[Matroska] best audio format ?

[Dams]

Since I'm new with Matroska container, which is the best audio format for this , according to your experience(s)?

Is MP3 VBR can be put in, without problem ?

Best regards.

[hofmetzger]

sure!

i'm using 2x vorbis 2.0 @ lowest (but still good) in 1cd-rips, and 2x vorbis 5.1 @lowest in 2cd-rips.

[unmei]

argh another "best" question ><

yes, mp3 vbr poses no problems with matroska, but neither does vorbis or aac and others should be fine as well :)

one thing i think you can't do right now, is having a track with 2.0 and one with 5.1 ..ie all tracks must have the same number of channels,
but else.. your question could be transformed into "what is the best audio codec i can play over direct show", and there it comes clear its a matter of personal preferences :)

[Dams]

Originally posted by unmei
argh another "best" question ><

yes, mp3 vbr poses no problems with matroska, but neither does vorbis or aac and others should be fine as well :)

one thing i think you can't do right now, is having a track with 2.0 and one with 5.1 ..ie all tracks must have the same number of channels,
but else.. your question could be transformed into "what is the best audio codec i can play over direct show", and there it comes clear its a matter of personal preferences :)

So we cannot have a 5.1 AC3 file + 2.0 MP3 file into a matroska container ?
OGM remain better for this, so ?

[bond]

Originally posted by Dams
Since I'm new with Matroska container, which is the best audio format for this , according to your experience(s)?you can put every major codec into matroska!

Originally posted by Dams
So we cannot have a 5.1 AC3 file + 2.0 MP3 file into a matroska containerafaik thats not true!
this was the case with ogm but not with matroska...

[Dams]

Originally posted by bond
you can put every major codec into matroska!

afaik thats not true!
this was the case with ogm but not with matroska...

so u have done one ?

[bond]

no, but why dont you try it for yourself ;)

[Dams]

I'll do somedays

[jcsston]

I've had a mono VBR mp3 stream, stereo vorbis, and a mono AAC in the sam file and they played back without any problems. :)
I haven't tried 5.1 as I don't have any sources (tv caps not dvd rips) and not enough speakers.

[Animaniac]

If you want to use 5.1 channels, ~130 kbps AAC is the way to go. Vorbis is not optimized for >2 channels, and wastes bits... I feel AC3 uses too many bits, but that's also an option.

[Sirber]

RealAudio 5.1 @ 128kbps is comparable to a 350kbps vorbis (Q4 IIRC) and sounds great

@Animaniac

Your shipon avatar is nice :)

[Gaia]

RealAudio 5.1 @ 128kbps is comparable to a 350kbps vorbis (Q4 IIRC) and sounds great

Go to some audio forum and say that to them :)

You will get "intresting" replies...

[Sirber]

Where ever I go I always get interresting replys :) BTW, no-one is a specialist, neither me. But, from the tests I made, vorbis bellow Q4 (~350-500kbps), the bass channel suffer too much. RA@128 is the same Q as Vorbis Q4 for 5.1, from my tests

[Ramirez]

LOL! Well spoken Gaia :D, IMHO Sirber gotta learn to use an "IMO" more frequently because this is indeed his, and Only His_Opinion which I'm sure nobody around here willing to share.:p

[bond]

hm, realaudio's capabilites arent really well known and vorbis isnt really good for 5.1, so...

sirber,
can you plz upload a 5.1 ra file for testing?

[Ramirez]

vorbis isnt really good for 5.1, so...

