Does SVCD Support 48,000 Audio??

[wulf109]

Does SVCD support 48000 audio sampling rate? I've alway used the 44100 default but I've been using 48000 recently. Both my DVD players play them at 48000 without problems. The 48000 rate seems to sound better but am I looking for problems using 48000?

[adam]

http://www.vcdhelp.com/svcd

No the vcd and svcd standards don't support it but most dvd player will still play it. Use it at your own risk, you never know if the next player you buy will be able to handle it.

[ZeroKool]

Just like Adam said - 48000 is not VCD or SVCD standard but it IS a DVD standard so most players do support it (unless it is just a plain VCD player that doesnt play DVDs) - if your player does support then, obviously it is better to keep 48000 than 44100.

[vitualis]

if your player does support then, obviously it is better to keep 48000 than 44100.

Actually no. As the warning the adam stated before.

You don't know if your next player will be able to play 48 kHz sampled audio on S/VCDs.

IMHO, you should only be making 48 kHz audio S/VCD if you have a good reason to (e.g., you plan on migrating your video to DVD sometime in the future). Otherwise, it is probably safer to make standard discs. With a good 48 --> 44.1 kHz downsampling, there isn't a huge difference in the audio quality.

Regards.

[Xtreme]

I use soundforge to resample my audio using 44,100 and 192kbps. The guide i have to resample it is awesome. It will keep the audio at 44,100 and 192kbps but raise the volume on the sound and decreases the size of your wave file by 100 - 300 megs. It does not make the audio sound shitty at all when resampling and raising the volume, if anything i am getting a better sound from soundforge than i ever have. This is awesome software and i highly recommend using it.

I would agree with Zero cool on this

- if your player does support then, obviously it is better to keep 48000 than 44100.

I dont think many new DVD players which play SVCD canot handle 48K audio.
The only thing you are really doing by downsampling is wasting time& quality.

[vitualis]

Well, there are enough players such that every time this issue comes up someone puts up their hand and says "My player can't play 48 kHz audio properly!" or "My audio sounds funny" (not realising that they were encoding to 48 kHz audio).

The only thing you are doing by downsampling to 44.1 kHz audio is that you are making a compliant disc and thus ensuring that this disc will play as intended in ALL S/VCD compatible players.

There is MINIMAL loss of quality if you do a good downsampling. I'll be very much surprised if someone could reliably tell the difference on a double-blinded A-B trial.

Not downsampling to 44.1 kHz without a good reason (e.g., planned future migration of video to DVD so you are happy to make an X/S/VCD in the interim, or you are decidedly making an X/S/VCD and are not worried about possible future incompatibilities) is, IMHO, encoding laziness. If you are going to make the effort of making a good quality otherwise compliant disc, you shouldn't skimp on the downsampling stage.

You'll feel much sillier (or perhaps annoyed) when a few years down the track you realise that you brand new spiffy DVD/Blu-Ray/etc. player doesn't play your old discs properly because your discs are trivially "X"S/VCDs simply because of the audio sampling rate.

Regards.

[StanEis]

I agree that compliance is the way to go, as my crystal ball doesn't always work. I have just recently delved into audio encoding with a few of my SVCDs that are at 48000. I have managed to develop a patchwork process that works but I am sure that someone out there can critique my process and give me a few pointers and/or shortcuts. This would be much appreciated.

Conversion of 48000khz mp2 to 44100khz mp2:

1- De-Mux with TMPGenc
2 - Convert 48000 mp2 to 48000 Wav with Cdex
3 - Downsample wav to 44100 with DVD2AVI
4 - Convert 44100 wav to 44100/128 mp2 with BeSweet
5 - Mux with TMPGenc

The finished product is just fine. I feel that I am wasting time with all these steps. Can all this be done with BeSweet? To be honest, I have read many tutorials but BeSweet confuses me. Just unfamiliarity. The longest part of this process is step #3, avg. about an hour. I also would have preferred that the bitrate was higher than 128, maybe 224, but as I stated earlier I am unfamiliar with BeSweet and cannot find a simple tutorial for this process.

Anyone wanna take a shot at this and steer me in the right direction? Any help would be welcome. Thanks in advance.

Stan

[mrbass]

I wish someone would name a model # of dvd player that CANNOT play 48Khz. Why wouldn't any dvd player be able to play it if DVD audio is 48Khz to begin with? The only case I can think of is a SVCD standalone player that only plays SVCDs and not DVDs. I don't know if any exist or not.

I'm willing to bet there are more dvd players that play mpeg 5.1 (currently about 3 to 5) than dvd players that can't play (for those that can play SVCD that is) 48Khz audio SVCDs.

[StanEis]

I hear what you are saying. It makes sense that 48000khz should not be a problem. If I understand correctly, I believe that the big question is, "Will non-compliant SVCD's be supported in all DVD players in the future?" Maybe someone could shed some light on how a DVD player would not play an SVCD that has a non-compliant 48000khz audio track. Your logic that VCD players are the only players that problems would arise makes sense to me.

Stan

[sterno]

1- De-Mux with TMPGenc
2 - Convert 48000 mp2 to 48000 Wav with Cdex
3 - Downsample wav to 44100 with DVD2AVI
4 - Convert 44100 wav to 44100/128 mp2 with BeSweet
5 - Mux with TMPGenc

For besweet 1.4, something like this should work:

besweet.exe -core( -input 48000.mp2 -output 44100.mp2 ) -shibatch( --rate 44100 ) -2lame( -m s -b *BITRATE* )

If you prefer joint stereo over standard stereo (which you might with an audio bitrate as low as 128) pass "-m j" to 2lame instead of "-m s". Check the files under besweet's Help directory for more information on these options.

I think besweet can extract the audio straight out of the mpg if you specify a stream ID, but I haven't done that before. When I tried to read the audio straight out of MPEG-2 with an older version of besweet it didn't work, but I haven't tried again since I installed 1.4.

[Tagger]

Another program that can do the conversion(s) for you is HeadAC3he

It's what I've been using to convert whatever to .mp2. I then use BBmpg to mux the .mp2 and .m2v files together. Used to use TMPGEnc, but it gets the audio out of sync sometimes and BBmpg has never failed me yet.

Anyways, back to the topic. HeadAC3he can to the 48000khz to 41000khz conversion and also you can pick the bitrate - from 32 to 320

[adam]

I wish someone would name a model # of dvd player that CANNOT play 48Khz.

No I can't name any particular model but I do remember when the Grinch (the one with Jim Carey) was released on SVCD. The group forgot to downsample and dozens of people reported problems with the audio. You can look the thread up on isonews probably.

Most DVD players wil have no problem with 48kHz in a SVCD but there are definitely those that will and I don't find it suprising at all. Just because all dvd players support 48kHz in a DVD, means absolutely nothing when dealing with another format. There are more to dvd players than just their physical parts, ie: the audio decoder may be able to decode 48kHz, regardless of format, but that doesn't mean the firmware can. After all, my dvd player supports AC3 audio in a DVD and mp3 cds but I cannot use either audio format in my SVCDs.

[StanEis]

Good input. Thanks much. I will try the BeSweet tip. I'll also give HeadAC3he a try. BBmpeg is a good app. I use it quite a bit and it is very reliable. Adam confirmed my suspicions about the possibility that a player may not be able to support an SVCD with a non-compliant audio stream. It's good to know that if I am ever in that situation that I can rectify it.

Once again the forum at vcdhelp has proven to be an invaluable tool.

Stan