Cbr Abr Vbr

[yokotsoko]

I have 2 questions to ask
-Which method should I prefer when encoding an mp3 for a movie. CBR VBR or ABR and why? (which one gives the best quality and creates the less sync problems using Besweet and Nandub). Do they all three create files with the same size?
-Do ogg files need more computing power for decoding?

[unplugged]

Originally posted by yokotsoko
I have 2 questions to ask
-Which method should I prefer when encoding an mp3 for a movie. CBR VBR or ABR and why? (which one gives the best quality and creates the less sync problems using Besweet and Nandub). Do they all three create files with the same size?

VBR in almost every kind of encoding, if it's well tuned is the better/logical choice, and LAME is very well tuned for this (--alt-preset standard).
Although, I'll strongly recommend you to use Vorbis ;), of Ogg free project, it gives surprising good quality/file-size ratio at -q 2 (Besweet 0.200)

Originally posted by yokotsoko
-Do ogg files need more computing power for decoding?

Ogg is only a container for audio and/or video formats, if you are pointing the audio format, Vorbis, this doesn't require much more computing than MP3.

If you are pointing to Ogg, the media container for videos (ext. called .OGM), by my experience this could have sporadic stuttering with mid-slow PCs especially in non-NT windows like 98-98SE-ME

[TelemachusMH]

CBR is the simplest of the mp3 encoding methods. The advandage of it is that it has a very predictable filesize. But the disadvantage is that it is not effiecent for quality, if you have a scene with a lot of sound it may become distorted because it has the same amount of bits as the rest of the scenes do.

VBR is more intvolved mp3 encoding method. The advandage here is that there is no excess bits lost if the scene does not require it, because of this the files are a little smaller and you have some extra space. So, you van either have a smaller file or you can raise the bitrate some. The disadvantages of it is that sometimes (although, not as much now that the tools are more devolopeted.) the sound has sync problems. (I haven't had a problem with this for quite a while, but it does still happen of rare occations.)

ABR is a type of VBR mp3 it has all the advantages and disadvantages of VBR but it has an extra advantage, it has an aproximent filesize predictability. It isn't exact, but it is usually within a few megs of the prediction.

I have used ABR normally and I haven't had any problems that couldn't be fixed. It is nice that mp3 is playable by default on almost all systems now.


I have recently been expirementing with ogg vorbis, and I found that it is very good. I have been making rips with ~64kps audio, which gives an apporxement filesize of 50 - 65 megs, and sounds as good as the 128 vbr mp3. I am not sure how much CPU the ogg decoding takes, but I would guess sense the decoder is not nearly as mature would not be as optimized. I would guess it would take more, but I doubt that it is that much more.

Hope I could help,
TelemachusMH