[MPlayer-users] tweaking the MP3

[Rocky Hetherington]

On Fri, 2002-07-05 at 22:19, Florin Andrei wrote:

> I wonder if any of you experimented with different MP3 speeds in the
> DivX file.

Yep.

> The reason i'm researching this is because i always try to encode DivX
> files so that their size is close to 699 MB, and i try to get the most
> overall quality. So, if sound can be optimized (encoded at lesser
> speeds), that might prove beneficial for the image quality.

True.  Although i try to get both video and audio bitrates down as low
as possible so as to keep filesizes down (usually for sharing files,
archiving i go for high bitrates).

> I am especially interested in compatibility issues, like playing the
> DivX with other DivX players (Xine, Win Media Player), using other
> codecs (XviD, divx.com), and on other OSes (Windows, etc).

I don't have any Windows machines here, so have been unable to test it
myself, but i have produced short experimental clips which i've asked
some Windows users on my news server to test.

Encoded using libavcodec some people have had problems viewing them
unless they have either DivX5 or ffDshow
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow) installed.  Once those are
installed all clips have played back fine, no matter what settings i
have used for audio or video.

> I suspect 96 kbps would be ok to encode action movies, even for the ears
> of HiFi geeks, but i'd like to hear other geeks' opinions. ;-)

96kbps should be suitable for action films, but you will most likely
notice problems with things like explosions.

In most of my encoded files that i share i usually use a 56kbps - 64kbps
MP3, which works fine, but most of my files do not contain complicated
audio.

Personally i can't wait until Mencoder supports Ogg Vorbis for audio. 
Compiled Vorbis from CVS a couple of days ago and the improvements over
RC3 are amazing.  A q0 file (nominal bitrate of 64kbps) now sounds as
good as a 128kbps MP3.

HTH
-- 
Rocky Hetherington
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