I don't agree,I've tested both LC/HE AAC vs. Vorbis vs. Real audio in wide range of bitrates using various sources, and in all cases Vorbis produced better sound then its contestants (way better then dreaded HE-AAC btw), and yes Vorbis is more then great for multi -channel audio unless you're pushing it to insanely low bitrates like 57kbps, at such low bitrate any codec will produce nothing but shit anyways.

and of course this is all IMHO btw ;)

[alexnoe]

So we cannot have a 5.1 AC3 file + 2.0 MP3 file into a matroska container ? That's even possible with AVI :D

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by Sirber
RealAudio 5.1 @ 128kbps is comparable to a 350kbps vorbis (Q4 IIRC) and sounds great

@Animaniac

Your shipon avatar is nice :)

Shipon kawaiii desu ><

Are you sure about that?... 350 kbps Vorbis is supposed to be transparent on nearly all samples, comparing that to 128 kbps? Unles RA has made some HUGE stride that we don't know about... no codec can say it's transparent at 128 kbps...

[rjamorim]

I'm conducing a codec test of RA8 vs. Vorbis (among other codecs) at 64kbps.
http://audio.ciara.us/test/

Unfortunately I can't disclose preliminary results before the test ends, but I believe you guys will find them pretty interesting ;)
(The test ends Sep. 21, and the results are published soon after)

Everyone is invited to participate, BTW.

@Sirber: IMO, one BIG problem of RA8 is the lack of VBR mode. That really shows on movies, where you can save bits on quiet parts to later use them on parts with music or lots of noise.

Regards;

Roberto.

[Dams]

Originally posted by alexnoe
That's even possible with AVI :D

Sure it does !

But it is chapter/subtitle less, and haven't good seeking as the ogm/matroska container.

[celtic_druid]

You can have subtiltes in an AVI. You are correct about chapters though.

[Dams]

Originally posted by celtic_druid
You can have subtiltes in an AVI. You are correct about chapters though.

wow, i didn't know we could put subtitle into avi .. it's odd..

[Joe Fenton]

Maybe it's another one of those user hacks like dual audio (BivX).

I used external subtitles with AVIs until I switched to OGM. I've been playing with MKV to see if it's better than OGM for my purposes.

I have never seen an AVI with built-in subtitles, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible... or maybe it does. :)

[alexnoe]

Joe: AVI-Mux GUI can write such AVI files since version 1.13 with SRT and has support for SSA since version 1.14. Replaying them only requires DVobSub.

Dual Audio is clearly not a hack. The AVI format supports 1 video stream with up to 99 additional other streams, which can be audio or subtitles.

I also have thought about an interesting way of hacking Vorbis audio into AVI (even with variable frame length!), but only time, and a lot of testing, will show if my idea works out, if I ever find the time to try it...

[bond]

Originally posted by alexnoe
I also have thought about an interesting way of hacking Vorbis audio into AVI (even with variable frame length!), but only time, and a lot of testing, will show if my idea works out, if I ever find the time to try it... :eek:

and perhaps aac too :D

[alexnoe]

Doesn't AAC use constant frame length in samples? Then the MP3 hack would without problem...

[bond]

dunno, but perhaps you can enable aac muxing too (if it works)...

[Sigmatador]

@alexnoe.

Kiss450 dvd player can rean ogg audio file, but not ogm video file, it could be interresting ^^

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by alexnoe
Joe: AVI-Mux GUI can write such AVI files since version 1.13 with SRT and has support for SSA since version 1.14. Replaying them only requires DVobSub.

Dual Audio is clearly not a hack. The AVI format supports 1 video stream with up to 99 additional other streams, which can be audio or subtitles.

I also have thought about an interesting way of hacking Vorbis audio into AVI (even with variable frame length!), but only time, and a lot of testing, will show if my idea works out, if I ever find the time to try it...

Where are the moderators !!! koepi !!!

This is a matroska thread and these people discuss about improving AVI !?!? :scared: :angry: :devil: :eek: !!!

LOL .... :D

@alexnoe : i hope to have the time to test your matroska version of avimux-GUI this week, as i have one week vacation and will stay at home all time, together with my little baby daughter :).

About 'hacking' Vorbis and AAC into AVI, well, the Indians had a saying :

"If you notice you are riding a dead horse, leave it behind and get a new one ...."

