Just spitballing here but it's not possible to play AAC/M4A files with Windows Media Player or any arbitrary player? I'm still Googling around but I'm finding a lot about AAC encoding as well as AAC-->MP3 neither of which I'm interested in. Edit: I've just installed a 3vix DS filter. I understand that 3viX is no longer free... was it ever? And if so, what was the "cutoff mark"? I'm using v4.03 right now Cheers. _ _ _X_X_X_X_X_[small]ASUS A7N8X-X, XP2500+ OC'd to XP3200+ Samsung 1024MB, PC2700 OC'd to PC3200 480GB [3x160GB, 7200, 8MB] EVGA, GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB Rules and Policies: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/2487[/small]
You're having problems because Nero (at least used to) encode MPEG 4 Audio files with the etention of mp4 which can actually contain video OR audio. m4a is the extension for MPEG 4 Audio.
> I've just installed a 3ivx DS filter. I understand > that 3ivx is no longer free... was it ever? And if > so, what was the "cutoff mark"? I'm using v4.03 right now http://www.3ivx.com/ is the URL to download their free demo (1 month) of the current DirectShow filter suite v4.5 which contains a MPEG-4 audio decoder and an encoder based on FAAC. As they have to pay patent license fees to ViaLicensing for the audio support (although FAAC is open source), they decided to release this version commercially and add an online store to their website. The decoder alone costs US$6.99 for the end user, decoder and encoder US$ 19.99. After the trial period their DS file splitter and muxer and video codecs will still work, but not the audio codecs. You can substitute the 3ivx audio decoder with the open source CoreAAC DS filter based on FAAD2 if you enable "Use unsupported decoders" in the 3ivx MP4 file splitter. Other DS filters for Windows Media Player and similar multimedia apps come from mpegable (freeware) and LSX (from Ligos, free demo for one month). See also this Wiki page for a table of available MPEG-4 players for Windows: http://www.audiocoding.com/modules/wiki/?page=MPEG-4+Players
