Support AAC de- and encoding on Linux

Pretty much the only feature missing on the Studio version on Linux.
Right now have to treat AAC audio inside mov or mp4 files (convert to pcm wav) before I can open it inside Davinci Resolve which is a huge bummer.

Also MP4 support with Audio is basically impossible due to the missing AAC encoder.

It'd be nice if there were an additional "Codec Pack" available for the Studio version that would include ProRes (for Windows), x264 (commercial) and other such things. It would be a paid option to cover the licensing fees, and allow proper software codecs, rather than relying upon the often limited options provided by the OS and GPU.

Such a Codec Pack would level the playing field across all three platforms, as well as provide some much needed options not currently available.

Windows is actually pretty good about what Decoders and Encoders they provide. Of course, ProRes isn't going to be one of them...

Things are different on Linux, though.

That being said, when I used to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux | Workstation, they would distribute all of these CODECs with the system out of the box. Everything just worked, the same way it does on Windows 10 or macOS. Maybe they should support only Enterprise Distros that ship with these CODECs out of the box (i.e. the cost of the CODEC license is in the cost of the OS purchase/subscription)?

Still wouldn't fix the "ProRes issue," though it would handle cases like H.264/HEVC and AAC.

Windows is actually pretty good about what Decoders and Encoders they provide. Of course, ProRes isn't going to be one of them...

Things are different on Linux, though.

That being said, when I used to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux | Workstation, they would distribute all of these CODECs with the system out of the box. Everything just worked, the same way it does on Windows 10 or macOS. Maybe they should support only Enterprise Distros that ship with these CODECs out of the box (i.e. the cost of the CODEC license is in the cost of the OS purchase/subscription)?

Still wouldn't fix the "ProRes issue," though it would handle cases like H.264/HEVC and AAC.

I think most distributions are equipped with ffmpeg nowadays anyway. So AAC en- and decoding shouldn't be an issue?

Right now the MP4 export is pretty much useless without audio lol

Windows is actually pretty good about what Decoders and Encoders they provide.

It's not good enough, though. That's why I think a paid option to add more/better codecs for Studio would be a good idea.

AAC encoding in the Studio version would be a welcome addition on Linux.

If I could get that, Ut Video support, and the ability to use my Xtouch control surface life would be good.

Windows is actually pretty good about what Decoders and Encoders they provide. Of course, ProRes isn't going to be one of them...

Things are different on Linux, though.

That being said, when I used to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux | Workstation, they would distribute all of these CODECs with the system out of the box. Everything just worked, the same way it does on Windows 10 or macOS. Maybe they should support only Enterprise Distros that ship with these CODECs out of the box (i.e. the cost of the CODEC license is in the cost of the OS purchase/subscription)?

Still wouldn't fix the "ProRes issue," though it would handle cases like H.264/HEVC and AAC.

I think most distributions are equipped with ffmpeg nowadays anyway. So AAC en- and decoding shouldn't be an issue?

Right now the MP4 export is pretty much useless without audio lol

This answers why I am having issues with all audio encoded MP4s on Studo via Linux. And I agree with deezid points.

Windows is actually pretty good about what Decoders and Encoders they provide. Of course, ProRes isn't going to be one of them...

Things are different on Linux, though.

That being said, when I used to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux | Workstation, they would distribute all of these CODECs with the system out of the box. Everything just worked, the same way it does on Windows 10 or macOS. Maybe they should support only Enterprise Distros that ship with these CODECs out of the box (i.e. the cost of the CODEC license is in the cost of the OS purchase/subscription)?

Still wouldn't fix the "ProRes issue," though it would handle cases like H.264/HEVC and AAC.

I think most distributions are equipped with ffmpeg nowadays anyway. So AAC en- and decoding shouldn't be an issue?

Right now the MP4 export is pretty much useless without audio lol

This answers why I am having issues with all audio encoded MP4s on Studo via Linux. And I agree with deezid points.

No audio, right?
Greyed out when exporting MP4 lol

16.1.2 Studio still without AAC de-/encoding support.

I asked Peter Chamberlain in an email chain "why AAC is not an acceptable CODEC on Linux" and he replied that "the simple answer is due to licensing".

It seems strange to me that AAC can't be licensed in DR Studio when h.264 and ProRes can.

so there is no workaround for AAC on Linux even for Studio??

this is a huge bummer. shame on me for not checking before purchasing a Studio license, but also I mean come on... it's audio decoding, I would not have thought it would be an issue. my GoPro footage has AAC inside the MP4s at least the Sony camera works w/o intermediate re-encoding now, but this means my workflow is still annoying until i can rely on Studio to consistently read all footage

oof :-/ this is really disappointing after having spent a good chunk of money on the Studio Version.

If I'm lucky, I can still get a refund. If I need to re-encode anyways, I don't need the Studio license either.

