30 Jan
2006
30 Jan
'06
6:27 a.m.
At Sun, 29 Jan 2006 01:05:12 -0500,
Lee Revell wrote:
Question for the DSP gurus:
How hard would it be to implement an AC3 encoder as a LADSPA plugin that
could be used in an ALSA config to encode stereo and 5.1 sources on the
fly? Many Windows drivers seem to contain one, and it would be a nice
response to the naysayers on LKML who doubt the power of ALSA.
It appears that a simple AC3 encoder is ~1500 lines of code:
http://www.koders.com/c/fid04210C5E2BC83FC0BA5E0A2A1C37D52503E31EFD.aspx
http://www.telos.de/Surround_Sound_Formats.360.0.html#1051
Technically it wouldn't be hard to write an ac3 encoder. Actually I
wrote once a simple encoder by cutting down from the ffmpeg code.
However, the question is rather a legal one. It's very unlikely that
you can use it free (at least for distros).
BTW, the naysayers can always say no. You could implement it in the
kernel space, too ;)
Takashi