tooLAME - any thoughts ?

[spidey]

Hi Guys,

I was just trying to gather any info on whether or not using tooLAME was a good idea with regards to encoding in TMPG. So far it has seemed very good, but I was curious as to it's advantages and disadvanatges as it pertains to the default encoding in TMPG.

Thanks for any info

[dphirschler]

I'll tell you this much. Encoding seemed much quicker after I installed tooLAME. Also, I hear that the quality of the audio encoded with tooLAME is better than audio encoded using TMPGenc's internal audio encoder. I haven't noticed a meaningful difference. However, it should be noted that I've been encoding episodes of "The PJ's" and they aren't exactly pushing the audio envelope on that show.

I would be curious to know if there are possibly some flags that I could set in tooLAME to possibly tweak the audio a little.

But to answer your question, it is faster and at least as good as TMPGenc's internal encoder (and most people will tell you that it is better).


Darryl

[spidey]

Thanks Bud. I've heard all of those as well.

Have a good one

[monster]

Well I had an experience this weekend with TooLame. I had recorded the beginning of Star Trek Enterpise at high quality, the theme song that is. I then re-encoded it to vcd standards (using TMPGenc and TooLame as the audio tool). I played it back on my PC before burning it to cd. It sounded ok, but had that distinct hollow sound. I didn't think it would matter much, but I re-encoded the clip again, this time using TMPGenc's built in encoder. Wow! What a difference. I know people say TooLame is better (or faster or both), but in this instance it wasn't. I think I'll try a few more clips.

[chickenhq]

if any1 could send me toolame.. i've tried to dl off the website but i get some anti leech crap just send it no url needed to go find it.. thanks

[homerpez]

I personally no longer use Toolame, but when it worked for me, it was definitely faster... but as far as quality? I found absolutely no difference between that or TMPGEnc's by itself...

What I did find about Toolame is that is is maniacally buggy at times. It will encode to 99% and quit, for instance. On my computer it stopped entirely... basically it's not worth the speed difference. As it is, TMPGEnc can encode a full movie's worth of audio to MP2 in about 20 minutes... not exactly a lifetime's worth of wait, and it's more stable.

This is one of those topics that will never die...

[markdf]

I didn't notice any diiference between toolame and the internal audio encodere on tmpg, except toolame would frequently crash on me.

I have just started experimenting with SCMPX, the sound quaility is better and it has not crashed on me. I still need to use it a lot more to determine how reliable it will be for me. I don't know how what it does to the compiling time. I don't worry about the time as I'd prefer the highest quailty settings over faster compile times.

[mawcobra]

I tried my own test of toolame with a 50min tv show. Without toolame the conversion took 38min ans 32sec and with toolame it took 38min and 30sec. So no real savings in conversion time. Also the files i used toolame with had that "hollow" sound and the sound was out of sync. For my money (ie none) i wont be using toolame anymore. FYI heres a link for toolame if you want to try it for yourself.
http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Files/Audio/toolame-02i.zip

[SatStorm]

tooLAME is only for the wav > mp2 encoding
You also need to resample the audio on DVD rips or DVB/s/t/c transmissions. The audio there is 48000 not 44100
Use tooLame for encode to mp2 and SCMPX for resample.
It takes more, but you have no quality loss

For audio from Avi to mp2 with tooLAME, you gonna see difference if you use souround audio. For stereo TVs, or PC speakers there is no difference!

[anengineer]

Toolame also produces .mp2's that give
VCD2TK's VCDMUX a "fatal error"read
past end of file) when separately muxing
sound files for inclusion in the segment
section of a VCD. VCDMUX does not give
me that error with .mp2s produced by
TMPGenc nor waves converted to .mp2's
by DBpowerAMP.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: anengineer on 2002-01-15 04:38:10 ]</font>

[vcddude]

I find that tooLAME is generally unreliable and that SCMPX is totally
reliable. Not as fast as tooLAME, but SCMPX appears to deliver better
if not comparable audio quality...

vcddude

[Groami Geistalt]

Hi.

I'm using Goldwave to eliminate hiss from a 'bad satellite' video recording. Once the hiss is removed, the audio is 'hollow' sounding. I don't understand the basic theory yet, about what I'm seeing when I look at Goldwave's noise reduction graphs. Will TooLAME fix this 'hollow' problem somehow? Until I learn how to read those graphs and edit-out the hiss without editing-out the 'treble' in voices, etc.

Thanks!

[dphirschler]

No. It will likely make the hollow sound worse. Try breaking your audio into three sections based on frequency. Highs, mids, and lows. Then apply the hiss reduction on the high channel. Then mix them back together. Don't expect miracles though. I'd rather hear the hiss myself.

Another thing to try is a noise gate. Apply that to only the high frequencies too.


Darryl

[Groami Geistalt]

Thanks.

Does Goldwave do that? Break a file into "highs, mids, lows"? If so, do you know what is the name of that method?

[Nelson37]

Interesting. TooLame has been around a long, long time. Pretty sure some blind testing was done here quite a while back and it was judged significantly better. Never heard any problem reports such as posted here back then. Used it myself on hundreds of SVCD and CVD encodes, no errors. haven't used it in some time, though.

The "hollow" sound is classic resampling error. SSRC will avoid this.

[julitomg]

I used tu use TooLame with TMPGEnc and was quite pleased both with the results and the speed. But that was when the comp it was installed in was a Pentium 4, 2.0 GHz, 768 Megs RAM and Windows 2000, then I was finally able to upgrade it to P IV, 3.2 HT, 1 Gig RAM and Win XP Pro..the problem is TooLame is just unusable, the encoded sound is incomplete at times, sometimes just crashes and the bizarre part is that when I get sound its way faster than the original sound(like it´s been speeded up about 100% or more), anyone knows why this may be happening?

[Groami Geistalt]

Thank you for the advice about "SSRC."

How is SSRC applied to TMPGEnc as a plug-in? It's not mentioned in "SSRC.txt":

Would I put a copy of SSRC.exe in the same directory with TMPGEnc's files? Upon start-up would TMPGEnc recognize SSRC as something it could use as a plug-in?

[celtic_druid]

In the audio engine options you can load it under Sampling Frequency converter. Doesn't have to be in the same dir.

Anyone who has problems with toolame might want to try twolame, although the changes were all due to the static lib as far as I know. Still it might help.

[SatStorm]

latest version of toolame had issues

I still use toolame-02k

[celtic_druid]

You might want to try twolame v0.3.6.