I asked Peter Chamberlain in an email chain "why AAC is not an acceptable CODEC on Linux" and he replied that "the simple answer is due to licensing".

It seems strange to me that AAC can't be licensed in DR Studio when h.264 and ProRes can.

Licensing ProRes costs nothing.
With AAC it's different:

"No licenses or payments are required for a user to stream or distribute content in AAC format.[48] This reason alone might have made AAC a more attractive format to distribute content than its predecessor MP3, particularly for streaming content (such as Internet radio) depending on the use case.

However, a patent license is required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs.[49] For this reason, free and open source software implementations such as FFmpeg and FAAC may be distributed in source form only, in order to avoid patent infringement. (See below under Products that support AAC, Software.)"

"No licenses or payments are required for a user to stream or distribute content in AAC format.[48] This reason alone might have made AAC a more attractive format to distribute content than its predecessor MP3, particularly for streaming content (such as Internet radio) depending on the use case.

However, a patent license is required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs.[49] For this reason, free and open source software implementations such as FFmpeg and FAAC may be distributed in source form only, in order to avoid patent infringement. (See below under Products that support AAC, Software.)"

So? Then why can Resolve - even/especially in the paid version - not even READ AAC?

To create decoder you also need license most likely.

To create decoder you also need license most likely.

That why I paid for the Studio version - to get all the licenses. Turns out I paid for half a product.

If you take all licensing from 300$ then not that much is left. How are you going to pay for all the developers? You know how much they cost

If you take all licensing from 300$ then not that much is left. How are you going to pay for all the developers? You know how much they cost

Saying "the product is too cheap" in a weird way won't make it functional for me.

Buying a product which has no needed functionality is also strange. It’s a fact that AAC is not supported on Linux. Why have you bought it then? I know why- because it’s cheap and offers tons of other functionality for its price. Sorry but you are victim of your own. You have been given reasons why it’s not there. There is not much more to it. Maybe it will change in the future maybe not.

Windows is actually pretty good about what Decoders and Encoders they provide.

It's not good enough, though. That's why I think a paid option to add more/better codecs for Studio would be a good idea.

It's good enough

Windows is way better than macOS when it comes to CODEC support out of the box.

It just doesn't have support for Apple's proprietary CODECs like ProRes, the same way Apple doesn't ship WMV/WMA support out of the box. Economically it makes little sense to license those, because they are fairly industry specific and the license costs would have to be negligible for it to make sense. It's better off left to the individual solution/software developers.

Aside from that, Windows has native AAC CODECs, so I'm not even understanding this reply. You don't have this issue on Windows. The issue is on Linux.

Windows has pretty much ALWAYS had superior out of the box CODEC support to macOS, in recent history. Apple's "superiority" has always hinged on its CODECs being industry standard or ubiquitous in certain industries - not on breadth of support.

For Linux users, this issue is completely different. I still think supporting Enterprise Distros that ship the CODECs would be a great option, that way they don't have to worry about licensing it. They can just use the CODEC that ships with the system.

Buying a product which has no needed functionality is also strange. It’s a fact that AAC is not supported on Linux. Why have you bought it then? I know why- because it’s cheap and offers tons of other functionality for its price. Sorry but you are victim of your own. You have been given reasons why it’s not there. There is not much more to it. Maybe it will change in the future maybe not.

Agree. Also don't see why using Windows is such a problem. Use it for work and then go back to whatever else you prefer when you aren't working. It's not going to kill anyone.

One could always just use a Mac, as well.

CODEC support document has always been pretty explicit about what is supported and what isn't.

Does anyone know a way to get Resolve to use existing libs/APIs to auto connect (or preconfigure for) various audio codecs, at least for decode if not also encode?? Similar to how other Linux media players, and Windows and Mac (if I'm not mistaken)?..

For example /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfaad.so.2 for AAC? Or if that's also it's own license issue (compiling against those libs), doesn't Linux have an audio API that accessed the non-codec specific (decompressed) audio?

I just made the switch from w10 to Mint, and everything I've tried so far (save audio codecs) seems to work incredibly well. I'm SUPER impressed with the GPU accelerated neural performance on Studio! But, I have years worth of home movies which are both AAC (phone and cameras), and AC3 audio (m2ts/mts / AVCHD). It's a few terabytes in all (yes I've love taking video!) so I'd really like to avoid any intermediate transcoding..

This audio thing seems like it is the LAST barrier, and really Resolve is now the ONE app I have to resort to booting back into windows for.. I'm with others that if we can't get auto-graphing of the CODECs, then I'd pay a bit extra for .so files we have to drop into resolve... or one per needed codec I should say (in my case AAC and AC3).

