Best possible audio format?

[Noob_1]

So I downloaded a movie in dts audio and surprise surprise my TV doesn't play it. I used avidemux, and encoded the audio to AAC(FDK), in LC format, at 640 bps and 48 khz. It plays now and the audio sounds good but I'm not sure if it's the best? Could anyone tell me what audio format is the best for movies? Especially if they were originally dts audio at 48khz. Thanks!

[Hoser Rob]

If you're playing video via a device or something like a USB stick in a TV, the best audio format is one the device supports. You need to RYFM to find this out.

Otherwise, like a computer media program that is more flexible, the best audio format is the one it came with. Most videos use lossy audio codecs and you'll just make it sound definitely worse by converting to anything else.

[Noob_1]

But all it says is what audio formats work. It doesn't state the best one? Or am I stupid? What should I look for?

[davexnet]

But all it says is what audio formats work. It doesn't state the best one? Or am I stupid? What should I look for?

How are you playing this movie sound? TV speakers or piped through a receiver with 5 speakers and sub-woofer?
Your first post implies the TV sound; if so the aac audio, even reduced to two channel, is good enough

[Prototype v1.0]

I see that OP seems to not get the concept about lossy file format, let me give it a try to explain:

• When the video file was first shot one a time, it probably was composed by many separate video and sound tracks - most probably loseless formats (as perfect as you can ever get it). Those are out of reach now.
• Then at some point, the project have being assembled to a video file. In this step, both video and audio format are encoded in a way so that the final (downloadable) file are considerably smaller.
• This means that the encoder process get rid of some or more information - depending on bitrate and other settings.
• Like a book or old papyrus that have missing pieces, those pieces are gone and cannot be recovered.
• That means - when you sit there with a movie file on your usb stick, you do not have all the original information from the original recod.
• However - the information you have is enough so that you still are able to make sense of the sounds you hear. As for old text scrolls with some missing pieces, you can only guess what's missing but you can never get it completely identical to the original without having access to the original records.

Hope this make sense

[zing269]

But all it says is what audio formats work. It doesn't state the best one? Or am I stupid? What should I look for?

What formats does it say it supports?

[Cornucopia]

"The best one"...best for what?

Best quality would be the original uncompressed masters.
Best AVAILABLE quality would be the original version that you got it in.
If you cannot support that, and find you must convert (there are alternatives, but those may not be your path), then best quality is highest bitrate of most efficient compression supported, or uncompressed if available. Won't be as good as the original distributed version, but could be close.

Close enough? only you can say.

Best in terms of compression - go with the newer more efficient codecs.
Best in terms of compatibility - go with the older tried & true codecs or with the most common current ones.


Scott

[Noob_1]

But all it says is what audio formats work. It doesn't state the best one? Or am I stupid? What should I look for?

How are you playing this movie sound? TV speakers or piped through a receiver with 5 speakers and sub-woofer?
Your first post implies the TV sound; if so the aac audio, even reduced to two channel, is good enough

I'm playing it through an optical wire on a soundbar. it sounds good belive me the bass, sound quality is good enough but I'm just not sure if it really is the best. What would be the next best thing that is only slightly worse than dts audio. Because for now the whole file is 3 gigabytes less which is quite a lot.

[Noob_1]

"The best one"...best for what?

Best quality would be the original uncompressed masters.
Best AVAILABLE quality would be the original version that you got it in.
If you cannot support that, and find you must convert (there are alternatives, but those may not be your path), then best quality is highest bitrate of most efficient compression supported, or uncompressed if available. Won't be as good as the original distributed version, but could be close.

Close enough? only you can say.

Best in terms of compression - go with the newer more efficient codecs.
Best in terms of compatibility - go with the older tried & true codecs or with the most common current ones.


Scott

Well yes it is close enough and when I compared both on another TV that supports both aac and dts, the dts amplifies the music more, everything is sort of more balanced on it, but on my proper TV with a soundbar etc. , both the sfx and music in the movie on aac sound equal, so problem more or less solved. The thing is idk which audio format is the next best to dts, that's all I need to know. Is aac the next best in terms of quality or is it ac3 or something else?

[Noob_1]

I see that OP seems to not get the concept about lossy file format, let me give it a try to explain:

• When the video file was first shot one a time, it probably was composed by many separate video and sound tracks - most probably loseless formats (as perfect as you can ever get it). Those are out of reach now.
• Then at some point, the project have being assembled to a video file. In this step, both video and audio format are encoded in a way so that the final (downloadable) file are considerably smaller.
• This means that the encoder process get rid of some or more information - depending on bitrate and other settings.
• Like a book or old papyrus that have missing pieces, those pieces are gone and cannot be recovered.
• That means - when you sit there with a movie file on your usb stick, you do not have all the original information from the original recod.
• However - the information you have is enough so that you still are able to make sense of the sounds you hear. As for old text scrolls with some missing pieces, you can only guess what's missing but you can never get it completely identical to the original without having access to the original records.

Hope this make sense

No no I understand this, but it's just that dts audio didn't work with my TV, so I re encoded it to aac. Now I don't know if aac is the next best thing to dts.

[Hoser Rob]

But all it says is what audio formats work. It doesn't state the best one? Or am I stupid? What should I look for?

What formats does it say it supports?

That question is so obvious I'm going to repeat it. How in the hell do you expect anyone to answer otherwise?

[Noob_1]

But all it says is what audio formats work. It doesn't state the best one? Or am I stupid? What should I look for?

