specific m4b audiobook transcoding fails

[Bartłomiej Pater]

I am trying to transcode m4b audiobook to another mp4 file with lower bitrate. For unknown reason ffmpeg fails to do that on one file while it works fine on the others I have.

I am using a command (with freshly built ffmpeg from git master):

/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -v 9 -loglevel 99 -y -i test_m4b_with_cover.m4b -acodec libfaac -ab 64000 /tmp/ab.mp4

which gives following result:

ffmpeg version N-34903-g16b809c, Copyright (c) 2000-2011 the FFmpeg developers

built on Nov 16 2011 15:09:06 with gcc 4.4.5
configuration: --cc='ccache cc' --enable-shared --enable-libmp3lame --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-libdirac --disable-decoder=libdirac --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-libfaac --enable-libxvid --enable-postproc --enable-x11grab --enable-libgsm --enable-libtheora --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libx264 --enable-libspeex --enable-nonfree --disable-stripping --enable-libschroedinger --disable-encoder=libschroedinger --enable-version3 --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libvpx --enable-librtmp --enable-avfilter --enable-frei0r --enable-libopencv --enable-libfreetype --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libvo-amrwbenc --enable-libaacplus --disable-altivec --disable-armv5te --disable-armv6 --disable-vis
libavutil 51. 25. 0 / 51. 25. 0
libavcodec 53. 34. 0 / 53. 34. 0
libavformat 53. 20. 0 / 53. 20. 0
libavdevice 53. 4. 0 / 53. 4. 0
libavfilter 2. 48. 1 / 2. 48. 1
libswscale 2. 1. 0 / 2. 1. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0

[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x2388aa0] Format mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 probed with size=2048 and score=100
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x2388aa0] ISO: File Type Major Brand: M4A
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x2388aa0] All info found
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x2388aa0] Estimating duration from bitrate, this may be inaccurate
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'test_m4b_with_cover.m4b':

Metadata:

major_brand : M4A
minor_version : 0
compatible_brands: M4A mp42isom
creation_time : 2011-04-19 08:19:18
album : Title
artist : Artist
encoder : Online Media Technologies
genre : Audio Book
title : Title
track : 1

Duration: N/A, bitrate: N/A

Output #0, mp4, to '/tmp/ab.mp4':

Metadata:

major_brand : M4A
minor_version : 0
compatible_brands: M4A mp42isom
creation_time : 2011-04-19 08:19:18
album : Title
artist : Artist
encoder : Online Media Technologies
genre : Audio Book
title : Title
track : 1

Output file #0 does not contain any stream

Changing output codec to libmp3lame also results in above error.

File could not be played with ffplay but works fine with VLC (linux) and QuickTime Player (mac).

ffplay fails with message:

[begining the same as in ffmpeg - only last line changes]
test_m4b_with_cover.m4b: could not open codecs

[Bartłomiej Pater]

m4b audiobook that causes an error

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

(Even MPlayer -demuxer mov finds some audio in the file.)

Is there a vlc version that actually plays the file in a useful way? An old version here only plays a few seconds like MPlayer.

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

Patch sent to ffmpeg-devel.

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

Should be fixed.