Joining abr vbr cbr audio videos (maybe cut/paste too)

[ZZen]

I've often heard VBR Mp3s are bad for sync issues when you try to join videos, but is there any other problems VBR audio causes?

And is it only mp3 VBR's or any audio like AAC VBR AC3 VBR ect? Is it also bad to cut/paste VBR Audio?

CBR Audio is basically the best choice if you plan to join videos right? (maybe cut/paste too)


And for Videos When joining / cutting / pasting does it ever matter like it does for audio whether its ABR VBR CBR Constant Quality / Quantizer ect, or it makes no difference usually?

Thanks

[guns1inger]

It really depends on the application and how well it handles the qaudio formats. I Find that AVI Demux does a good job with VBR MP3 so long as you let it build the time maps when you load the videos. AC3 is CBR (certainly for DVD - I have never seen anything but CBR AC3), and I haven't had the need to join VBR AAC yet.

[jman98]

VBR audio was a "solution" to a problem that no longer exists, if it ever did. Back in the 90s, VBR audio was tagged onto MP3 audio to save disc space. At that time there was no DVD, so people played MP3 files on CDs. The iPod didn't exist, nor did USB flash drives. If you wanted to play MP3 files on the go, you played them on portable CD players that supported the format. The first clunky media players were beginning to appear. Since people were limited in how many songs they could put on a disc, especially if they were stuck with only using CD-Rs, VBR MP3 served a purpose in that it shaved a small amount of disc space to use it and if you used it on all your tracks, you might be able to squeeze a few extra songs on your CD-Rs.

With the advent of DVD players and modern storage devices such as USB flash drives, there really is no reason at all for anyone to still be using VBR audio. Using VBR audio with video files is akin to buying an HDTV at store A because it costs $999.99 instead of store B which charges $1000 when in fact you should have gone to store C where it costs $850. Or to put it another way, any space savings that VBR audio gives you are very small. Audio generally doesn't take up much space - video is what takes up space. With all the problems that VBR audio costs, there is no compelling reason to use it anymore. Trying to shave KB off audio is insane when you should be worrying about how big the video is. It's like worrying about pennies instead of hundreds of dollars in my HDTV example.