AVI with DivX and WMA V2

[cheerful]

I launched VirtualDub and one option in the audio compression is WMA V2.

1. Does anyone know if the combination of DivX/WMA in AVI is standard? Is it supported by hardware DVD player?

2. What's is V2? There is also V1 in the list. Is V2 a standard or a hacked version?

3. Which version of WMA will hardware DVD player support?

Thanks!

[guns1inger]

Support for any given codec varies from player to player. The closest to universal is Divx/Xvid with no qpel and no GMC, and CBR MP3 audio. Most will also support VBR MP3, AC3 and PCM. Some will also support DTS.

Consult your player's manual for specific details, or post the model number here and you might get more info. If in doubt, use AVIRecomp or AutoGK to re-encode to something compliant.

[jman98]

1. No it's not standard. Most DVD players that support Divx/Xvid don't support WMA, but it is possible to find some that do. You just have to choose carefully. Divx with WMA is rather unusual, so if you have a DVD player that supports Divx and WMA it should work, I'd advise testing before buying the player just in case it actually doesn't work.
2. Never heard of V1 or V2 with regard to WMA. I have no idea what V1 and V2 refer to.
3. It's up to the player, but usually WMA 8 or 9 are supported if WMA is supported at all.

CBR MP3 is really the best choice for audio if you want to be sure it will play.

[celtic_druid]

I would have said that most do support wma. Whether they handle it in an avi container is a different matter though. Pretty sure mine does so there is a chance that all MTK based players do.

Really can't see the point though when you can just use VBR lame.

Hardware players support wma std. Shouldn't matter what version since it is supposed to be backwards compatible. Most players don't support wma pro, lossless, etc.

[cheerful]

Thanks. I will stick with MP3 CBR then. LAME encoder does not support CBR under 128 kbps though. I don't need high grade audio so I probably downsample it to 22khz

[jman98]

cheeful - do NOT use 22 Khz audio. First of all, it will not save you any space over 44.1 or 48 Khz audio. Secondly, it will needlessly make your audio sound like crap AND introduce potential playback problems for no space savings at all. You might as well add VBR to the mix if you're going to do 22 Khz audio just to give yourself the bonus of not only having bad sound thanks to the 22 Khz sampling rate but also having the potential of audio sync problems thanks to the VBR encoding.

[cheerful]

Could you please elaborate? I've tried one on TV capture and audio appears to be OK. At 22khz, there are 1/2 of the sample data compared to 44khz and half of bitrate sounds reasonable to someone who knows nothing about audio compression. Is that just not enough sample at 22khz?

What's the TV broadcast freq?

Will appreciate your help!

[mats.hogberg]

@cheerful:Please don't cross post. This is (at least) the second thread you've started on basically the same subject.

/Mats

[jman98]

Elaborate? I thougth I already did. Sigh...

Using 22 Khz will NOT SAVE YOU ANY SPACE over using 44 Khz. All it will do is make your audio sound worse for NO SPACE SAVINGS. If you don't care, fine. Use it. It's not my project, so it's not problem for me. I'm just trying to help.

Choice #1 - You can use 44.1 Khz audio which everything plays.
Choice #2 - You can use 22 Khz audio, which will degrade the sound and may not (or may) be supported on your DVD player. Mine won't play 22 Khz audio at all, for example. You SAVE NO SPACE by using 22 Khz audio! NONE!

I don't get why you are hellbent on choice #2, but if you still don't undertand my points there's not much I can do about that.

[cheerful]

I thought by downsampling to 22khz, it will allow lower bitrate to work better. I would assume the bitrate needed compress 22khz and 44khz are different. If that's not the case, then I am screwing something up.

[celtic_druid]

Yes, at a low enough bitrate, a lower sample rate will give higher quality. That's why when you encode with lame --cbr it will downsample giving a low enough bitrate. For instance -b 96 would be 32KHz, -b 48 would give 22Khz. Same principle really as resizing a video down for a lower bitrate. Also if you were to go quality based encodings, the lower sample rate would yield a space savining. -V 5 with a 22KHz source should be smaller than with a 44KHz source.