news
AAC audio: Kdenlive beats DaVinci Resolve (Studio) on Linux...
Although I have covered the wonderful AAC códec (the one that essentially replaced MP3 back in 1997, even though many people still don’t know it), I usually cover AAC in an audio final distribution context. Today, I’m talking about AAC in a video recording and editing context. I’ll explain about an unusual licensing situation which was privately resolved in the past on both macOS and Windows, but not with Linux distributions. Most of Linux «distros» are FOSS (free and open source software). Although there is no public record of the transaction, it appears that sometime in the past Apple and Microsoft privately negotiated with the predecessor of what is now Via-LA (Via Licensing Corp) to receive a license for decoding AAC audio on its platforms, be it from audio-only files or AAC audio embedded within H.264 and H.265 video files. Even though the DaVinci Resolve (free) and DaVinci Resolve Studio (paid, currently US$295) programs exist for Linux, macOS and Windows (and the licensing of AAC decoding was already taken care of by Apple and Microsoft on a system level), the situation is quite different on Linux.
As a result of this weird situation, H.264 and H.265 video files with embedded AAC audio (the most common way audio is embedded there) are initially silent when played within DaVinci Resolve (Studio) on Linux. The suggested workaround is to use a free third-party tool to extract and transcode those AAC recordings into separate audio files, either WAV or separate FLAC (compressed yet lossless) and import them into DaVinci Resolve (Studio) to accompany the essentially «muted» H.264 or H.265 files. This means extra steps before editing this H.264 or H.265 footage, which is very common in many camcorders and mobile phone recordings.