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How to Interpret MPEG streaming Audio files

I have captured an MPEG2 Streaming Audio File and I need to interpret the file with respect to Packets and headers, etc.
All I know for sure at this point is that the following sequence shows up every 0x240 (576 decimal) bytes = "FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF".

Can anyone point me to a definition for the MPEG2 format to help understand the format of the file?

Thanks

vo1d

there exists two different types of mpeg2 audio, aac and multichannel.
aac is not backward compatible to mpeg1 audio, multichannel is.
excample and docs for an encoder / decoder can be downloaded here. the source is coded in c.
http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c039486_ISO_IEC_13818-5_2005_Reference_Software.zip

the official moving picture experts group site can be found here:
http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/

what do you try to do with your code? do you wanna make a mpeg2 decoder?
if so you should change to a different programming language, c# will not fast enough for that.

Finch

ASKER

Actually I'm not building a decoder. I'm just trying to understand the contents and format of an MP2 streaming audio file. All I know for sure is that every 0x240 bytes there is a string of eight "FF"s in a row and a few other bytes look like formatting data then a lot of compressed audio data. Do you know of any file format definitions?

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vo1d

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Finch

ASKER

You are my hero (except for your interesting photo). This definition is exactly what I needed.... Thanks

vo1d

mmh, which photo?

Finch

ASKER

Sorry, I was looking at a rather weird photo at the side of the Experts Exchange screen. The photo is for Gregory Young, I just now realized it's not yours.... good thing. Thanks again for your help.

vo1d

ah, ok ;)