;) :) .... no offense of course, i know AVI could be tweaked to do fancy stuff, but why ? Where's the benefit ? The only advantage of AVI, compared to MKV ( or even OGM ) is that its widely suported. Your 'changes' to make it accept Vorbis and/or AAC would break this compatibility completely, so again, where's the point ? Showing the world its technically possible ?? :) .....

[Joe Fenton]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
Where are the moderators !!! koepi !!!

This is a matroska thread and these people discuss about improving AVI !?!? :scared: :angry: :devil: :eek: !!!

LOL .... :D

@alexnoe : i hope to have the time to test your matroska version of avimux-GUI this week, as i have one week vacation and will stay at home all time, together with my little baby daughter :).

About 'hacking' Vorbis and AAC into AVI, well, the Indians had a saying :

"If you notice you are riding a dead horse, leave it behind and get a new one ...."

;) :) .... no offense of course, i know AVI could be tweaked to do fancy stuff, but why ? Where's the benefit ? The only advantage of AVI, compared to MKV ( or even OGM ) is that its widely suported. Your 'changes' to make it accept Vorbis and/or AAC would break this compatibility completely, so again, where's the point ? Showing the world its technically possible ?? :) .....

Boy those Indians are smart! :D

At least I did say I was trying out Matroksa. There's an avimux version that handles Matroska? I'll have to check it out.

I felt the same way about AVI. Putting ABR MP3 into AVIs darn near broke every player out for a while. The Mac just in the last couple months finally got the ability to handle those AVIs. Forget putting anything else in them. It isn't worth the hassle. Move on to something better.

[alexnoe]

As you can see in my signature, there is, but I have not yet implemented any subtitle support.

/Me would like days as on Bajor, which have 26 hours

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW

About 'hacking' Vorbis and AAC into AVI, well, the Indians had a saying :

"If you notice you are riding a dead horse, leave it behind and get a new one ...."

;) :) .... no offense of course, i know AVI could be tweaked to do fancy stuff, but why ? Where's the benefit ? The only advantage of AVI, compared to MKV ( or even OGM ) is that its widely suported. Your 'changes' to make it accept Vorbis and/or AAC would break this compatibility completely, so again, where's the point ? Showing the world its technically possible ?? :) .....

Yeah. I would have to agree. Granted the skills of these programmers never caese to surprise me. But AVI is alot like beating a dead horse. I have seen several places where people are deathly afraid to leave the AVI format even if they have to break it to bits just to get it to do what they want. Thank goodness people here are a bit more reasonable. So far Matroska has been great and is only getting better. Once MP4 gets better implemented we should not need anything other than it and Matroska.

As to best audio format I agree it is a personal choice that is not going to be equally shared by everyone. MP3, Vorbis, and AAC should work great. I have had some issues with AAC though I was testing with Quicktime AAC. RA was impressive in the past. Say about 1995~1996. I will probably get some time to look at it again here in a bit. Especially depending on what Roberto's test shows.

[calinb]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
Where are the moderators !!! koepi !!!

This is a matroska thread and these people discuss about improving AVI !?!? :scared: :angry: :devil: :eek: !!!


Okay, let's see if we can steer it back :)

ChristianHJW, any updates on HE-AAC support?
________________________________________________
Update: I just took a look at the mkvmerge docs. Looks like you guys solved the AAC+SBR problem by simply letting us tell the muxer when we're using SBR. I'm stoked! Since I got an iBook, I've been looking for a cross-platform container that works well for 5.1 HE-AAC sound on both my Mac and HTPC. VLC and mplayer don't seem to be able to decode HE-AAC in an ogm container. The 3ivx splitter has the nasty seek/sync bug on Windows so I ruled out mp4.

My conclusions are that HE-AAC >> ogm works well on the PC, but not on the Mac. Conversely, HE-AAC >> mp4 works well on the Mac, but not on the PC. Matroska works on both!

