Audio quality on VCD

[Thrax]

I've made a few VCDs now after my experience the first time around...Took me 17 hours, a whole lot of splitting, audio ripping, converting, etcetera...But now I've got it down just fine :)

Only question is, when I encode videos into VCD format, the high end on the audio is very sharp, ringy, and distorted...Is there any way to fix that? (The pure audio stream does not have this imperfection, only the combined output)

[vitualis]

Your problem is probably because you used TMPGEnc to downsample the 48 kHz audio (DVD) to 44.1 kHz (required for VCD). It doesn't do a good job of it.

I suggest that you go to http://www.doom9.net to follow the various guides there to get much better quality audio.

VCD uses MPEG-1 Layer 2 compression at a bitrate of 224 kbit/s. The quality of the audio is definitely near CD quality.

Regards.

[Thrax]

Call me stupid, but can you point me to the right guide for better audio quality? (And yeah, I used TMPGEnc for the final VCD output...But I used Virtual Dub to extract the audio in full processing mode (1.2GB audio file))

[vitualis]

Try this: http://www.doom9.org/ac3tomp2.htm

Even if you aren't going from a VOB/AC3 source, I think that you can still use the proggies here...

BTW, you can use the program that does the downmixing (SSRC) as a plugin directly in TMPGEnc...

Regards.

[Thrax]

The problem isn't the pure audio stream though, as when I extract it from virtualdub, it sounds great...The problem lies within the recombine in TGMPEnc to the final VCD output. It does something to the audio to make it sound like shat.

[Colonel_Starr]

try encoding vcd with 48000 hz. i did and sounds great. use toolame in tmpgenc :P

[Thrax]

ok, will try that.

[Thrax]

Except, I just realized you can't encode a VCD with 48.1KHz audio...

I used toolame to try and improve the audio in conjunction with TGMPEnc...The ringing is LESS noticable, but it's still there. Especially when it gets into the very high end of the audio. It's like this ringy, twangy, squeal noise. You'd have to hear it to understand, but I cant post a 35mb video sequence

[vitualis]

Thrax, please read my first post...

Your problem is probably because you used TMPGEnc to downsample the 48 kHz audio (DVD) to 44.1 kHz (required for VCD). It doesn't do a good job of it.

And the solution to this was in my second post...

BTW, you can use the program that does the downmixing (SSRC) as a plugin directly in TMPGEnc...

Regards.

[Thrax]

aha, thank you...I missed that :oops:

where can I get SSRC?

[Wooby]

You can also try this:

When converting in V-dub, make sure the "high quality" box is ticked.

I had this same issue on an XViD conversion of a certain Tolkien movie that's currently dominating the box office, and when I tried the above, it disappeared completely.

[mats.hogberg]

You could even try to keep the audio fq at 48.1 kHz, if you're willing to stray somewhat outside the VCD specs. I never change the frequency, and so far, my DVD player hasn't complained.

/Mats