Write down the spec of your computer on a piece of paper.
2) Go to your local PC shop
3) Hand them the piece of paper and ask for something faster at encoding video
4) Happiness

Yep. Crap computers suck at transcoding video. Even a better graphics card would work much better, since lots of GPUs these days can offload much of the conversion.
Some notebooks were sold without multi-core processors (but are still 64-bit, some people assume 64-bit = multi-core), and lots of consumers have things like mismatched ram sticks and the like that can reduce their computer performance for these types of tasks.

Thanks a lot guys!!!! Appreciated!
It looks like they are still ignoring the issue. I think I might try to upvote the thread tomorrow again.
My general issue is that I am accessing different PCs all the time. Let it be work, uni, friends, or my home laptop. So I generally just need a fast way to get stuff onto the device.
Maybe we get lucky and they enable it again

I personally don't think this issue should have a high priority, as Zune software reencode your file on the fly.
Even at Microsoft, ressources are limited, and there are lots a other stuff I would like first (custom ringtones, multitask, silverlight and flash on the browser...)
My 2 cents.

(nico) said:
Even at Microsoft, ressources are limited,
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The issue here is that it works on the Zune HD without re encoding or demuxing and the same applied to the wp7 emulator until they decided to take the feature out...
Maybe it will be a OEM specific feature?!

Name one reason for DivX /XviD support, except that you want to play your pirated movies...
Transcoding XviD shouldn't take much time with a modern computer.

Why do they have to be pirated? There are those of us who have huge DVD/BD libraries ripped to xvid (and later on MKV). Personally I have several hundred DVDs that I have painstakingly converted to xvid for digital storage and easy access from my HTPCs.

Sir. Haxalot said:
Name one reason for DivX /XviD support, except that you want to play your pirated movies...
Transcoding XviD shouldn't take much time with a modern computer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could make the same assumption about mp3s. I started ripping in 99.. I don't have the resources to rerip my music into something better now. And in a real case scenario I don't want to be told 2 years from now that an MP3 player doesn't play mp3s anymore because they are "all" considered to be pirated .....

I have pleny of DVD's/BD that on top of normal movie have a digital copy that can be used with portable players. They come in many formats on those discs and all require to enter a code before 1st play so it can check if it is valid copy.
I do that and then can play them on my PC even via Zune. Formats I have are WMV, AVI, MP4 and DIVX.
My death race in wmv that works on windows 7 fresh install (with no extra codes and net access) is converted by zune. Annoying as zune officially supports WMV and even plays that movie.
Two mp4 movies (Mummy and Mummy 2) from the same Box set one just copies and works one is converted from mp4 to mp4. Some Divx movies are "converted" but it lasts 1 to 2 min aka it only changes extension while some are properly reconverted but resolution or quality are the same afterwards (720p or standard resolution no matter). There is a problem there.

[Q] May This Be a Solution for the Videoplayer-Problem on Android?

I just thought about the thing that there's no good video player for android, that decently plays .mkv files in 720p, even on the Desire HD.
But what about Archos? They have also Android as OS, and use a 1 GHz Processor ( ARM8 I think) in their newer devices.
But even the Archos 5 IT could playback 720p with its 800 MHz CPU. May it be possible to implement the ARCHOS media player on other Android devices?
Or is it coded too specifically, using the graphics accelerator so only the Archos can work with that app?
Would love to here ur oppinion about this
Sorry if this question is too dumb,

Hi Dr lele
I recently started work on my DHD and found a program called arkMedia. You can download it from your app store for free. It works very well for me right accross my varied media including avi, flv, mp4 etc...
I believe this is the tcpmp equivalent for android.
I hope it works for you as well as it is working for me.
Kind regards,
J

maybe arcmedia?

