Aften - Is it really that quick?

[44echo]

I just used Aften (via AftenGUI 1.4) to convert a .wav file to .ac3. The audio clip was 41 minutes long. It took 5 seconds to convert it. I scanned through the converted file real quick and everything sounds OK. It just makes me a little nervous when things happen that quick. Granted, I just upgraded from my 9 year old PIII 550, so lots of things seem to be real fast.

Just checkin'.

[edDV]

You say it is faster than other FFmpeg AC3 converters?

[44echo]

ed, I have nothing to compare it to, so I don't know what is faster. It just seemed like 5 seconds for a file that size was awful quick. I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't expect 5 seconds. By the time I thought to open task manager to check out how much resources it would take, it was done!

With my old PC, it took 3 hours to convert 1 hour of video (DV-AVI to Mpeg-2). Yesterday, it took 6 minutes to convert a 40 minute clip. I guess I just have to get used the new horsepower I have.

[edDV]

I thought Aften just did audio.

[44echo]

It does. I was just giving another example of how I'm not used to the speed of my new PC.

The original intent of this topic was for another Aften user to say, "5 seconds to convert a 40 minute clip? Yeah, that's about right" or "Wow, that's slow/fast." I guess I didn't convey that very well.

[creamyhorror]

5 seconds? That's ridiculously fast, but I don't use Aften. I'm a bit doubtful, but you did check through it, so...

[AlanHK]

I just used Aften on a 57 min wave to AC3, took 61 seconds on my 2.4 GHz Athlon.

MPEG2 encodes with HCEnc go at about 22 fps with minimal filtering.
I did an animation a few days ago with some strong cleaning filters, it was grinding along at 0.6 fps. But I can still process more video overnight than I have time to watch, so I have no urgency to upgrade.

You say it is faster than other FFmpeg AC3 converters?

Aften isn't an ffmpeg encoder, though the code was derived from ffmpeg.

[44echo]

creamy, thanks for the reply.

If you feel like giving it a shot, you can download AftenGUI here. It's very small and there's nothing to install. You just run the .exe.

As far as me checking it... it plays, it has an .ac3 extension, it's 1/4 the size of the original .wav file, Bitrate: 384 kb/s, Codec: a52, Sample rate: 44100 Hz.

[AlanHK]

As far as me checking it... it plays, it has an .ac3 extension, it's 1/4 the size of the original .wav file, Bitrate: 384 kb/s, Codec: a52, Sample rate: 44100 Hz.

Why 44100 sample rate?

I usually use a batch file to pipe audio from an AVS file using wavi into Aften, so I can use Avisynth audio filters, like SSRC, to convert sample rate to 48000.

AftenGUI can't do that, as far as I know, but FFmpeg GUIs do sample rate conversion.

[44echo]

Why 44100 sample rate?

That was the default setting. I had never used it before and was just trying it out.

I'm looking through my stuff to see if I have a ~60 minute file to compare to your conversion time.

[44echo]

I just converted a 62 minute clip in 9 seconds.

I looked through all the settings and didn't see where I could change the sample rate.

[johns0]

I tried aften gui encoding a 43 min wav file and took 5 seconds but i wouldnt trust using it.

[disturbed1]

Not sure about the whole aften gui thing - but - Aften is multithreaded and SSE2/SSE3 enabled. I've encoded litteraly 1,000's of files to ac3 for DVD Authoring, never an issue. Far, far, far supperior to previous ffmpeg a52 encodings - which notably have various levels of compatibility issues. These compatibility issues are/were one of the driving factors of creating Aften. AFAIK, some of the work done on aften was re-incorporated back into ffmpeg. To what level of inclusion, don't know, don't care. I'll stick with what works. No reason to fix what is not broke.

Haven't ever timed the length to encode a wav file to ac3 with aften. I can tell you it takes less than 5 minutes, and longer than 1 minute to encode a ~90 minute 48khz wav to 192kb stereo ac3 file with a dual core e8400. If I can remember I'll time it here shortly when I get some free CPU cycles.

[AlanHK]

I just converted a 62 minute clip in 9 seconds.

I looked through all the settings and didn't see where I could change the sample rate.

I don't think you can.

As I said, I usually use Avisynth SSRC to to that, but I also have a batchfile using ffmpeg to do the sample rate then Aften to make AC3:

for %%I in (%1) do (
p:\ffmpeggui\ffmpeg -i "%%I" -ar 48000 -f wav -vn -y - | p:\aften\aften.exe -b 192 - "%%~nI.ac3"
)

There is a command line SSRC that you could use if you already have a wave file.

[disturbed1]

Ok, so it's a little faster than a minute (30.5 seconds) for a 91 file

time aften ballistic.wav ballistic.ac3 

Aften: A/52 audio encoder
Version 0.0.8            
(c) 2006-2007 Justin Ruggles, Prakash Punnoor, et al.

input format: WAVE Signed 16-bit little-endian 48000 Hz stereo
output format: 48000 Hz stereo (2/0)                          

SIMD usage: MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3
Threads: 2                   

progress: 100% | q: 240.6 | bw: 38.0 | bitrate: 192.0 kbps 


real    0m30.552s
user    0m29.220s
sys     0m1.981s

For comparison, encoding the same file with Lame took 3m 9s, and Ogg took 2m 44s. With ffmpeg r20542 (~11/22/2009) 59.3 seconds.

[AlanHK]

Looks like this Aften GUI:
http://code.google.com/p/wavtoac3encoder/
also does sample rate.

[johns0]

Looks like this Aften GUI:
http://code.google.com/p/wavtoac3encoder/
also does sample rate.

you can download AftenGUI here.

That file is included in the posted download here.

[AlanHK]

Looks like this Aften GUI:
http://code.google.com/p/wavtoac3encoder/
also does sample rate.

you can download AftenGUI here.

That file is included in the posted download here.

Yes, but there are two GUIs listed, and 44echo is using the other one, so I wanted to be specific.

[44echo]

I tried aften gui encoding a 43 min wav file and took 5 seconds but i wouldnt trust using it.

Is there any way to test the integrity of the converted file?

[AlanHK]

I tried aften gui encoding a 43 min wav file and took 5 seconds but i wouldnt trust using it.

Is there any way to test the integrity of the converted file?

If you still have the original wave, open that in Audacity.
Then import the AC3 (Audacity can import AC3 in the latest version using ffmpeg filters) as a new track and you can visually compare the waveforms. They should be almost identical.

[johns0]

The only way to test the integrity of the ac3 is to author it in a dvd/blu-ray and play it and see if it doesnt go out of sync in your player.