Fred or Cowboy can probably give the best answer on this. But, if I
recall correctly, you do still need the ASI for MP3 as it's a licensing
issue with software MP3 due to patents. Since the ASI cards have
hardware MP2/3 encoders and decoders present, the licensing has been
paid through the purchase of the cards. (It used to be you could only
play MP2 and MP3 with ASI until the MP2 patent expired). In order for
Fred to include the ability without ASI cards, there would have to be
licensing paid to the patent holders of MP3 technology, which opens up a
whole huge can of worms and problems. Hence, why ASI cards are needed
for MP3 and why MP2 is in the software now.
That is my understanding. I haven't kept up as well in the last year or
two as I've been working on other projects, but that is my last
understanding I knew. Again, Fred will have an absolute and 100% correct
answer.
On 2/27/20 8:41 PM, Alan Smith wrote:
I could be wrong, but I seem to remember asking an almost similar
question when I first started with Rivendell.
It is my understanding that you do not need ASI cards to play either
mp3 or mp3 cards. You might have needed them 'back in the day', but
these days I believe ASI cards only gets you the following features:
I know you are definitely correct with gaining the hardware
encode/decode as well as time scaling. Those are definitely features
granted with the ASI cards.
Time Scaled Audio.
Hardware MPEG encode/decode.
As I understand it, it's not horsepower, but licensing that's the issue
with it. It'll all come one day when the MPEG patents all expire. While
there are certain use cases where the MPEG formats are useful, most will
argue with the cheap hard drive prices these days, they're not needed
and you're better off starting the audio chain with lossless
uncompressed audio. I have had uses for both and it's nice to have the
choice depending on your needs.
Tim
Thats about it. Hardware encode/decode shouldn't be an issue-todays
processors are more than capable of doing the job in realtime with
plenty of 'horsepower' left to spare. Now it *might* be the hardware
encode/decoding produces better quality results, I'm not sure though.
I know in the video side of things hardware
decoding/encoding>software. May not apply to audio though???
-Alan
_______________________________________________
Rivendell-dev mailing list
Rivendell-dev@lists.rivendellaudio.org
http://caspian.paravelsystems.com/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev
_______________________________________________
Rivendell-dev mailing list
Rivendell-dev@lists.rivendellaudio.org
http://caspian.paravelsystems.com/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev
