What OTHER mp2 encoders are there

[EddyH]

OK. Tried TMPGEnc. Tried TooLame. Have been using GNU opensource codec (a 1994 vintage?) as bundled with Cooledit 96 for quite some time, but have come to realise it's own odd limitations too.

So, surely, there cannot be only three mp2 encoders in the world. Putting speed on the back burner for this challenge, what other encoders does anyone know of besides these? (any GNU updates also welcome)

Willing to try pretty much anything new... but prefer if:
* it can happily sustain treble frequencies of 18khz or so (at 224kbit SS or 192kbit JS) even if that distorts a little,
* doesn't show either the stereo oddness of TMPGEnc (far too much detail in stereo compared to mono) or the old GNU (vice-versa),
* can go at about half realtime speed (ie a 2 hour file takes 4 hours to encode) when running as a single process on an 800mhz machine.

C'mon, surprise me..

[disturbed1]

I like CDex's internal mp2 engine.

Better than TMPG's, and better than tooLame (IMO of course )

Panasonic's stand alone Mpeg1 encoder has a great mp2 engine, but don't thinks it fits in your time pref.

[txpharoah]

The best one on the market is the MainConcept plugin for SoundForge 6.

[EddyH]

Jeez, its slower than 1/2 speed on an 800mhz machine? that's something to see (and i thought the GNU one was tardy).

I'm definately talking audio-only here..

Wow, back when they were using 486s and low pentiums for video work, no wonder there was so much dedicated hardware involved... i'd still give it a try, but where can it be got from, if such a question isnt a warez request? I was under the impression the panasonic encoder was all three of commercial/expensive, heavily copyrighted and no longer distributed.

And, though it's nice of you to suggest plugins for proprietary softwares (i'll let CDEx go as its a small freeware ), i'm looking more along the lines of standalones, or at least plugin filter/codecs for cooledit/goldwave, tmpgenc/virtualdub, windows ACM.. whatever. Havent a clue what Soundforge is other than it's probably as expensive as panasonic and CCE..!
And cheap/free if possible, havent exactly got much cash to throw around.

Well guess thats narrowing it down already, but still, anything is still being considered. Can probably turn the dial on my brothers head and point him off in the direction of the, ahem, more underground websites that he seems to frequent far too often.

[disturbed1]

Jeez, its slower than 1/2 speed on an 800mhz machine? that's something to see (and i thought the GNU one was tardy).

I'm definately talking audio-only here..

Wow, back when they were using 486s and low pentiums for video work, no wonder there was so much dedicated hardware involved... i'd still give it a try, but where can it be got from, if such a question isnt a warez request? I was under the impression the panasonic encoder was all three of commercial/expensive, heavily copyrighted and no longer distributed.

And, though it's nice of you to suggest plugins for proprietary softwares (i'll let CDEx go as its a small freeware ), i'm looking more along the lines of standalones, or at least plugin filter/codecs for cooledit/goldwave, tmpgenc/virtualdub, windows ACM.. whatever. Havent a clue what Soundforge is other than it's probably as expensive as panasonic and CCE..!
And cheap/free if possible, havent exactly got much cash to throw around.

Well guess thats narrowing it down already, but still, anything is still being considered. Can probably turn the dial on my brothers head and point him off in the direction of the, ahem, more underground websites that he seems to frequent far too often.

Yeah I'm talking about the audio. It isn't exactly that slooow, but it is slow. About realtime if I remember correctly.

If your bother can find the demo, you might like it. I've used it for all of my music vid caps. Panasonic seems to be more musical.

If you'd still like to try out that plugin for soundforge, it uses the exact audio engine from bbMpeg. Brent did most of the enhancing on the video encoding part, but the left the audio the same. (Thinkin' TX means the Mainconcept Mpeg plugin, since they don't have a mp2 plugin)

You could always try wav2mp2 http://www.mnsi.net/~jschlic1/mpeg_a.htm#wav2mp

[txpharoah]

The Mainconcept MPEG plugin for SoundForge does all formats of MPEG audio: MP2, MP3, etc.

[EddyH]

realtime is perfectly OK, GNU seems a bit unoptimised and so manages about 2x on a good day; usually more like 1.5...

hm cant remember if i ever tried out the bb audio encoder.. it probably didnt set me on fire if i did, but at least it's ready to hand to test.

as is WAV2MP, now

So... to go n00b13 for a second... whatta heck is soundforge and mainconcept, freeware or cashware? not bothered about it doing mp3 though, i'm sorted and happy for that.


can't beleive we're still up to only five or six, even the mpg encoder comparisons page in the guides has about ten or eleven different video engines O_O
maybe the internet is the great leveller and less stuff is being uniquely made by large numbers of bedroom coders any more, then slowly spreading out through user groups and magazines..


update: hm, seems wav2mp came from similar source to tmpgenc. passable, but not a good quality/speed tradeoff. stuck at 14-15khz even when using joint stereo at 256kbit... ah well.
Plus it appears BB cannot encode PCM wavs...?!?! even when muxed into an avi file, too.
edit2: no, seems just my copy of bb has gone mental and suddenly cant encode any audio at all without crashing. great.

[disturbed1]

Soundforge is Sonic Foundry's sound editor. Like CoolEdit. Mainconcept is another company that makes video products (Mainactor, MainVision, EVE, etc). They hired Brent Beyeler (author of bbMpeg) to do work on their Main Concept video encoder plugin. It's been distrib. with Adobe, Vegas Video, Ulead, Dazzle's DVD Cre8tor, maybe more. The mp3 encoder is completely different from the Mainconcept video encoder (which does the mpeg 1 layer 2 audio encoding). Although Mainconcept does make the mp3 plugin for Sonic Foundry apps.

You also have MAENC. Uses cygwin, not sure if GPL or not, but is a free down load http://www.mtl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~aji/prog/myprog.html . It's not english, but look for MPEG-Audio Package (MAPACK) towards the bottom of the page.

There's also SCMPX http://www.din.or.jp/~ch3/index_e.html . Also free :P

[Donny661]

BeSweet can use the MP2ENC engine and TooLame, but i've found MP2ENC sucks (too much distortion); toolame is much better and seems to be considered the best encoder by most. For MainConcept you can just purchase their standalone version and not pay $400 for SoundForge plus the mainconcept price, but their plugin might work for CoolEdit also. CCE and LSX have mp2 encoder but are commercial and I've not heard much about quality. SCMPX is another and is free, but I've never tried it also. That's all I can think of at the moment.