Sony Vegas - 320 kbps vs 192 kbps

[CrystalMethod]

Hi all. I see everyone rendering videos as maximum audio quality at 192 kbps, but i make video and add in it 320 kbps mp3 song. So should i render video at 320 kbps audio to keep sound quality or to 192 kbps ? Thanks

[hello_hello]

Once the bitrate gets to a certain point the audio generally becomes "transparent". Higher bitrates don't necessarily make any difference. Different encoders (and types of audio) require different bitrates to be "transparent". Some more than others. If in doubt, there's probably no reason not to use the maximum bitrate, especially if you're using a constant bitrate rather than a variable bitrate. Often when choosing a bitrate, the effect on file size is also a consideration.

I don't know which MP3 encoder Sony Vegas uses, however..... some reading if you're interested.
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME

[Cornucopia]

What format file are you trying to get at output? (for what reason/device?) This can affect what will be compatible.

Scott

[CrystalMethod]

What format file are you trying to get at output? (for what reason/device?) This can affect what will be compatible.

Scott

i want to make mp4 or wmv and for pc and youtube uploads also.

[Cornucopia]

You want to keep the quality the best it can be, right? So you want to render at the highest quality that can be handled, within capacity/bandwidth constraints.

For PC, it is truly only limited by what you want to assign to it (or what your PC system is capable of handling). For Youtube, in order to get the best outcome (as YT will ALWAYS recompress whatever you give it), you should give it also a very-high quality source file. Possibly even higher quality than what your PC can natively play smoothly.

All this of course is limited by the existing quality of your starting files. Sounds like they are already compressed somewhat. To retain what you already have, these are the choices (in terms of quality) from BEST to worst:

1. Remuxing/Smart Rendering so that you have exact or near exact versions of what you started with.
2. Uncompressed/Lossless compressed intermediates
3. Psychologically-lossless (audibly & visually) lossy intermediates (incl. JP2k, Cineform, DNxHD, ProRes)
4. Re-recompressed lossy source codec, but at higher bitrate than originals
5. Same but same bitrate as originals
6. Same codec but lower bitrate
There's also a heirarchy to 4,5 & 6 in terms of codec efficiency:
1. HEVC (but only once it is stable & fully tested)
2. AVC & VP9
3. VP8 & VC1
4. MPG4-ASP
5. WMV9
6. MPG4-SP & VP6
7. WMV8
8. MPEG2
9. MPEG1
10. DV

These are roughly my estimation of them. There are plenty others, I just won't go into them now. Note: they aren't necessarily indicative of QUALITY, just EFFICIENCY at a particular bitrate (as often DV is given much better bitrate than MPEG1, and has features for interlacing, so it often looks better).
And that's just for the video...

For lossily-compressed audio, it looks like this:
1. AAC
2. MP3
3. AC3
4. DTS
5. MP2
Again, there are others, but those are the MAIN ones commonly used (and it doesn't include lossless/uncompressed).

Scott