AviMux - Rec-lists & audio interleave

[Skywalkerjen]

Hello.

I'm using AviMux to mux XviDs with AC3 and DTS audio.
I've searched through Alexnoe's 500 recent posts :) and have searched the keywords in Doom9 and Google for the past 5 hours(!).

Rec-lists
I've always used these since having seek problems a couple of years ago, but after seeing that some hardware MPEG4 players didn't support them I tried muxing without. I've encoded my Fellowship Of The Ring Extended Edition DVD, (both parts joined).

The avi is 10GB including 7 audio streams (1024x416, Q2) without rec lists and is running absolutely fine - very fast seeking, no audio probems.

1. Am I therefore better off not using rec lists as they seem to make no difference to my playback or am I gaining something I'm not noticing?
2. Has the Microsoft avi splitter been adapted or is there something else that has fixed playback without rec-lists? (I use media player classic with ffdshow).
3. Are rec-lists also known by a different name or are they very uncommon as I can't seem to find anything about them on the Internet?

Audio interleave
Avimux recommends 100-250kb.

I've done some experimentation here too - with and without rec-lists I've used 100-20000kb and have seen no difference to the operation of my avi.

4. What is the audio interleave value doing to my avi's apart from it's effect of altering the overhead size in the avi?

Finally the old chestnut:

5. What is best for my particular circumstance - rec-lists or not? What size audio interleave?

My circumstances:
Archival copies of my DVDs using XviD and AC3/DTS.
Filesize is not a problem as I aim to be watching these in 10 years time on my 5TB hard discs :D
I don't intend watching these from Blu-ray / other portable media.
I intend on watching them from my PC.

Thanks for any help :thanks:

[stephanV]

1. Am I therefore better off not using rec lists as they seem to make no difference to my playback or am I gaining something I'm not noticing?
Rec lists cause additional overhead, so your files without rec lists would be a little smaller.

2. Has the Microsoft avi splitter been adapted or is there something else that has fixed playback without rec-lists? (I use media player classic with ffdshow).
By default MPC uses its own AVI splitter, so it is hard to tell if microsoft fixed anything. But since you are playing from a hard-drive, any kind of seeking issue almost vanishes, as read speeds are much higher there.

3. Are rec-lists also known by a different name or are they very uncommon as I can't seem to find anything about them on the Internet?
Nope, rec lists are just called that and they are uncommon I guess. You can find some additional info in Alexnoe's doc here (http://www-user.tu-chemnitz.de/~noe/Video-Zeug/).

4. What is the audio interleave value doing to my avi's apart from it's effect of altering the overhead size in the avi?
Interleaving is used to improve seeking, but again, since you are playing from a HD, you won't notice the difference between different interleaving methods. (You probably won't even notice it if your file is not interleaved at all!)

5. What is best for my particular circumstance - rec-lists or not? What size audio interleave?
Interleaving for DTS and AC3 is done framewise, the defaults for this (both 2 audio frames per chunk) are ok. (AC3 must be 2-5 frames per chunk!)

You don't have to use rec lists, but it won't hurt anything either in your case.