What formats does it say it supports?

That question is so obvious I'm going to repeat it. How in the hell do you expect anyone to answer otherwise?

I didn't even see that my bad. It supports:

MP3

M4A

MPA

AAC

FLAC

OGG

WMA

Wav

Midi

Vorbis

Ape

AIFF

ALAC

And I think AC3 aswell but it doesn't say

[Selur]

FLAC and ALAC are lossless audio compression formats, it doesn't get better than lossless.

[Noob_1]

FLAC and ALAC are lossless audio compression formats, it doesn't get better than lossless.

Well yes but I don't think they were available on avidemux. Also the audio was already dts so will that matter? Let me check again and see if they're available. And if not what would be the best lossy audio?

[Noob_1]

F6
[Attachment 57947 - Click to enlarge]LAC and ALAC are lossless audio compression formats, it doesn't get better than lossless.

Also a picture to show you all the audio formats, ps: pcm doesn't work I already tried.

[Selur]

Okay then use vorbis or aac, later is probably wider supported on hardware players.

[Noob_1]

[QUOTE=Selur;2614608]Okay then use vorbis or aac, later is probably wider supported on hardware

Well then I'll stick with aac as I have that now In the highest quality possible I think.

[killerteengohan]

Use a free audio editing software called Audacity and save as 24-Bit FLAC.

That's the best you can get, but I doubt your ears will hear a difference between 640kbps AAC and FLAC without a multi thousand dollar sound system.

[Selur]

@killerteengohan: FLAC should be lossless so you should never be able to hear any difference since there should be none,...

[pandy]

AAC is most versatile and relatively modern lossy audio coding method also it is industry standard so probably best compatibility across various devices - however most of AAC implementations is severely limited when compared to AAC capabilities and it is not free as AAC is proprietary and royalties covered solution.

[Noob_1]

Use a free audio editing software called Audacity and save as 24-Bit FLAC.

That's the best you can get, but I doubt your ears will hear a difference between 640kbps AAC and FLAC without a multi thousand dollar sound system.

But will flac work with a movie? And I don't think I can even import a movie file to audacity? Also how can I convert a dts file to flac, or does it just work?

[johns0]

You can import a movie into audacity and convert dts to flac,just make sure you have ffmpeg to audacity addon installed,i doubt your tv will play flac if it can't play dts,aac is your best choice for audio for your setup and at 640 kbps you won't here any difference with your sound bar compared to dts.

[Selur]

You can import a movie into audacity and convert dts to flac,

Does this take potential delays into account?

[johns0]

Never noticed any delays when i did that.

[Noob_1]

You can import a movie into audacity and convert dts to flac,just make sure you have ffmpeg to audacity addon installed,i doubt your tv will play flac if it can't play dts,aac is your best choice for audio for your setup and at 640 kbps you won't here any difference with your sound bar compared to dts.

Well yes but idk how audacity really works and couldn't find a tutorial on how to convert video audio. Just how to import videos, with ffmpeg. If you could somehow describe or link a video maybe. Would appreciate it.

[blud7]

You're using Avidemux, then aac (FDK) is the best choice for you.
You want to go the route of using Audacity to obtain flac audio? Just go on YouTube and search "convert movie audio using audacity".
But aac is probably the best at compatibility, quality and compression.
Apple's qaac encoder may give you the best quality aac audio in m4a/mp4 container.

[hello_hello]

Noob_1,
Try this portable version of Foobar2000. Just unzip it somewhere. foobar2000 1.5.3 Portable.zip
It comes with all the goodies most people need for re-encoding audio, except ffmpeg. There's a text file included with instructions on where to put ffmpeg and it also explains where to set a few file paths in fb2k's preferences, if necessary. It's been a fair while since I uploaded it but I don't think there's much to do to get it working and then you can convert almost anything to anything, and there's plenty of conversion presets to get you started. You can convert the audio in many container types (mp4, mkv etc) without having to extract it first, even if the file also includes video. If you do that though, you should check for any container audio delay yourself if necessary. There's also DSP presets for compressing & downmixing etc.

My foobar2000 configuration looks like this running on XP (it's actually an audio player but it's also a pretty good converter). You have to mux the new audio with the video yourself, but that's easy for MKVs. MKVToolNix is very versatile. There's no need to import files one at a time either. Just load all the audio into a playlist and FB2K can convert as many simultaneously as you have CPU cores, or it can convert to multiple audio formats at the same time.


[Attachment 58294 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 58295 - Click to enlarge]

Never noticed any delays when i did that.

It'd probably pay to check. When you extract with DGIndex or gMKVExtractGUI etc, they write the delay to the file name. Some muxers such as MKVToolNix will automatically apply the delay if it's written to the file name.

0108 Episode 8_track2_[eng]_DELAY 48ms.eac3

Some encoders, such as MeGUI, would add 48ms of silence to the beginning of the encoded audio for the example above, and write the output file name as:

0108 Episode 8_track2_[eng]_DELAY 0ms.eac3

[Belike]

Both WAV files and AIFF files represent the highest quality possible in the audio world. AIFF files were developed by Apple but also play on the Window's OS.

[4kblurayguru]

Send the audio to a DTS compatible receiver, don't convert anything.

[dellsam34]

Get an AVR and a powered subwoofer and enjoy a quality show, stop wasting your time on unnecessary and time consuming software conversions. Most people spend 3 times the content duration fiddling with it than just enjoy watching it the way it is.