VBR audio in DVD2SVCD.

[w00t3r]

After making a few SVCD's I began to wonder if SVCDS can use VBR audio? If so does DVD2SVCD utilize it? If not then could it be programmed so that it could? Something like 128-256 instead of a CBR of 192 may decrease the total file size so more space could be used for the video encoding.

[smiller667]

I don't have the IEC specs for SVCD (a bit expensive), but the vcdimager manual suggests you can indeed use VBR audio on SVCDs:
The audio stream must be mpeg-1 layer II, with a bit-rate ranging from 32 to 384 kbits/sec bit-rate (i.e. vbr!) with up to 2 stereo or 4 mono channels [...]

[dvd2svcd]

Nope, sorry, that wont happen.

[Kedirekin]

Does mp2 even support vbr? I thought that was an mp3 innovation.

[w00t3r]

Yeah mp2 does support VBR.

http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~mikecheng/

Straight from tooLame homepage.

[Doom9]

I think I read in a a/v mag that one reason mpeg2 multichannel audio never took off is that philips&sony couldn't deliver the necessary encoding hardware at the required time. An issue related to that might also be that it's pretty hard to mux vbr video and audio (look at how it's being done with divx.. it's not perfect either)... basically no player would keep synch so, even if it's theoretically possible it will most likely never be realized. Check the audio forum for the huge thread about dts -> 5.1mc... already there we have a huge amount of problems (encoding difficult, compatibility very low to just mention 2 problems) and put vbr into the mix and you'll probably never arrive at your goal. So best forget about it quickly to spare you a great deal of frustration.