Developer cracks iTunes encoding format

Posted on 7 Mar 2005 at 12:07

Apple may have kept details of the lossless encoding format introduced in recent versions of iTunes to itself, but that hasn't stopped one developer from reverse engineering an encoded file, to compile his own decoder.

David Hammerton's project is at an early stage; it can currently decode only mono and stereo ALAC files although the format allows for up to eight channels. And as yet there is no encoder. However he says that overcoming both hurdles should be fairly trivial.

The first version of the decoder writes to WAV or raw PCM data and can be downloaded from craz.net.

Also in its early stages, is skiTunes, an open source alternative to iTunes.

It differs from Apple's application in that it is written in Cocoa and uses native widgets and will support formats iTunes does not, including OGG and WMA.

It will be extensible and allow plugins of most kinds, including visualisers, music player drivers and file format support. It will also let iPod users use more than one iPod on one computer and allow transfer of songs from iPod to Mac.

skiTunes will provide AppleScript support and allow integration with existing open-source projects such as Adium, Growl!, and QuickSilver. skiTunes is also compatible with iTunes library files and will integrate with the rest of Apple's iLife applications.

Using native widgets means that it complies with system-wide custom themes, unlike iTunes, and will enable development of skinnable mini-mode. The developers also plan to offer binaries optimised for specific processors - the G3, G4 and G5 - as well as a generic PowerPC build.

No working version is available yet, but you can follows its progress at sourceforge.net/projects/skitunes.

Author: Simon Aughton

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