Greetings, Jucers!
I am getting several requests for the ability to read mp4 audio files - something I am doing perfectly well on the Mac, but most of my customers are on Windows.
I looked into this before, and it seemed problematic - I'm wondering if it's easier these days or if anyone has guidance for me?
Here's my reasoning - PLEASE let me know if I'm wrong or missing something...
1. To read mp4 audio files, I need QuickTime.
2. I get QuickTime for free on the Mac - Windows is my only issue.
3. The QuickTime library only comes as a shared library on Windows, and this library isn't distributed with Windows by default.
4. Assuming I use Juce's QuickTimeAudioFormat, that shared library must be installed.
5. If that shared library is NOT installed, my program won't even be able to start...
6. ... and there is no practical way to trap this error and continue running the program without QuickTime.
7. So in order to guarantee that the program won't crash on startup, I need to distribute QuickTime.
8. But in order to do this, I need to get a license from Apple, which might or might not cost me money, will certainly require a delay, and seeming also prevents me from distributing a freeware ("crippleware") version.
9. Moreover, in order to do this I need to install their shared library when my program is installed - which means I need to write an installer (right now, everything's in one executable file, so there's no explicit installer).
I'm thinking that one mechanism might be to distribute TWO versions - the "default version" which doesn't refer to QuickTime at all, and the QT version, which assumes that you have independently installed QuickTime. It's somewhat lame, but my resources are fairly limited.
Any help gratefully accepted!