[Speex-dev] Speex newbie: win32 encoder and Java applet playback?

[Fernando Cassia]

Hi!

I´ve just discovered Speex, and sorry if this isn´t the right place to
ask this, but I found no other mailing list (some projects have a
"users" and a "developers" list separately, I guess this isn´t the
case with Speex. If it is, please let me know).

First, how I got here:

1. I´m looking for some low-bitrate codec to reduce the size of some
very long (think 4-5+ hrs of voice conversation each) person-to-person
interviews, which as Windows Media Audio (WMA), 32k bitrate, mono
encoding, end up as 50 to 60 MB .wma files. My idea is to find some
command line encoder (if possible for win32) to re-compress the files,
and then use a Java based solution (an applet would be just fine) to
reproduce these low-bitrate audio files from a web page.

2. I have found several low-bitrate codecs, namely g.729, and another
open source one dubbed "Codec2". I wasn´t able to find a command line,
win32 encoder for these... much less a java player applet solution
that I can embed on web pages.

a. Codec2, at http://www.voiptoday.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=512:codec2-low-bit-rate-open-source-speech-codec-v01-alpha-released&catid=53:general&Itemid=101
and http://freetel.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/freetel/codec2/ still
offers only "tarballs"

b. g.729: I was able to find a command-line, win32 DECODER able to
turn g.729 back to PCM wavs... http://www.voiceage.com/media/G729.zip

However, for a win32 g.729 ENCODER... all references point to a file
that was "wav2g729.rar" and was hosted at
http://www.archived-mails.info/downloads/wav2g729.rar

However, the domain "archived-mails.info" has expired and all the
content associated with it is gone. And guess what? The content was
NEVER indexed by www.archive.org. So I guess that´s another fine piece
of software gone into oblivion. (personal rant: When people will learn
not to store software on a single page but to mirror it on university
sites and repositories?

Well, that´s it.. those are my needs and how I got here.

It looks now that g.729 is very restrictive in terms of licensing and
cost, and that brings me to Speex.

So... is there a win32 command line tool I can use to convert wav or
mp3 files to Speex? And second, any Java based playback solutions?.

Thanks in advance!

FC