[PandoraSaver]

Random development note: Working on a little window to show the last sniffed song and song details (mostly meant to be a listening accessory)

disabling the taskbar item for the pandorahelper would be a good idea. now i use bosskey addon for the firefox portable, so everythin goes to the tray and the task bar remains clean. i dont use pandorahelper, but if that too doesn leave any taskbar item that would be perfect.

about the turbo mode, couldnt you just save all the mp4s and run the decode-encode routine as a batch later on? as in, just save the tagged mp4s along with the directory info in a txt file or something and then we could write a .bat file which can take this txt as input and batch convert those mp4s :) just a suggestion.

thanks again for this awesome work!

[PandoraSaver]

Updated the currently uploaded version with a delay of 3 seconds (needed because sometimes the encoder locks the file for a sec anyways). Also, going to add a tray icon.

tried with this. couldnt copy paste again! can you please make tagging optional?

[PandoraSaver]

Hrm, keep trying if you would yeehaa, I need that before one to determine the type of container it is in and the after to do some checks on (to see if it is a fault of the program, or the player, or what)

if you could gimme a debug version with some sort of wait period before taggin, i could do a copy paste of the "before" file. can u please add a 5-10 sec wait after the encoder is done and before the taggin starts? just for test purposes.

i tried not re-encoding using PS. i.e, saved just the mp4 and manually went through faad, neroaacenc and finally mp4tags. the final output was working alright. the only difference between the manual method and the PS method would be the startin file in the manual procedure was already a tagged mp4.

[PandoraSaver]

Haven't the faintest. Get a before and after if you can (of the m4a), a log snippet, and the original mp4, then upload it somewhere. I'll take a look at it.

tried to get the before and after m4a, but couldn't. the taggin process runs too fast and deletes the old one! yesterday i could copy paste one fast enough.. not today!

[PandoraSaver]

LAME does, but any program coded in the last 10 years should honor the exit code.

Added name customization and the better encoder stuff, along with some other small changes.

Download at http://zzj.itf-inc.com/SPPS1.000c1.006d.zip

tested out the new version with neroaac encoder. the small filesize of the encoded m4a was coz of a dumb mistake on my part. the %bitrate option was passing the value as 128 where as nero needs in the "128000" format. i missed this coz the mp4tags, after its done processing makes the file "unplayable".

so now i guess the problem is at the last stage - the tagging. the m4a file from the nero encoder plays just fine but after taggin it wont play on vlc. i have tested it only in vlc. any idea why?

[PandoraSaver]

It's not freezing on tagging - it just doesn't have a message that notes when it is done cycling (and so that can be the last message for a while). I'll add a message.

Figured out a better way to check if the encoder ended happily ever after or died a horrible death in the lava- the exit code, which will be 0 on a successful exit. As there is this i have made the window hidden again (though you'll have to guess if something goes wrong. a tradeoff.)

are you talking about neroaac or lame? if you havent used neroaac could you please try with that too?

[PandoraSaver]

It launches a window evidenttly because of how i have to handle channeling output - if something goes wrong it could write the output of the program to the log. Still looking for a better way to handle it. Maybe i can make it launch minimized; that would be better than nothing.

By the sound of it, you did not change the extension used (from mp3), so it is saving it with a wrong extension and is trying to tag it with the wrong method. You will want to change that to .m4a, mp4 or .aac. (under advanced settings, next to the encoder boxes). Also, it waits up to 5 minutes for the conversion to complete - if it is exiting early, with a bad output file something isn't working right. However, the encoder is still producing an output file so it thinks all is fine and dandy. I'll have it echo output regardless, i think. It probably is not hanging at tagging the mp3 files (I'll make a distinction when it is done processing a file)

I am contemplating making it spawn a tray icon of its own, but, it can't use the P icon that pandorasaver makes as SProxy and Pandorasaver are fundementaly two different pieces of code, with minimal interwork between them. (SProxy essentially performs the same function as fiddler did, with some extra bits)

I'm looking into getting a firefox portable sorted for this to have ready-made, but their new format for portable apps is giving me a bit of trouble. I'll get it sorted in the next few days.

The IE setting must be changed as that is what flash uses to determine how it routes requests. If it does not set that stuff then flash will circumvent SProxy for most requests, and so PS does not work. It's also somewhat handy for people who use IE/other browsers that use IE settings (chrome).

@boem: glad you like it :)

responses one by one:

hopefully you will be able to provide sproxy with an option to minimize to tray.

i have the extension set to m4a. the conversion successful message is almost instantaneous. and the resulting file size varies from 15 kb to 500 kb. maybe the taggin gets stuck because of this corrupt m4a file?

firefox portable needs not change at all from the previous standalone version except for two edits in the firefoxportable.ini,

AdditionalParameters=http://pandora.com

LocalHomepage=file:///C:/PandoraFox/BrowserPAC.js

and the BrowserPAC.js in the same folder.