Matroska rules -- at least right now :)

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by calinb
Matroska rules -- at least right now :)

Be careful with statements like that, you might get striked because you mispelled OGM, if you normally wnated to say OMG ( = 'Oh My God' ) or if you dare to mention there are other containers also if the original thread is about it ....

[Dams]

I look at the mkvmerge and the gui was developed, and it's a bit difficult to use it ,like i don't understand what mime type doing in this container, and how to get the right mime type for mp3 and Divx?

[jcsston]

Originally posted by Dams
I look at the mkvmerge and the gui was developed, and it's a bit difficult to use it ,like i don't understand what mime type doing in this container, and how to get the right mime type for mp3 and Divx?
The mime-type is for Attachments, which can be pictures, text, or even programs you attach to the file. You can look at the Shell Ext (http://cvs.corecodec.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/matroska/doc/website/downloads/shellextension/index.html) page to see what it can do with attached files.

[Dams]

yeah, you're right, but why it says to me that one or more attachement has no mime type defined, even if I simply had one only AVI file ..:confused:

[calinb]

Can someone tell me what's wrong with this command line? I can't get the manual sync to work.

mkvmerge -o output.mkv input.avi --aac-is-sbr 0 -y 0:-63 input.aac

mkverge seems to respect 0 as the track id for the .aac file (--aac-is-sbr works) but -y doesn't change the audio track skew. I've tried positive delay. I've tried re-muxing a .mkv file. This should be simple and I'm sure I'm doing something wrong.

[Mosu]

Originally posted by calinb
Can someone tell me what's wrong with this command line? I can't get the manual sync to work.

mkvmerge -o output.mkv input.avi --aac-is-sbr 0 -y 0:-63 input.aac

mkverge seems to respect 0 as the track id for the .aac file (--aac-is-sbr works) but -y doesn't change the audio track skew. I've tried positive delay. I've tried re-muxing a .mkv file. This should be simple and I'm sure I'm doing something wrong.

Probably a bug in mkvmerge. I'll investigate.

(The command line is OK.)

[Mosu]

Originally posted by Dams
yeah, you're right, but why it says to me that one or more attachement has no mime type defined, even if I simply had one only AVI file ..:confused:

Please upgrade to mkvtoolnix 0.7.0 (http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/) which includes a new GUI. I won't answer questions regarding the old GUI (which wasn't done by me, btw).

[Dams]

So, it was bugged, in previous version ?

[Mosu]

Originally posted by Dams
So, it was bugged, in previous version ?

Not necessarily. It is just outdated and not being developped anymore. It's a discontinued project.

[Lobuz]

Hey, but what about Matroska as an audio container. I mean for full CD with texts, tracks , covers, with lossless audio. Can it replace APE+CUE +Covers+texts compressed with rar or zip with CRC? It could be interesting, but needs some tools and support of audioplayers (for example foobar2000).

Reagrds
Lobuz

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by Lobuz
Hey, but what about Matroska as an audio container. I mean for full CD with texts, tracks , covers, with lossless audio. Can it replace APE+CUE +Covers+texts compressed with rar or zip with CRC? It could be interesting, but needs some tools and support of audioplayers (for example foobar2000).

Reagrds
Lobuz

MKA :)

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Lobuz Hey, but what about Matroska as an audio container.

Yes, thats planned, and big parts of it work already, like attaching covers, creating chapters for every song, just lossless audio is not yet supported, but jcsston had FLAC support half way done in VirtualdubMod before he realized the lib is not nice to use if FLAC shall be embedded into other containers ...

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
Yes, thats planned, and big parts of it work already, like attaching covers, creating chapters for every song, just lossless audio is not yet supported, but jcsston had FLAC support half way done in VirtualdubMod before he realized the lib is not nice to use if FLAC shall be embedded into other containers ...

I'd really like to see Monkey's Audio rather than FLAC. Toff and DCoder (http://dsp-worx.de/index.php?pg=projects&tid=18) have developed APE DS Filters...

