Joint Stereo vs Stereo on VCD

[spidey]

Hey Guys,

Just a quick question. I believe a while back someone had posted that on a rip of Castaway, the only way they could get a good encode to VCD was with changing the audio mode from Stereo 224 Mpeg2 to Joint Stereo 224 Mpeg2.

Since then I've done all my stuff to Joint Stereo. My big question is what is the difference ? Also, I believe their problem was that when you scan'd fwd the clip would lose it's audio track, and somehow changing to Joint Stereo remedied it.

Any info as always is very appreciated. Thanks

[JJamez]

Joint Stereo - Finds redundancies between left and right channels, and achieves a higher compression ratio.

[spidey]

Based on your comment, Is it better to use Joint Stereo than Stereo ?

Thank you very much

[vitualis]

Joint stereo if properly done can lead to better quality than standard stereo as there is more efficient use of the available bitrate.

However, I don't believe that standard VCDs actually support Joint Stereo encoding (correct me if I'm wrong). However, this should work on most modern hardware decoders, however.

Furthermore, at VCD bitrates (224 kbit/s), the quality difference between Joint stereo and standard stereo is probably minimal. As joint stereo uses L+R and L-R, there is also the risk (definitely true at lower bitrates) that you will end up with some loss of stereo separation when compared to the original.

Regards.

[spidey]

Just a quick survey if anyone can respond. I just wanted to get the majority opinion on this.

Have any of you run into scanning problems just encoding to Stereo ? When I had the scanning problems it was with the SxVCD (mpeg2 vbr 1150) and the SeVCD (mpeg1 vbr 1150) templates only. My plain old VCD encoded rips have been fine....

Is Joint Stereo preferred or really not necessary. Obviously it fixed things when in a vbr encode, but what about what all of you may use in a cbr VCD ?

Thank you all !!!!!!!!

[homerpez]

I've used both, and I really haven't noticed a difference wither way (on Apex 500W). I typically choose "Stereo" lately, only because I'm sure that's well supported, though "Joint Stereo" works as well.

They synch problems you're having, I've found, and a lot more to do with the VIDEO, and the MULTIPLEXING. You might want to experiment with the Demux with TMPGEnc, remux with bbMPEG method, to get the two streams to synch better.

(I thought at one time this broke the VCD, but turned out to be dust on the CD! It really did work for me, after I figured that little thing out)

But, yeah, I'd bet that in 90% of all cases, it's not how you encoded the audio, but how it was multiplexed, or the video encoding.

[Darkbird]

Using joint stereo instead of stereo can degrade the audio if the sound is Dolby surround encoded. Surround decoding works with phase shifts in the channels and mixing the signals with joint stereo will eliminate some of the "channel steering" information present in the recording.

This applies to the older "Surround" as well as the newer "Pro-Logic Surround" Dolby formats.

If the audio is not Dolby surround encoded then it doesn't much matter if joint stereo is used.

[statuspending]

word

[JJamez]

By the way, how are you posting without a username?? Looks kinda funny.

[spidey]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the info !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As far as the username goes, when I signed up for my acct. it wouldn't let me into my old normally spelled acct. so I just put my name inside of < > Somehow that blocked the name from showing. It was not done intentionally. It just happened. That's why I now try to remebrr to add my signature at all times.

Thanks !!!!!!!!!1