Youngmoo Kim
MIT Media Lab
3/31/2000

Here is the latest version of the MPEG-4 Audio Composition (AC) software.
It has been tested on Windows NT, Macintosh, and SGI Unix platforms.

The software does not yet support the .mp4 file standard.  Instead it
uses a proprietary binary format (included test.bin files).  BIFS scenes
can be created as text files (using standard AudioBIFS syntax) and
converted using a text-to-binary conversion tool (t2b), included with
this release.  Also included is a binary-to-text conversion tool to
verify the validity of .bin files.

The AC software does read Structured Audio bitstreams, which also use
the .mp4 suffix.  This is confusing and will be changed in a later release.
In the meantime, please do not confuse the test files included with this
release as being true .mp4 format scene description files.

The AC software does not natively implement any of the other MPEG-4 audio
decoders other than Structured Audio.  This is because the current VM
code is not re-entrant.  This functionality may be included in a later
update to the VM code.  In the meantime, all processing is file-based on
decoded audio files (extension .cu).  Several example .cu files are
included, as well as MATLAB files for reading and writing the .cu
format.

Here is the organization of directories:

	ac: The primary source for Audio Composition
	
	bifsparser: Source code for BIFS text-to-binary (t2b) and
							binary-to-text (b2t) conversion.

	project: Project files for Windows NT and Macintosh
	
	binaries: Binaries for Windows NT, Macintosh, and SGI
	
	testfiles: Binary (.bin) BIFS scenes and supporting files.
			textfiles: Text versions (.bifs) of the test files.
			
	matlab: MATLAB functions for reading and writing the .cu decoded
					audio format.
			
If you have questions or comments, please e-mail Youngmoo Kim at
<moo@media.mit.edu>.  Thanks!
