To OGG or not to OGG?

[cofferscuffs]

I've been getting fed up lately with the amount of backups I've done with VBR MP3's, which cause short, but frequent de-sync of the audio. I don't really want to use AC3 sound (too much space even though CD's cost 25p), or CBR. So I want to know any and all experiances with OGG Vorbis sound, any problems etc, best bitrates (even though I think they're limited). Thanks for the help.

[MaTTeR]

From what I had read in the past I thought the problem was muxing the audio. Apparently, you are unable to seek through the avi file after it's muxed. Maybe I'm wrong but that's the last I had read about it.

I'm just excited as you to move on to OGG:)

[LotionBoy]

as far as I know, the OGG DS filters are very beta at the moment, so bunches of playback issues.

LotionBoy

[ChristianHJW]

ingoralfblum, the coder of the only existing Ogg Vorbis DirectShowFilters so far, called Media XW ( http://mediaxw.sourceforge.net./ ) stated that next version ( 0.7 ) should be able to fix a couple of bugs. For now 0.5 has to be used because current version ( 0.6 ) doesnt support AVI at all.

Biggest problem for now is muxing the Ogg with AVis. Only known method is to use Nandub and to exchange every dll in nandubs folders with ogg or vorbis in the name against latest version from Ogg Vorbis SDK. This has bee proven to work for Ogg RC2, but not for RC3 yet. Seeking is still impossible then.

AVI format generally seems to be less than ideal for VBR audio, so an interesting discussion is going on over at http://www.powerdivx.com/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=13 about creating a new A/V format replacing AVI. Avery Lee himself gave a short comment on ingoralfblums suggestions regarding the weaknesses of AVI .....

[ingoralfblum]

OGG DS filters are very beta at the moment
Yes, but the reason is not that I'm too lazy, but there is currently no need for it. Although you can multiplex Vorbis with AVIs it is a bad idea at the moment. What we really need is either completely new AVI multiplexer and demultiplexer filters or a new media format which means new filters too.

Some words to the filters. The 0.0.6 version differs from the 0.0.5 version only in the filter registration, which means, that I intentionally disabled them to work with AVIs, because the AVI format used by all applications out there is not capable of multiplexing VBR audio and updated filters will read/write AVIs that are not compatible with them. If you create Vorbis AVIs at the moment, e.g. with Nandub, you'll have to remultiplex them into an updated AVI format or another file format later. With the current format it is not possible to have you AVIs playing smoothly unless you play them only from the beginning.

I have no time to write these (de)multiplexer filters for now, but when we have them working it is a matter of a few days to make the Vorbis filters working with them. If you want to help, the PowerDivX forum is the place to go. You can find the links in Christian's posting above.

Regards, Ingo

[BlackSun]

The world is small. Like Ingo said, actually this is a bad idea to use OGG into your movie, anyway I am thinking about doing a system for PowerDivX 4 which will play:

- The Video Stream .avi
- The Vorbis Audio Stream .ogg

Both synchronised for playback. I still dunno if I'll use the OGG Vorbis SDK, or if I'll use Winamp Plugins. Winamp Plugins sound great because it will also solve the MP3 VBR problem.

The main problem with this method is that we need to have audio & video as separate files.

Sound good for you or not ?

[Milkman Dan]

That might work on a hard disk, but not on a CD-R. The head would go crazy trying to seek back and forth between the audio file and the video file, since they won't be interleaved on the tracks. Would probably shorten the life of the drive.

[BlackSun]

I didn't think about that :rolleyes:

[western shinma]

There is a similar feature in Micro DVD Player, and they got around this problem by optionally copying the audio file onto the hard drive.

[ChristianHJW]

... doing this would be a nice workaround.

The only sensible solution IMHO is creating a new A/V file format. Lets see how far we can get with TMF ...

[BlackSun]

hmmm, maybe I can ask the user if he wants the player to copy the file

[ephemeros]

only temporary copy of audio file (.ogg and support for other formats (.wav, .mp3) if possible)
-> lower load on both CD and HD + quite fast

[MaTTeR]

@BlackSun

Soooo....we'll see this in Alpha5? :D

[Tes]

BlackSun, if you decide to use the Winamp plugins why not add MPC support as well. :)

[ChristianHJW]

MPC is ment to be a high quality compression standard for music, average bitrates > 200 kbps.

For DivX AVIs Ogg Vorbis is the way to go, its giving good results for bitrates > 96 kbps, even 64 kbps sounds acceptable, plus it supports up to 255 channels, making 5.1 surround sound with average bitrates of 160 - 200 kbps possible ( thanks to channel coupling ) ...... but we maybe need a new format to get this moving ....