TooLAME

TooLAME is a Free Software (LGPL) and Open Source MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2) audio encoder written primarily by Mike Cheng. While there are innumerable MP2 encoders, TooLAME is well-known and widely used for its particularly high audio quality. It has been unmaintained since 2003, but is directly succeed by the TwoLAME code fork. The name TooLAME is a play on "LAME" and "Layer II".

infobox software
name = TooLAME

caption =
developer = Mike Cheng
latest_release_version = 0.2L
latest_release_date = March 01, 2003
latest preview version = 0.2 m beta 8
latest preview date =
operating_system = Cross-platform
genre = Codec
license = GNU Lesser General Public License
website = http://toolame.sourceforge.net/

History

After leaving leadership of the LAME project, Mike Cheng decided to redirect his efforts towards the MP2 format. This was in part due to concern with looming legal threats to those distributing software for the widespread MP3 format, due to patents held by Fraunhofer and Thomson, while use of MP2 audio was basically unrestricted. For more, see: LAME#Patents_and_legal_issues.

The first release of TooLAME (v0.1) was November 07, 1998. [http://web.archive.org/web/20020409021845/http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~mikecheng/layer2/HISTORY TooLAME HISTORY] ]

He originally based his work on "mpegaudio.tar". In October 1999, he started over from scratch, instead basing TooLAME on the more capable ISO Dist10 reference implementation, and substantial code from LAME. He aimed for higher audio quality and improved encoding performance. [http://web.archive.org/web/20020409022532/http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~mikecheng/layer2/README TooLAME README] ] Achieving high performance, "About 4 times faster than ISO code." [ [http://web.archive.org/web/20070321155552/http://www.eftel.com/~mikecheng/planckenergy/ TooLAME Web Page] ]

TooLAME was mainly a standalone audio encoder, accepting PCM files in RAW/AIFF/WAV format. However, in the final TooLAME release from Cheng (TooLAME 0.2 m beta 8), support for use as a library was included. Cheng repeatedly resisted the addition of features like libsndfile integration for support of a much wider variety of input formats.

TwoLAME

Nicholas Humphrey made significant modifications to tooLAME, and released it publicly. At Mike Cheng's request he renamed it to TwoLAME to avoid confusion. [ [http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=a06200701be439513981a%40%5B152.78.64.103%5D TooLAME Mailing List] ]

Technical Details

TooLAME utilizes the highly tuned psychoacoustic model developed for LAME, but applied to MP2 audio encoding, instead.

Includes a rather complex, rarely used, and poorly supported (by MP2 players) variable bitrate (VBR) mode. [http://web.archive.org/web/20010408014337/http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~mikecheng/layer2/README.VBR TooLAME VBR README] ]

Frame CRCs, and Broadcast Wave Format (BWF) output was added for Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) use.

Popularity

MJPEGTools documentation recommends the use of TooLAME instead of their included mp2enc. [ [http://mjpeg.cvs.sourceforge.net/mjpeg/mjpeg_play/README?revision=1.29&view=markup mjpeg_play/README] ]

MPlayer/Mencoder includes support for TooLAME (and TwoLAME) audio encoding. [ [http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.txt MPlayer The Movie Player] (man page)]

Code Forks

TwoLAME: Mainly code clean-up, API change, performance improvements: http://www.twolame.org/

MCTooLAME: TooLAME fork with MPEG Multichannel 5.1-channel surround sound encoding: http://mctoolame.sourceforge.net/

Windows DLLs: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=BB6FAF8F.40CB%25steve%40prx.org&forum_name=toolame-devel http://www.fmjsoft.com/addons.html

See also

*MPEG-1 Layer II
*MP3
*LAME
*MPEG-1
*Digital Audio Broadcasting

References

External links

* http://toolame.sourceforge.net/ TooLAME Official Web Page