Thank You I'll try it
But I'll also try to get the app from the archos to the DHD maybe the video player works. That would be pure awesomeness

Dr. lele said:
I just thought about the thing that there's no good video player for android, that decently plays .mkv files in 720p, even on the Desire HD.
But what about Archos? They have also Android as OS, and use a 1 GHz Processor ( ARM8 I think) in their newer devices.
But even the Archos 5 IT could playback 720p with its 800 MHz CPU. May it be possible to implement the ARCHOS media player on other Android devices?
Or is it coded too specifically, using the graphics accelerator so only the Archos can work with that app?
Would love to here ur oppinion about this
Sorry if this question is too dumb,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No software player will help you overcome what hardware can't do , 800 MHz to 1000 MHz is not the issue here. Alot of things make a CPU package for phones, CPU is just a general purpose hardware not fast enough for 3D games or 720p+ video decoding.. . There are several software players out there with their own codecs that will use your cpu in software mode , you will be able to play avi,divx,xvid if your phone can't already do so, but to playback 720p you need alot more horsepower or specialized hardware. Your Desire HD has Snapdragon CPU
Archos 5 does have slower general purpose CPU less MegaHertz but ! that CPU happens to be Cortex-A8 it is more geared for media has "NEON™technology for multi-media and SIMD processing".
Same CPU but slightly faster is in my AT&T Captivate and or any other Samsung Galaxy S phone.
I can playback 720p video no problem high bitrate H264,x264 ect. Amongs many video containers it can also playback MKVs and with some help from players like "mVideoPlayer" it can even render internal and external subtitles.
You can only blame marketing and low education of general population , where everyone thinks all CPUs are equal and only MegaHertz that matters
Hope that was educational for you , in case it was not short answer , Player from Archos 5 will not help you play 720p video. It is not the player that does the hard work.

Ah thx... thats sad news, but i feel a little bit smarter now and somehow I expected that there's a reason for the DHD's original Media Player not to playback mkv containers
So with a Samsung Galaxy phones i could playback more media files... thats really interesting because I looked for an Android Phone which combines the powers of the Archos PMPs and an Android Phone

[Q] Linux on Droid: Virtualized and hardware options.

I have seen other posts related to these programs. However, none address the ideas/question I have.
chroot = full linux on android = "daddy likes" or in my terms, "awesome, i can convert, compile and port android applications on a bus, plane, work break/lunch etc. But, hmm... I rather would like to attempt to do more... for absolutely no other reason than 'because i can'" So brainstorm with me people.
1st: What settings would be the absolute least CPU intensive to encode/decode on Xvfb?
2: How does one change the refresh(fps)
3: Can it be encoded to mp4, perhaps invoking hardware decoding on an android device? If so, do any *droid* happen to have a hardware encoding option (perhaps because of camera) that can be made use of to improve Xvfb(or clone) performance?
4: What about Kill-android video processes ; link -> chroot or startx?
5: how about a virtualized application container? Something more efficient than vnc, which could execute a process, with hardware supporting inside a "window" that knows what to do with it, rather than emulate a complete frame buffer?
If you are one of those people that read this and want to say something negative: I am ignorant to many things, this is something i realize more with every thing i learn.
Welcome to science.
"Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" -Miss. Frizzle

Nothing? You realize i will heavily read up on any suggestions you make. Im not looking for directions, im looking for ideas.

I don't really know what are you talking about, take this as a BUMP to your thread
tardisguy said:
3: Can it be encoded to mp4, perhaps invoking hardware decoding on an android device? If so, do any *droid* happen to have a hardware encoding option (perhaps because of camera) that can be made use of to improve Xvfb(or clone) performance?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mp4 is just a container, am I right? So you should be looking for what codecs can be encoded/decoded by hardware.

MuF123 said:
I don't really know what are you talking about, take this as a BUMP to your thread
mp4 is just a container, am I right? So you should be looking for what codecs can be encoded/decoded by hardware.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Begging your pardon sir, I will be more specific: Yes mp4 is a container format with includes MPEG-4 video compression method. Which when played by most androids is accelerated by an auxilary core processor, which gives you the smooth video playback with far less cpu use.
I, having never thought to actually loop up the hardware features of the powerVR compatable core, theorized the possibility that the acceleration core, might have depreciated encoding abilities in parallel to the decoding. (like maybe the chip encodes because directly encoding video from your phones camcorder, would be highly taxing on the cpu.) But then, if they hadnt thought of that, then the people who designed this core... well ill be nice.

Maybe you need to ask on Droid Development forum, not on Milestone forum, because we have a locked bootloader and we can't use custom kernels or do any bigger modifications.

[Q] [DEV] Use AOSP AAC Encoder for Bluetooth Audio (A2DP) Instead of SBC?