So ffmpeg can't be distributed with DR, I guess that's the licensing issue? But it doesn't seem that big a deal, like said earlier it's already included in most distros and it's fairly trivial to obtain it yourself. Lots of other software deals with this issue (ie Reaper) or similar when exporting MP3s with LAME.

ffmpeg is not a "single" thing.
It all depends on the build- some are rather free of any licensing issues, some are not at all.
AAC is not licensing free codec.

"No licenses or payments are required for a user to stream or distribute content in AAC format.[48] This reason alone might have made AAC a more attractive format to distribute content than its predecessor MP3, particularly for streaming content (such as Internet radio) depending on the use case.

However, a patent license is[when?] required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs.[49] For this reason, free and open source software implementations such as FFmpeg and FAAC may be distributed in source form only, in order to avoid patent infringement. (See below under Products that support AAC, Software.)

The AAC patent holders include Bell Labs, Dolby, Fraunhofer, LG Electronics, NEC, NTT Docomo, Panasonic, Sony Corporation,[1] ETRI, JVC Kenwood, Philips, Microsoft, and NTT.[12]"

BM would have to pay license to include it in Resolve and if you offer free software then you simply loose money on every copy of free Resolve. In case of Studio it's a different story, but what BM charges for it is not much, where those licensing fees can be really high. This is exactly he same reason why some other codecs are not there.

ffmpeg is not a "single" thing.
It all depends on the build- some are rather free of any licensing issues, some are not at all.
AAC is not licensing free codec.

Yes, I'm aware of that. In the case of Reaper it ships with the basic codecs and you must supply your own "-nonfree" build to use H264 etc.

https://reaperblog.net/2020/11/ffmpeg-for-reaper-users/

Does anyone know a way to get Resolve to use existing libs/APIs to auto connect (or preconfigure for) various audio codecs, at least for decode if not also encode?? Similar to how other Linux media players, and Windows and Mac (if I'm not mistaken)?..

For example /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfaad.so.2 for AAC? Or if that's also it's own license issue (compiling against those libs), doesn't Linux have an audio API that accessed the non-codec specific (decompressed) audio?

I just made the switch from w10 to Mint, and everything I've tried so far (save audio codecs) seems to work incredibly well. I'm SUPER impressed with the GPU accelerated neural performance on Studio! But, I have years worth of home movies which are both AAC (phone and cameras), and AC3 audio (m2ts/mts / AVCHD). It's a few terabytes in all (yes I've love taking video!) so I'd really like to avoid any intermediate transcoding..

This audio thing seems like it is the LAST barrier, and really Resolve is now the ONE app I have to resort to booting back into windows for.. I'm with others that if we can't get auto-graphing of the CODECs, then I'd pay a bit extra for .so files we have to drop into resolve... or one per needed codec I should say (in my case AAC and AC3).

There is no such a functionality in Resolve. There is one for export now, but not for import and this is unlikely to change.

ffmpeg is not a "single" thing.
It all depends on the build- some are rather free of any licensing issues, some are not at all.
AAC is not licensing free codec.

Yes, I'm aware of that. In the case of Reaper it ships with the basic codecs and you must supply your own "-nonfree" build to use H264 etc.

https://reaperblog.net/2020/11/ffmpeg-for-reaper-users/

BM is unlikely to do such a thing- too big company to play such a games.
Other than this Resolve does already use portion of ffmpeg code/features.

BM is unlikely to do such a thing- too big company to play such a games.

Have you seen the state of Fusion's integration into DR?

Different matter.

yeah this is really sad. just ran into the problem: recording live concerts with the atem mini pro iso, try to edit the material afterwards: sound is gone when trying to edit on a linux machine in davinci resolve 17 studio. sounds like a joke but it is not. for all the reasons named here and there, i think there is no real reason to get this just working right (or pay extra or whatever it needs to get it working...) so on linux i will import all videos to kdenlive or shotcut, export the audio to wav, then go to resolve? try some one liner ffmpeg command, stitch everything together afterwards? doesnt feel like 2021 lol...

Agreed. I purchased a Studio license to get access to the MP4 video encoding (since basically everything I have is in mp4 format), just to find out that it doesn't support, well basically any audio format that MP4 can readily be encoded with.

In this case, I tried the following (all of which work fine in VLC player, and Olive (an open-source, minimal video editor)):

• AAC
• A52 (also known as AC3)
• MPEG 2 (mpga)

I eventually wound up exporting via Olive to a .mov with WAV audio (sowt codec) to be able to import properly into DR. Not exactly the best experience, especially if we have all of the audio codecs and libraries installed on our boxes to begin with. It would be really nice if DR could notice available libraries and act accordingly.

Another Linux user here who would love AAC support.

Is there seriously no workaround for this!? Resolve on Linux can't even import the audio portion of the most ubiquitous video file format in existence. WTF!

Another vote here for AAC support on linux please!

I would even be happy to pay an additional $20-$30 to license it separately if I had to.