[Neo Neko]

APE, MPC, and a whole slew of others are planned to be supported. But in many of their cases their code can be somewhat closed or at least needing some adapting. FLAC now being part of Xiph is very open. Ok it has always been very open from the start even before Xiph. :P And it's compression is generally quite on par with Monkies. Monkies audio that is. No chimpanzees in the equation. That at least explains to me why FLAC is the first to be tackled. But I know Chritian and the guys are hot for MPC and will also likely have APE support in the near future. Just give em time. ;)

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by Animaniac
I'd really like to see Monkey's Audio rather than FLAC. Toff and DCoder (http://dsp-worx.de/index.php?pg=projects&tid=18) have developed APE DS Filters...

I don't think Monkey is a good format for Matroska. The reasons:

-It's very slow on decoding, sometimes consuming even more resources than decoding MPEG4 video with ffdshow

-Licensing is dangerous. Basically, every program wanting to use Monkey's Audio depends on Matt's authorization. And he can decline to authorize the usage for any reason, of for no reason at all - just because.

-It doesn't work well on anything besides the x86 architecture, because it heavily depends on x86 assembly. There is C fallback code for every assembly routine, but that is quite slow. So, don't expect fast encoding/decoding on PowerPC, Sparc, Itanium, ARM...

-There is a rumour (spread mostly by the FLAC developer, Josh Coalson) that it uses GPL code. That leads to even more complex licensing issues.

I think the best solutions for Matroska would be Flac (even though the format libraries are currently shitty) or WavPack4 (even though it hasn't been released yet)

Regards;

Roberto.

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by rjamorim
I don't think Monkey is a good format for Matroska. The reasons:

-It's very slow on decoding, sometimes consuming even more resources than decoding MPEG4 video with ffdshow


Not on my system. Granted it is more processor intensive than FLAC and MP3. It takes an average of 10% CPU (DCoder+MPC) whereas MPEG-4 takes apx. 30% (ffdshow+MPC).

Originally posted by rjamorim
-Licensing is dangerous. Basically, every program wanting to use Monkey's Audio depends on Matt's authorization. And he can decline to authorize the usage for any reason, or for no reason at all - just because.

Licensing issues are overplayed. He created the format, he can set the license he wants. I highly doubt he'll be against expanding Monkey's Audio. I prefer better technology over free technology.

Originally posted by rjamorim
-It doesn't work well on anything besides the x86 architecture, because it heavily depends on x86 assembly. There is C fallback code for every assembly routine, but that is quite slow. So, don't expect fast encoding/decoding on PowerPC, Sparc, Itanium, ARM...


Point taken. Though x86 is in the vast majority...

Originally posted by rjamorim
-There is a rumour (spread mostly by the FLAC developer, Josh Coalson) that it uses GPL code. That leads to even more complex licensing issues.


Like you said it's a rumor. Nothing more.

Originally posted by rjamorim
I think the best solutions for Matroska would be Flac (even though the format libraries are shitty) or WavPack4 (even though it hasn't been released yet)


I never said Matroska shouldn't support those formats as well. If you haven't noticed, Matroska isn't in the business of picking and choosing which formats to support. The developers want to support any and all formats. They strive for world domination. :D

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by Animaniac
Like you said it's a rumor. Nothing more.

Well, by "rumour" I meant that it is unverified. Josh specified what is GPLd in the sources.

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general&action=display&num=1050032172&start=0

3. The range coder used in the MAC source code is GPL encumbered.

I never said Matroska shouldn't support those formats as well. If you haven't noticed, Matroska isn't in the business of picking and choosing which formats to support. The developers want to support any and all formats. They strive for world domination. :D

Sure, but, from what I understood from talks to Christian and other Matroska advocates, they want to create a set of codecs that would be some sort of "standard", probably for future player certification. And my point is, Monkey's audio wouldn't be a wise idea for that, for the reasons aforementioned.

And, since Monkey's isn't a good idea, they should give higher priority to better alternatives.