Good morning to you all!
I've posted this in the thread about the apt-x petition, but didn't get any replies so far. And since it's also partially off topic there, I thought I'd open a new thread.
Beloved mods, if this is the wrong section, then please move it into a more fitting area. I also wasn't sure about the correct thread title prefix, so if this one is inappropriate, please change it to a better one. Thanks!
I'll basically repeat what I said in the thread over there. The thread title actually is a good tl;dr, so here's the longer version:
Apt-x is not a viable alternative as bluetooth codec in Android devices, due to various reasons explained in the thread above. But AAC could be a nice alternative. It's a much more complex and powerful codec than SBC, theoretically resulting in much higher audio quality, if the playback device/bluetooth receiver supports AAC decoding. Maybe AAC isn't as efficient as apt-x, but it's definitely a great format - in low bitrate ranges with HE-AAC and in high bitrate ranges with low complexity AAC (the latter is what's being sold by Apple in the iTunes store at high bitrates).
AOSP does contain a high quality AAC encoder since Jelly Bean (nothing like the FAAC or ffmpeg encoders for AAC, they're not providing good quality), the code has even been extracted for use in other applications that need a high quality AAC encoder, for example the popular video transcoding tool Handbrake. It's available under the name FDK-AAC (also see http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencore-amr/).
My main concern is: I don't see why it shouldn't be possible that AOSP ROMs could use this encoder for encoding audio for A2DP. There can't be any licensing issues, because the codec already is in AOSP, right?. I know that if it were that easy, someone probably would have already implemented that in some custom ROM (or even Google would have enabled AAC over A2DP per default), but I don't understand what the technical problems here are. The only thing I can think of is processing power. Encoding AAC needs moch more power than SBC, but I'd assume that modern smartphones shouldn't have a problem with that. We're talking about playback-speed encoding, it's not like you want to use the encoder on your phone to transcode you music library that should work as quickly as possible. I don't have any numbers, but my common sense tells me that power shouldn't be the issue. Isn't AAC encoding maybe even hardware accelerated on some SoCs, considering that AAC is also being used as audio codec in most video recording formats?
Maybe someone could clear that up for me.
To clarify: I'm not looking for an immediate practical solution, this question is more of theoretical nature. I'd really appreciate it, if someone, who understands this whole bluetooth audio situation in Android, could explain it in words that I (no developer, semi-advanced user with experience in audio formats) can understand. I'd also be thankful for any links to documentation or specifications, which might help to explain things.
I hope you understand what my question is. If not, please ask me, and I'll try to explain it in other words.

Seriously, is really nobody interested in that? Or am I completely wrong with my assumptions?
Please, if someone knows anything about the inner workings of audio via bluetooth in AOSP, share your knowledge. Maybe there exists documentation that I haven't found yet, even just a link would be very appreciated.
This is the only bump of the thread, promised.

It's not that nobody is interested, it's that it's much more complicated than that. Bluedroid does support aac sure, but for an app to support sink for aac then it has to include hardware-specific headers. In an open platform like Android, this is difficult for developers to do.
From what I understand, there is no setting/code in kernels or bluedroid to make any app automagically support aac over a2dp - the apps themselves need to have HCI natives/interfaces. And these may very well be patented by the Oem e.g
Broadcomm.
Sent via Tapatalk on my Xperia Z

This is very insightful, thanks.
I wasn't aware that the apps themselves needed specific support. I thought this was one system-wide thing: Once paired with the bluetooth receiver, the same codec will be used for all A2DP audio. If that's not the case, I see that this makes it even more complicated.
If there are even patents and complicated hardware-specific code required, I understand it's more difficult than I thought.
But impossible? Aren't at least the Nexus devices open enough to try something?

