pliz read. need info about audio compression

[yakuza]

from a 140 MB movie file, 130 of it is video and 10 audio. is that ok ? or should there be less audio ?
(program used: VirtualDub 1.5.8)
i'm using MP3 as compression. more exactly, the
56kBit/s 22050 Hz Stereo 7KB/s setting
but thats the highest one in the list.
there are two frequencies possible for stereo : 22050 Hz and 11025 Hz.
for 22050 Hz, there are several possibilities for bitrate (i think its supposed to be bitrate...) : 56kBit/s, 48kBit/s, 40kBit/s.
and for 11025 Hz :
32kBit/s, 24kBit/s, 20kBit/s, 18kBit/s
what would u suggest as best ? when i say best, i dont mean best sound quality, but to have an extreme minimum amount of space allocated to audio, but still at the point where the sound quality can be qualified as being "ok".

[Erik_Osterholm]

If you want higher quality audio, BeSweet appears to be what you want. Encode the video with Virtualdub, but set Audio to "No Audio". Then encode the audio in BeSweet, and merge (called "Mux") the files in Nandub, VirtualDubMod, or AVI-Mux (I think the last will work).

If you want to be able to split your finished AVI file, you'll have to encode the audio as constant bitrate (CBR). If you are not planning to split your file, you can use variable bitrate (VBR) to get a slightly smaller audio size while maintaining quality.

Edit: Misspoke in the above, fixed.

[LigH]

The reason for the bitrate limitation in your MP3 codec is the fact, that Windows is shipped with this limited version of the Fraunhofer MP3 codec (to make you buy the expensive full version).

You could as well download the ACM codec of the free LAME MP3 encoder from RareWares (http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org), which is not limited in bitrate, and may even provide better quality - but nevertheless, converting the audio via BeSweet or HeadAC3he externally, and multiplexing it afterwards via VirtualDubMod or AviMux, is the much better way.

I often created AVIs with VBR MP3 audio (but I used the ABR algorithm, which keeps a rather constant average bitrate, and limited the bitrate range), and I did not experience any bad problems with split AVIs (always used VirtualDubMod for splitting).

The "next generation" of audio compression is Ogg Vorbis - but you will have to save as Ogg Media or as Matroska video, and you will have to install additional DirectShow filters to be able to play such files. But Ogg Vorbis allows much lower bitrates at the same quality than MP3.

But finally, this thread may no longer belong to the "XviD" forum; a moderator may wish to move it e.g. to "Audio encoding" or a general video editing forum instead?