Regards;

Roberto.

[Sirber]

Will Real codecs be in standarts? :confused:

[rjamorim]

Originally posted by Sirber
Will Real codecs be in standarts? :confused:

I don't think that is likely, but I'm definitely no Matroska spokesman.

You see, the standards, as I understood them, are mostly a certification for hardware players. MPEG has a very clear hardware licensing portfolio. I don't know of anything like that from Real (I.E, licensing programs for hardware implementations of their codecs). So, using Real codecs in this standard profile would be risky at best.

[ChristianHJW]

Lets be realistic, especially with the ongoing support and usage of OGM, its very unlikely that any hardware player manufacturer might be interested in implementing MKV support in hardware players.

So all the speculation about hardware profiles is not so very much interesting right now IMHO. Our plans for profiles were mainly directed on what next generations hardware units will support anyhow, and that is MPEG4 video and AAC audio from our perspective. If some manufacturers will implement RV9 decoding in their units, we have no problem creating a new profile to serve them best possible.

About profiles with lossless audio, this was mainly targeted onto mf's new, alternative blue laser DVD standard called S-DVD ;) ....

[Tuning]

I think the most suitable lossy audio format would be AAC,Possibly He-AAC.This audio compression has real advantage over most of the lossy ones.U can have great sounding 5.1He-AAC @ 80kbps.

[Lobuz]

So what's the progress with lossless codecs ( APE,FLAC, .. + CUE)? I've heard that Matroska is for all formats but suddenly APE is not good enough? It's getting popular in net so why don't You want to use it?

Regards
Lobuz

[ChristianHJW]

FLAC is working fine now already, thanks to jcsston's FLAC encoder filter. Its a bit of a pain to have to use it from Graphedit, but it definitely works. Dont know about APE, somebody had to clarify if their licensing does allow to make a DShow based encoder filter or not.

I am working on a Guide right now how to pack a complete MusicCD into one single MKA file, but it seems there are some devs in the matroska team who would like to have this feature more standardized ( like what image compression to use for the covers, etc. ) so that players can support it easier. Let's see what the outcome of this discussion will be.

[aaar9800]

There is an APE DS filter

look here:

http://dsp-worx.de/index.php?pg=projects&tid=18

[raistlin2k]

Anybody tried to use two 5.1 Ac3-streams inside an MKV-file?

Did so, the resulting file seems somehow broken:
after changing the audio-stream or jumping around in the timecode the sound is gone!!!:scared:

That's the case with ac3filter.ax & with IVI-Audio-Decoder.
Second one produces moreover noise, I guess because it gets loaded several times, once for each stream.

Please tell me if this is working for you.
I tried already on two machines, same results:o :(

Raist

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW

I am working on a Guide right now how to pack a complete MusicCD into one single MKA file, but it seems there are some devs in the matroska team who would like to have this feature more standardized ( like what image compression to use for the covers, etc. ) so that players can support it easier. Let's see what the outcome of this discussion will be.

Neat, I would like to see PNG as the standard for images in mka cd's. Also what audio formats would there be in this standard? Ogg, AAC, FLAC, MP3, DTS?

[mfluder]

Originally posted by raistlin2k
Anybody tried to use two 5.1 Ac3-streams inside an MKV-file?

Did so, the resulting file seems somehow broken:
after changing the audio-stream or jumping around in the timecode the sound is gone!!!:scared:

That's the case with ac3filter.ax & with IVI-Audio-Decoder.
Second one produces moreover noise, I guess because it gets loaded several times, once for each stream.

Please tell me if this is working for you.
I tried already on two machines, same results:o :(

Raist
Just tried this and it works great. Though it was the same 5.1 AC3 file muxed twice as I currently don't have anything else to test with. Switching the streams works great in both MPC and Zoom Player and there hasn't been any problem that you mentioned. For muxing latest mkvmerge (0.7.7) was used and for playback latest MatroskaSplitter and AC3Filter.

mfluder