Additionally, Sproxy could load firefoxportable.exe or %browser% when it starts. :)

I didn understand the flash part even though i had seen some mention of it in this thread before. anyways, that is not too much of an issue, i guess

[PandoraSaver]

thanks for the new sproxy version!

a few suggestions (dunno whether u r open to them) :)

(1) I just used the firefox portable from the previous version, but now with the startup parameters like the pandora.com and the browserpac.js in the firefoxportable.ini. would you consider this method to make your release truly standalone?

(2) the sproxy window wont minimize to systray. now that you've got rid of fiddler, wht dont you make it just the "P" icon in the tray? i mean, add one more option to the pandorasaver icon in the tray to bring up the sproxy window! that will leave the users with just their browser windows to deal with. btw, there are still some fiddler references in the PS GUI.

(3) I am using neroAACenc.exe to reencode the wav to lc AAC, so that it will be compatible with itunes and my portable player. thanks for implementing this! but there are a few problems.

Encoder: %path%neroAacEnc.exe ; Encoder Command: -lc -br %bitrate% -if %wavtmp% -of %out%.

the log says the conversion was successful. but the resulting file is only in KBs. looks like PS does not wait long enough for the conversion to complete and deletes the source file!

after this step the log window stays at "Taggin the mp3 file".

Note:

the nero encoder brings up a command prompt window when it runs. i solved this using a program called cmdow.exe by modifyin the Encoder: %path%cmdow.exe and Encoder Command: /run /hid neroAacEnc.exe -lc -br %bitrate% -if %wavtmp% -of %out%.

EDIT: one more thing that i noticed; sproxy changes the IE settings in Connections> Lan settings>Use a proxy server (Check). is there any way to disable this for users like me who use other browsers for PS?

[PandoraSaver]

I'll upload the newest (still-beta) version in a bit once i've made some changes.

thanks! will be waiting for that!

[PandoraSaver]

I ended up adding a field for the path to encoder (%path% will be replaced with the path to the directory SProxy was launched from; and will always end with a slash, example "%path%lame.exe"), a field to edit the arguments (such as "-h -b %bitrate% %wavtmp% %out%"), and finally a field in which to put what extension should be used for the output (ie "mp3", "aac", "wma" etc etc), which it uses to check for the existence of the output file

%wavtmp% was the wav file decoded in step one with faad, %out% is the name used for output. it uses the full path enclosed in quotes for both, to prevent errors relating to spaces.

awesome! that should be enough! :) thanks again.

and could you update the other thread too, telling people that the standalone installer does not have the latest plugin?! i am new here and dont wanna pm a mod with such a request :)

[PandoraSaver]

So, you basically want to use another encoder in place of lame (to convert the HE-AAC which pandora gives us to LC-AAC)? It wouldn't be particularly hard to implement, just add a few tags like it handles %bitrate% (which is the bitrate selected under common options.) It will be part of 1.006; the new standalone version which will be released soon.

thanks! yes, i wanna convert the HE to LC so that it will be compatible with itunes and my phone.

nero encoder has this format : neroAacEnc.exe [options] -if <input-file> -of <output-file>

if not for the "-if" and "-of" switches, i could have just renamed the neroaacenc.exe to lame.exe and modified the rest in advanced options. :(

anyways, will be waiting for the next version with the nero support. :)

and everybody who is using the advanced options, if you use -V3 instead of the -h -b %bitrate% will give a decent VBR mp3 file.

[PandoraSaver]

I'm not sure i understand what you are asking- the AAC files from pandora are not re-encoded and are already in HE-AAC format. Or, do you mean provide the facility to use another encoder other than LAME? Currently, LAME's options are customizable under Advanced settings if you wish to use VBR etc to encode.

Also, why would you want to specify the decoder? Faad seems to work fine? :S

Please make any follow ups to this in this thread, as it is somewhat of a pain to deal with two threads on the same topic. I should note that the PandoraSaver being used in this version is outdated (iirc).
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thanks for the answer!

and sorry. i was using the standalone installer and the version numbers got me confused. now i see the lame encoder parameter field. i was thinking of using neroAAC encoder and decoder. the aac encoder from nero is considered very good. comparable to apple aac in LC. i need to play my songs on my portable and aac will save a lot of space. please implement it if it is not too much to ask for. you could specify the encoder path and the parameters in the config file or even in the reg file. faad decoder is decent. so no complaints there :)

[PandoraSaver (Standalone) Installer (updated as needed)]

hi... first of all thanks for this awesome "program"!

i have a request though. could you please add an option to specify the encoder and the encoder parameters and if it not too much the decoder too. that way one could use the more efficient nero aac with the LC switch. other than that everythin is perfect out of the box!

thanks for the effort :)