Actually, I suspect that Quicktime _cant_ decode AC3 (directly to
computer speakers).

I had a look and realised that I have a video lib called perian
installed on my mac ... I think this is what is doing the AC3 decode.

Ambisonia has to provide for 2 scenarios:
1) streaming to computer that as a multi-channel sound card (AAC works
for this),
2) streaming to a computer that has a digital connection to an AV
receiver (AC3).

Both are small files so its not bit deal .... but its a matter of
managing how many formats Ambisonia is serving.

Etienne

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 8:46 PM, e deleflie <edeleflie@...> wrote:
> All,
>
> This email is copied from a blog post here:
> http://blog.ambisonia.com/2008/05/13/ambisonia-uploader-90-complete/
>
> (Except there are screenshots in the blog post.)
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> The Uploader is around 90% complete. I've interspersed screenshots
> through this blog post.
>
> That said, it wont be deployed for a couple of months yet. This is
> because the Uploader uploads to Amazon's S3 (not the Ambisonia
> Server). What I need to do now is to migrate all of Ambisonia's
> existing content to Amazon S3 (which will take a little while because
> of certain challenges).
>
> Further. The aim of having the content on Amazon S3 is that I can
> stream directly to playback from within the browser.
>
> I am also writing automatic transcoders (instead of the current manual
> DTS conversion which relies on irregular and inconsistent transcoding)
> so that the streaming versions will be consistently available no more
> than 60 minutes after uploading.
>
> I was initially keen on AAC for the streaming. The problem with AAC is
> that it can not be streamed via Optical to an AV receiver. Some people
> will want to play back the 5.1 file on their computer to computer
> speakers (not good quality I know), but many people will want to go
> optical to the AV receiver.
>
> AC3 can go optical to the AV receiver .. and I am currently doing a
> test to see if it can STREAM to the browser THEN go optical to the AV
> receiver.
>
> I did some tests and Quicktime can also decode AC3 directly to
> computer speakers (at least on a MAC). So if the tests work then I can
> kill 2 birds with 1 stone by using AC3.
>
> Again, progress is slow… but it is moving.
>