Had I known AAC was not supported via studio, I likely would not have purchased it as nice of a program as it is.

I wonder if that is theoretically possible to implement via some plugin?

I saw a NobeDisplay plugin for dr (unfortunately, commercial and only for winOS and macOS). It is a workaround solution for full screen preview in a separate window. The plugin is an external program. It worked via added node in the composition. Dr feeds the content to the node of a plugin, then to actual output. Then the program takes care of the rest.

Probably the similar technique could be used here. I think if the dr did not decode the audio stream, then it cannot be feed to plugin from inside dr. But what if the dr could send a clip's file name? Then the plugin could grab that from file system, then decode the sound from it and feed it back to dr.
So you just import all your mp4/mov with aac, then link to the plugin and that is handling the sound.

Encoding easily in latest Studio version.
Decoding impossible atm. as Resolve has no input integration ability at all.

Just bought Davinci Studio, no AAC decoding for me under Linux.
I suppose I have to switch to Windows ( I prefer Linux)

Speed Editor works as expected after solving root only problem !

Shotcut is free and allows mp4 files with aac sound. (input and output)

Before switching to Windows, I would like to know why Davinci STUDIO is not able to play and record AAC sound !

Yes it's kinda disturbing, but I have a great workaround for it:

Put this into a shell script:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
for i   
do
    echo "Processing $i"
    filename=$(basename -- "$i")
    extension="${filename##*.}"
    filename="${filename%.*}"
   
    if [ -f ${filename}_afx.mov ]; then
    echo "${filename}_afx.mov already exists."
    continue
    fi
    ffmpeg -y -i "$i"  -stats -hide_banner -loglevel panic -acodec pcm_s16le -vcodec copy "${filename}_afx.mov"
done

Then run with "draudiofix.sh *.mp4" or something.

It is just a wrapper around ffmpeg as you can see.

The trick is, that this ffmpeg command will COPY the frames but TRANSCODE the audio, therefore it is fast and results in no video quality loss!

Have a nice day:)

But why? Just tell us!

Shotcut is free and allows mp4 files with aac sound. (input and output)

Before switching to Windows, I would like to know why Davinci STUDIO is not able to play and record AAC sound !

No licenses or payments are required for a user to stream or distribute content in AAC format.[49] This reason alone might have made AAC a more attractive format to distribute content than its predecessor MP3, particularly for streaming content (such as Internet radio) depending on the use case.

However, a patent license is[when?] required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs.[50] For this reason, free and open source software implementations such as FFmpeg and FAAC may be distributed in source form only, in order to avoid patent infringement. (See below under Products that support AAC, Software.)

The AAC patent holders include Bell Labs, Dolby, Fraunhofer, LG Electronics, NEC, NTT Docomo, Panasonic, Sony Corporation,[1] ETRI, JVC Kenwood, Philips, Microsoft, and NTT.[13]

This is why. Distribution/streaming is free, but codec itself is not.
Company like BM can't use ffmpeg code to decode/encode AAC as this is not a licensed solution.

I'd love to have AAC encoding on Windows too.

For when I just need scratch audio, I don't want to keep the camera's 24bit PCM and convert it to 16bit FLAC to at least save on some space.

You should keep original recordings as WAV.
AAC or MP3 is not the best choice. Just RAR wavs and job done.
Use AAC or MP3 as delivery format.

AAC *encoding* can be had via MainConcepts plugin: https://www.mainconcept.com/blackmagic-plugins

I haven't tested it, and their marketing about being "faster than open source" offends me, but the functionality looks like it's there.

AAC *decoding* is a really important feature ... I don't always have control over my source footage. Among other things, GoPro footage is often AAC encoded. Even if it's just provided by a third-party plugin (the way MainConcept now provides AAC encoding), we need a way to deal with this that is more elegant than transcoding before ingesting.

Not going to happen atm. as there is no way to write import plugin for Resolve (only export).

Mainconpect SDKs are fine and used in probably 70%+ of post apps- from Adobe to Autodesk.

Not going to happen atm. as there is no way to write import plugin for Resolve (only export).

Hence, my feature request: Since native AAC decoding does not seem to be in the cards, I would like to see import plugin support as a feature. Saying "its not going to happen" seems like a strange response on "feature request" forum...

Not going to happen for plugin as there is no such thing atm.
Not- not going to happen for import API.
As you said- those are separate things.

Ah this is sad news indeed! I don't unfortunately have a single video that isn't AAC. I have around 800gb per football game that I would need to extract the audio from. With 2 games a week This isn't my job either sadly.

So I'll need to request a refund which is rather sad!

1 x 1TB drive + eg. 1 night and you have all masters re-wrapped as PCM and working in Resolve.
I don't see it as huge problem. When we need to transcode video then it's much bigger pain. Audio bit is easy and fast.