One answer and I am done!

[rgegeo]

Hello people,

I have only one question and I hope to find a simply answer since I am not involved in programming.

I want to find how a program made in Delphi (with an audio player included) converts an unknown extension to .mp3 in order to play it back.

The filename has the artist and the tack name but an unknown extension.

The files are stored in a folder and while they are played back you can “see” them for a while in the “Temp” folder. When the track is finished they are gone.

I am not interested in the code, I just want the music.

Thank you in advance

 

[Guest_imported]

Afaik, systems seldom if ever use the file extension to figure out the file format. There's actually something inside the file that says "I'm am mp3" or "I'm a pdf" or whatever. The player or other system which tries to open a document first reads the file and checks for the presence of messages like "I'm am mp3" until it finds a message matching the various file types it knows about, then treats the file accordingly.

Years ago I wrote a program to decode and show a TIFF graphic- first thing the program had to do was look for the message saying "I'm a TIFF" and reject the file if the message was missing, even if the extension was .tif. Conversely, it would accept as a TIFF any file with the right messsage, regardless of the file extension.

Jim Brown,
Tech writer and training consultant,
Johannesburg,
South Africa.

On Tek-Tips after a few years absence... nice to be back!
My time is GMT+2

 

[sggaunt]

Jim is correct, the first part of an mp3 file is a header which tells the playback device the playback speed, the length of the track and lots of other stuff, if its not a valid mp3 header, then it cannot be played as an mp3.

Steve: N.M.N.F.
If something is popular, it must be wrong: Mark Twain

 

[rgegeo]

Thank both for the immediate reply,

I understood your answers but the fact is that the files (the program’s music library) are in c: with an unknown extension. The extension is .ism but I could not find anything about it.

So what is the program doing in order to play them back as mp3’s?

Is changing the extension on the fly via a codec thus they can be seen in the tempo folder as mp3s?

Where should I search inside the code to find out what is exactly going on in order to open them through another media player.

 

[Opieo]

If they are literally being played as MP3s, then you should be able to just change the extension from .ism to .mp3
The chances of the program converting the song every single time it went to play, rather than just natively supporting the .ism is slim.

~
“Your request is not unlike your lower intestine: stinky, and loaded with danger.” — Ace Ventura.

 

[rgegeo]

thank you for your comment Opieo, this was the firts thing i did with no luck.
a notice that a codec is missing appears when i try to playback with other media players.
any other suggestions?

 

[Glenn9999]

You might do well to describe the context where these "music files" are appearing. In other words, what program is doing this? Especially since I can not find any reference to an ISM music format in any web searching. Given that, it might be good for you to identify if these are even music files that you are seeing before you go too much further.

I'm waiting for the white paper entitled "Finding Employment in the Era of Occupational Irrelevancy

 

[DelphiAaron]

can you open and play it in media player while in mps format in the "Temp" folder ?

also they may not just change the extention they could also be changing the contents of the file.

Aaron

 

[rgegeo]

The files are stored in the applications folder in C: as .ism,lets say Donna_Summer-I_feel_love.ism. While the program’s player is playing them back you can “see” them in the temp folder as mp3’s (Donna_Summer-I_feel_love.mp3) but you can’t play them back with another player nor copy them. In C: there is a log file with the date and time the playback starts that proves that the files are mp3’s.

The application is made with Delphi and has its own player. The application is just a player. Imagine having windows media player and a folder with mp3’s!

By changing the extension from .ism to .mp3 the tracks can’t be played via any player, “a codec is missing” warning pops up. I tried to find any codec but nothing. All I want to do is to playback the files with any known player!

Thank you all for your feedback!

 

[roo0047]

Is it possible that ISM is a database and the app is extracting MP3's from the DB to ..\temp???

Roo
Delphi Rules!

 

[rgegeo]

By disabling all the codec in my PC I find out that the app is using mpeg layer 3 codec.
This means that the .ism are converted in .mp3 in order to be played.


Dear Roo,

is it possible by using reverse engineering to find what conversion or extraction is done to the .ism files and use it in order to batch convert them into .mp3s?

Dear aaronjme,

Unfortunately I can’t neither play them nor copy them when in Temp folder.


thank u