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Configuring Standard, Professional, or Lossless Audio Encoding

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When the Windows Media Audio encoder enumerates output types, it identifies each enumerated type as either Standard, Professional, or Lossless. You can determine whether an output type is Standard, Professional, or Lossless by performing the following steps.

  1. Call IMFTransform::GetOutputAvailableType to obtain an IMFMediaType interface that represents the output type.
  2. Call IMFMediaType::GetRepresentation to get an AM_MEDIA_TYPE structure that contains information about the output type.
  3. The pbFormat member of the AM_MEDIA_TYPE structure points to a WAVEFORMATEX structure that contains additional information about the output type. Inspect the wFormatTag member of the WAVEFORMATEX structure. A value of 0x161 indicates Standard, a value of 0x162 indicates Professional, and a value of 0x163 indicates Lossless.

If you set properties on the Windows Media Audio encoder before you enumerate output types, you can limit the number of output types that are enumerated. For example, if you set the VBR properties appropriately, you can limit the enumerated output types to those that are in the Lossless category.

Standard Audio Encoding

You can use the following steps to configure Standard audio encoding.

  1. Set the properties of your choice on the encoder.
  2. Enumerate the possible output types.
  3. Inspect the enumerated types and choose one that has an audio format tag of 0x161.
  4. Set the output type to your chosen type by calling IMFTransform::SetOutputType.

Professional Audio Encoding

You can use the following steps to configure Professional audio encoding.

  1. Set the properties of your choice on the encoder.
  2. Enumerate the possible output types.
  3. Inspect the enumerated types and choose one that has an audio format tag of 0x162.
  4. Set the output type to your chosen type by calling IMFTransform::SetOutputType.

Lossless Audio Encoding

You can use the following steps to configure Lossless audio encoding.

  1. Set the MFPKEY_VBRENABLED property to VARIANT_TRUE.
  2. Set the MFPKEY_CONSTRAIN_ENUMERATED_VBRQUALITY property to VARIANT_TRUE.
  3. Set the MFPKEY_DESIRED_VBRQUALITY property to 100.
  4. Enumerate output types.
  5. Set the output type to one of the types enumerated in step 4 by calling IMFTransform::SetOutputType.

The following code enumerates all of the lossless output types for the Windows Media Audio encoder. The code prints the value of the audio format tag for each enumerated type. Because all of the enumerated types are lossless, all of those format tags have a value of 0x163. Assume that pIMT is a pointer to an IMFTransform interface on a Windows Media Audio encoder object and that pStore is a pointer to an IPropertyStore interface on the same object. Also assume that hr is a variable of type HRESULT that was declared previously in the code.

PROPVARIANT prop;
prop.vt = VT_BOOL;
prop.boolVal = VARIANT_TRUE;
hr = pStore->SetValue(MFPKEY_VBRENABLED, prop);

if(SUCCEEDED(hr))
{
   hr = pStore->SetValue(MFPKEY_CONSTRAIN_ENUMERATED_VBRQUALITY, prop);

   if(SUCCEEDED(hr))
   {
      prop.vt = VT_UI4;
      prop.ulVal = 100;
      hr = pStore->SetValue(MFPKEY_DESIRED_VBRQUALITY, prop);
      
      if(SUCCEEDED(hr))
      {           
         HRESULT hrAvailableType = S_OK;
         LONG j = 0;
         while(MF_E_NO_MORE_TYPES != hrAvailableType)
         {
            IMFMediaType* pOutputType = NULL;     
            hrAvailableType = pIMFT->GetOutputAvailableType(
               0, j, &pOutputType);

            if(SUCCEEDED(hrAvailableType))
            {
               AM_MEDIA_TYPE* pTypeRep = NULL;
               hr = pOutputType->GetRepresentation(
                  AM_MEDIA_TYPE_REPRESENTATION, (VOID**)&pTypeRep); 
                     
               if(SUCCEEDED(hr))
               {
                  WAVEFORMATEX* pwfex = (WAVEFORMATEX*)pTypeRep->pbFormat;
                  printf_s("%x\n", pwfex->wFormatTag);
                  pOutputType->FreeRepresentation(
                     AM_MEDIA_TYPE_REPRESENTATION, (VOID*)pTypeRep);
               }

               pOutputType->Release();
               ++j;
            }                                                                  
         } // while                 
      }                                
   } 
}

Configuring Audio Encoding