I could be mistaken, this is how I understand it though. I actually investigated this myself a couple years ago and never got anywhere, I needed source code for the *receiver* too. Apparently it's not quite standard or something.
Things may have changed since, at least I bumped the thread maybe someone else knows more
Edit: I wouldn't get your hopes up though. It might be possible, but not legal. Aac is not "free", having the codec doesn't mean they're legally allowed to implement it in every level (I.e. A2dp is different to local file encoding in camera recording) and as the Nexus devices are developer devices not designed for general consumer use I don't see it having support for it. An Xperia device is another story though for example, we even have ATRAC support (obviously requires a Sony headset/device to pair with though).
Sent via Tapatalk on my Xperia Z

CosmicDan said:
I bumped the thread maybe someone else knows more
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Nah, you've definitely provided some thoughts that I didn't have before. Thanks for that.
CosmicDan said:
Aac is not "free", having the codec doesn't mean they're legally allowed to implement it in every level (I.e. A2dp is different to local file encoding in camera recording)
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If this is true, how are the FDK AAC and opencore-amr guys doing it? As far as I know, they extracted the AAC code from AOSP and are using it at their leisure without legal consequences. It would be really weird (but possible, I guess), if the AAC code in AOSP may only be used for certain functionality, e.g. camera videos, but not A2DP.
CosmicDan said:
and as the Nexus devices are developer devices not designed for general consumer use I don't see it having support for it.
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I understand that, but since you said there was some low level access required for some parts of the hardware or firmware, isn't it the developer devices that have the best chance for some solution?
CosmicDan said:
An Xperia device is another story though for example, we even have ATRAC support (obviously requires a Sony headset/device to pair with though).
Sent via Tapatalk on my Xperia Z
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Sure, there may be manufacturers that are using their own proprietary codecs like ATRAC, but I'm not really interested in that. It's an even worse situation than with apt-X, because the latter is already supported by a variety of devices, while ATRAC will be mostly Sony-only. That's just my assumption, of course.
AAC is supported by a lot more devices, probably due to licensing stuff.
In any case, I'm thankful for your replies.

I'm not sure about those guys, but Ffmpeg for example doesn't include/support aac for patent reasons. The codec is not free, use of an existing codec is free though. http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/aac-faq.aspx
Edit: Fdk is Fraunhofer, they're actually a shared holder of the patent. So yeah they have the rights to do it. Ffmpeg supports aac, but it's a violation to distribute aac encoding binaries without license so it's DIY in that case.
I did some more research, seems Lg did indeed pay for Aac encoder in Nexus 4. Most recent android devices do.... So I guess there is no legal barrier at all, I'm just talking nonsense
My guess is that there is missing hardware to support viable aac over a2dp, seems strange that it hasn't been done already. Or the aac encoder is separate to bluedroid; and requires a *second* license (along with reimplementation) for it to work with aac. Both seem just as possible to me.
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Yeah, this licensing stuff is very confusing. There's different information on the web, Wikipedia'd description is quite telling... "License: Liberal,[3] but not a license of patented technologies".
They're referencing the official AOSP license file that's included in the source: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/external/aac/+/master/NOTICE
And this document is really confusing to me. An important sentence is;
AOSP NOTICE said:
You may use this FDK AAC Codec software or modifications thereto only for purposes that are authorized
by appropriate patent licenses.
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But it's defined nowhere what these authorized purposes are.
So you could be right about them needing a second license for a different "authorized purpose". And additionally there could be hardware restrictions, that's true. I'm not familiar enough about how this works on a device. Like, is there hardware acceleration for AAC encoding/decoding, or is it done entirely in software. Must the bluetooth chipset specifically support certain codecs, or can it be used as "generic" device and the audio codec is all software stuff? Or is there something specific in the firmware for that chipset/radio etc. I really have no idea.
I'd still like a developer, who knows BlueDroid and maybe the Nexus devices, to explain this. ELI5. And we'll probably need a lawyer to explain the patent/licensing stuff. :laugh:

I *think* the Neon extension in ARM supports aac hardware encoding, or at the very least something in modern soc's would use hardware based encoding. Maybe only decoding, and that's the issue? Software based encoding could be a factor. I don't think it's done entirely in software, not decoding anyway - no idea about encoding to be honest. Probably varies per device. Apparently Samsung's support aptx so that could be an exynos thing for example.
Afaik the a2dp protocol can passthrough already-encoded aac streams regardless as it's part of the specification but I was thinking more of a highspeed (or additional) bus to allow the higher bitrates to work. But I'm just speculating here.
Maybe you'll have better luck asking on the Cyanogenmod forums? Xda is pretty crowded these days. This section is loaded with Chinese related firmware hacking and super-duper script "tweaks".
Sent via Tapatalk on my Xperia Z

Well seems like Google solved it now