[Meelis]

Hi
 
What's best quality audio format for videos (not uncompressed pcm)?
What free tools i can use for that?
 
Now i use Mediacoder, it's supposed to support lossless MPEG4 audio, but it crashes with that. even with ogg 1000 kbits and with
WavPack.
 
Now best that have worked for my stereo audio in mp4 video file, are:
* AC3 576 kbits
* ACC 500 kbits, but it is in wrong lower bitrate 319,4 kbits (i chosed 500, but output came out lower)
 
WavPack should work for mkv but MediaCoder can't just handle it.

 

[NullZero]

Mux FLAC audio into .mkv container with video, using MKV Merge

 

[Meelis]

Thanks NullZero

 

[NullZero]

 
Quote:

Thanks NullZero

 
No problem =]
 
I realise my post was quite abrupt, so let me elaborate:
1.  Download mkvtoolnix which contains mkvmerge ( http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/downloads.html ).
2.  Install and open mkvmerge.
3.  Press the "add" button on the right, and select the video.  Confirm selection (press ok).
4.  Press the "add" button on the right again, and select the audio file (in this case, the FLAC audio file).  Confirm selection (press ok).
5.  Change "Output filename" (located at the bottom) to desired directory and resultant file name.
6.  Press the "Start Muxing" button.
7.  Hopefully, no errors
 
Happy editing & Merry Christmas

 

[Meelis]

Thank you NullZero
 
Nothing wrong with your first post, the job process of mkvtoolnix is very easy.
------
 
That's so weird how video quality is so inportand and audio quality not.
Video is packed so high bit rate but small audio file is decreased even smaller.
Like some audio DVD's, 384 kbit /s audio, video is 5000-6000 kbit /s
and the disc is single layer, not DL, it seems they don't want to sell high quality audio.

 

[NullZero]

 
Quote:

Thank you NullZero
 
Nothing wrong with your first post, the job process of mkvtoolnix is very easy.
------
 
That's so weird how video quality is so inportand and audio quality not.
Video is packed so high bit rate but small audio file is decreased even smaller.
Like some audio DVD's, 384 kbit /s audio, video is 5000-6000 kbit /s
and the disc is single layer, not DL, it seems they don't want to sell high quality audio.

I'm relieved =]
 
I may be wrong but video needs a lot more information per second than audio does.  The end user is more likely to spot video quality degradation than that of audio.  Quite a few audiophiles here have trouble distinguishing differences between a 320kbps .mp3 and the loseless FLAC (yes I know, tautological), so how does it bode for the average, untrained ear to spot the degradation?  As for not using loseless anyway, my guess would be the DVD editors are going to want to put as much video content as they can on the space available, thus have to compromise on the audio quality.  It's mostly for profit, so the chances of them caring are probably low (hence not using the more expensive DL discs).  The end-user will most likely be focusing more on the video than the audio whilst watching the DVD.

 

[Meelis]

Doesn't the 320 kbits cut out sound over 10kHz, it's very noticable.

DVD-9
7,95 Gb

6 channel ~ Flac bitrate Sound (1000 kbits) 2 hours is 5,15 Gb if all channels are compressed separately.
Yeah that's too much, but if compressor can find identical areas in different channels i belive it can compress it smaller.

And the old DVD MPEG2 video standard isn't so good in quality and size.
Blu-Ray is a bit expencive (Chuck TV series 3 seasons DVD £36,4 / BR £123) but no problem there for lossless 7.1 sound.
How about new DL DVD standard; 720p video x264 (50 - 75 % of DVD size) and better sound (25 - 50 % of DVD size).
X264 video looks so good, there is no problem for 4GB 2 hour compression.
And computer based video player is much more future proof as codecs tehnlogy evolves.

 

[infinitesymphony]

Quote:

Doesn't the 320 kbits cut out sound over 10kHz, it's very noticable.

 
Most encoders' low-pass filters start at 18 kHz.

 

[barleyguy]

 
Quote:

Doesn't the 320 kbits cut out sound over 10kHz, it's very noticable.
 

 
At -V0, or 320 Kbps VBR, the low pass filter comes in between 19383 Hz and 19916 Hz (at least in LAME).  Losing those frequencies shouldn't be noticeable at all, especially because most headphones and speakers don't do much over 20Khz anyway.
 
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME#Technical_information

 

[ramicio]

It's not like movie tracks are all that complex.  Most of a movie is voice and low frequencies.  With music here and there, but usually quiet.  Most of the audio is through the center channel in movies.  384 kbps is the bottom line for 5.1 AC3.  448 kbps is pretty much the norm.  640 kbps is rarer.  DTS is 768 kbps or 1,536 kbps.  I'd suppose that these lossy codecs do the same thing lossless codecs do with multichannel audio and look for similarities between the channels.  Thank god for Blu-ray and lossless surround.  Not that I care about surround, but when I rip movies I just downmix to stereo and make it FLAC and put that in the MKV container.

 

[infinitesymphony]

Just out of curiosity, for those of you who are using FLAC or another lossless codec for the audio track, are you also ripping and storing video losslessly?

 

[ramicio]

No, why bother doing that?  Lossless video is meant to save space for editing so you aren't lossily recompressing video over and over.  Lossless video is still crazy high in bitrate, and you are still starting from a lossy video track when you rip a movie.  I don't even bother with anything related to DVD anymore.

 

[infinitesymphony]

ramicio raises an excellent point. Both the video and audio streams on a DVD usually are lossy by default. Is it worthwhile to losslessly preserve content that's already lossy?

 

[ramicio]

And Blu-ray being out now uses h.264 which is a pretty excellent codec.  Even compressing down to DVD5 or DVD9 size and keeping a lossy audio track results in no blocky artifacts.  I think h.264 is perfect and will be around for many many years.  Optics and digital cameras are the limiting factors