MP2 and WMA filters for CEP/AA

I found the following while answering a question on the Adobe forums.  Maybe it will be useful for someone here.

http://www.community-media.com/audition_mp2.html

I've had a copy of this for ages - didn't realise that it was still available, and I'd completely forgotten about it! It certainly works fine in AA1.0, but I haven't put it on the newer system because I haven't needed to, so I have no idea whether it works in 1.5 or 2.0.

If for any reason it doesn't behave, then dbpoweramp has codecs for just about everything available, including MP2.

It doesn't appear that the MP2 codec is a CEP/AA filter.  It looks as though one needs to use their Music Converter??  The MP2 codec only encodes. The first entry under "Music Converter R11.5 Highlights" on the dMC page says the Music Converter reads MP2 by itself, without a separate codec (if I'm reading the blurb correctly).

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central-mp2.htm
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

Bonnder's first link appears to be the same files I've had on my system for years, and if so, reside in all of my CEP/AA folders right up to 2.0.  And yes, I can encode an mp2 out of AA2.0 with it (wow, is it slow).

I've kept a pack of mpeg, ogg, Aurora, and Monkey's Audio filters in a safe spot for years, so anytime I have a new installation to do, they're ready to copy into the folder.  Works great.

This little demon is either the best addition to CEP 10 years ago, or the spawn of Satan.  I've had installations of it work terrifically well for years, and other installations of it crash repeatedly.  Syntrillium originally had it available on their website as a beta release, but dropped it after numerous stability reports popped up.  Use at your own descretion.  Personally I'd go with dBPoweramp ... yes it works outside of Audition, but is more versitile and certainly more stable.

Interesting you'd say that, Craig, since instability is the reason I'd also heard for its disappearance.  So you've encountered it, but I haven't.  Makes me wonder what makes it misbehave, a question that may never be answered!

Same as it ever was ...

I had a quiet afternoon and thought I'd play around with this file type filter.  Just as unstable as I remember it, locking the computer up a couple of times in 10 minutes!  For radio pros using Scott Studios and TLC, it would only read Scott format files (MP2 files with a different header) if you renamed the Scott file with an MP2 extension.  Actually opening the Scott file would lock up the computer using the old filter, while using OPEN AUDIO FROM VIDEO worked quickly and flawlessly.

Attempting to write an MP2 file was a similar story.  30" commercial files got the "not enough room to save" error message.  A 5" audio snippet saved, but not in a format that Scott would read.  Scott saw it as just another Raw-MP3 file.  Using the old filter to decode the file it just saved resulted in 2 different audio snippets, one with the last second or so cut off.

All in all then, if you need MP2 in Audition, OPEN AUDIO FROM VIDEO is the best choice, followed by dBPoweramp ... particularly if you need to save in MP2 as well.