audio bitrate

[niceaznguy]

wats is a good audio bitrate for svcd or vcd?


128???



thanx

[mats.hogberg]

VCD: 224 kbps audio bitrate
SVCD: 32-384 kbps audio bitrate

That's what the standards says. What's good then depends on your player, speakers and ears. I've heard XVCD's with 128 kbps audio indistiguishable from 224 kbps versions. I've also come across 128 kbps XVCD's sounding like the audio came thru a cellphone with a bad antenna.

/Mats

[dc91gt]

I almost always rip to 128kbps when I do svcd rips - I'd rather up the bit rate of the video. I've got a decent home theater setup - 5.1/dts setup and I can't tell the difference in 128kbps v.s. 224+. I'm sure a true audiophile could.. DTS you can tell, but regular stereo or dual channel 128 vs. 224/384 the difference is negligible.

[ya_jai]

For VCD I'll stick with the standard 1150 video bitrate and 224 kbit/sec

For SVCD, it will depend on movie if sound is important such as all sound effect movie then I'll set to 160-224 (depend on how many mins I wanna fit into 1 cd) and if the movie like drama, comedy I'd lower audio to as low as 128 kbit.

[vitualis]

IMHO, you should always leave the audio bitrate at 224 kbit/s (the standard for VCD). If you are making an XVCD or SVCD, I think that anything less than 160 kbit/s for stereo audio is sub-par.

Remember, MPEG-1 Layer 2 audio (as used on VCD and SVCD) is much less efficient than MP3 (MPEG-1 Lyaer 3) when you start dropping the bitrate.

At a bitrate of 128 kbit/s, MP2 performs much worse than MP3. Now, to my ears, I can tell the difference between a 128 kbit/s MP3 (encoded with the best encoders -- e.g., Lame or the original Fraunhofer codec) from the original without much difficulty, even with fairly average speakers/headphones.

I completely disagree that the difference between 128 kbit/s MP2 is negligible to 224 kbit/s. The difference is pretty stark -- especially if you intend to use Dolby Surround audio -- and I am definitely not an audiophile...

It is a common trap for people to focus too much on the video when it comes to encoding... trying to squeeze the last bits from the audio, often to its detriment. Remember, when watching the video, it is the combined experience of the video and audio. One of the best features of VCDs and SVCDs is the near CD quality (transparent for all intents and purposes) stereo audio (which may or may contain Dolby Surround). Don't ruin it for a near negligible increase in video bitrate. An extra 100 kbit/s for the video will often not make much of a difference if you optimise your disc space (e.g., with multipass VBR encoding of each section) but a loss of 100 kbit/s from the audio will have a huge impact.

Regards.

[mats.hogberg]

To boot, a change in audio bitrate doesn't affect the total MPEG size that much - some 10 MB to or fro, which is negligable when we're speaking of a 800 MB MPEG. But then there's the case when these 10 MB is the difference between 1 or 2 CD's...

/Mats

[thxkid]

Hey even 224 or 384 sucks compared to the audio used on Laser Discs
But with that said, I always stay at 224 on XVCD and XSVCD, unless the audio is mono, then I use 160, 128 is a waste, unless you plan to just play it through your TV speakers, in that case 128 or 224 is not really gonna make that much of difference.
I do use a 5.1 THX sound unit, oh yes, there is a huge difference on my system between 128 and 224, I would rather stick one more extra disc in then drop the audio and or video bitrates down to sub par listening and watching. So I guess its how much are you willing to live without. The again some people don't have the sonic feel for sound as other people do, so one persons ears may hear 128 and 224 and really can't hear the difference, while others can hear actually hear the compression and feel the lose sonically. You know a $249 sound unit at sams club is not gonna give you the same sonic feel as a full blown 5.1 THX select unit you buy at the good audio/video store, so its also really depends what you use to play back your sound with. Also a $49 APEX DVD player will not handle the sound as well as a good DVD player that has a 192mhz 24 bit audio chip in it also.

[vitualis]

Hey even 224 or 384 sucks compared to the audio used on Laser Discs

But then we are kind of comparing apples to oranges... 224 kbit/s MP2 and definitely 384 kbit/s MP2 is near or IS transparent to human ears from the original uncompressed stereo audio.

Obviously DTS 5.1 sounds better...

I agree completely with everything else.

Regards.

[ya_jai]

Do you watch every kind of movie with your THX system? I do have a home theater setup also. Mine is not really THX certificated just a pain Sherwood receiver with DTS and DD 5.1 and AR speakers with subwoofer, of course.

As I know, 128 kbit or 224 kbit they are all Stereo type and your receiver will only encode with DL I or II not DD nor DTS. IF you watch movies like The family Man, Sweet November, all kind of dialogue movie, what do you get from your THX system, ppl walking and talking in the background? I don't use my whole system for these kind of movie just speaker from TV set is good enough. (Save electric bill for next DVD purchase )

My point is, using 128kbit or 224 kbit depends on what kind of movie as well regardless of VCD standard spec. So goes with 128 kbit is not too bad at all. I know changing audio bitrate doesn't help much to lower filesize but sometime only 20-50 MB can help fit 1 movie into 2 CDs.

Sorry for my cheap ears and also cheap systems. I'm still using my APEX 660AD and it sounds sweet to me.

[HideOut]

Im trying to figure out if/how you can get the DTS tract of sound onto an SVCD. Is it possible/ Im currently using the popular DVD2AVI with CCE 2.5. Its making wonderfull SVCD's but only with AC3. If you were to put both tracts on there then you'd loose some video quality or have to ad a cd. That 3rd cd is fine with me for my personal use though. So is it possible? Same question, but for DVD-->DVD-/+R? I dont own a burner yet but I will put some of my best movies on it and the lesser movies will stick with SVCD. I play back with a Apex AD 1200. Whats the best options here?
Thanks,
HideOut