VirtualDub or BeSweet

[Capturebat]

Does it make a difference when encoding from MP2 to MP3? I would rather just encode with VDub, but if Besweet produces better quality I'll use it.

[Kurtnoise]

Well, it depends a lot of things (bitrate mode, gain, etc...). But you must know that reencoding isn't a good choice...

[Capturebat]

I'm encoding from 384Kbps MP2 to 128kbps MP3. This is for an XVID encode of a MPEG capture. I'm capturing to MPEG so I can have both an XVID and MPEG2 version. I already know how to encode in both BeSweet and VDub.

[pacohaas]

does Vdub use LAME? That's the reason i'd use BeSweet, i guess. More encoding options and the 32-bit process, you can't get better quality than that. As for whether the quality difference is audible...you'd have to do some blind tests to be sure. If you have to use CBR 128, it's nice to be able to use --preset cbr 128 as well.

[theReal]

AFAIK you can't use lame --alt-presets and VBR in Virtualdub so I'd rather use BeSweet.

[Capturebat]

I just did a test and I couldn't tell a difference between the audio quality of the two. The BeSweet one was a little bit louder, even though I had the gain turned off. I'm not using VBR because I don't want to mess with MP4 containers (I heard it's badly supported in AVI).

[KpeX]

Originally posted by Capturebat
I'm not using VBR because I don't want to mess with MP4 containers (I heard it's badly supported in AVI). Not true, use a proper muxing and decent playback software and it works just fine.

[Capturebat]

But you lose compatibility with quite a few players and programs right? How much better in terms of quality is VBR MP3 than CBR MP3?

[KpeX]

I would say substantially higher quality, although this will depend on what CBR bitrate you use. If you use a 320 kbps CBR (the max bitrate for MP3) no VBR stream will beat this (but the VBR will be much smaller for the same quality).

I don't know of any (software) players that have issues playing vbr mp3, and there are plenty of editing softwares that handle vbr mp3 in avi just fine.

[Capturebat]

Found this, http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:vu8rgDEXtFQJ:www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/audio6a.html+VBR+MP3+in+avi&hl=en

It says it can cause speedups or slowdowns in the video, so in some areas A/V sync will be lost. If A/V sync gets lost once in the video, wouldn't it be messed up until the end of the video? I'll try some VBR AVI muxing today.

[KpeX]

From Virtualdub news update 02/Dec/2001

That's very old news and information. Using decent software like VirtualDubMod or AviMuxGUI will not give you any sync or muxing problems.

[Capturebat]

I did some muxing with Nandub and I didn't notice any A/V sync dropout, speed ups, or slow downs. So its pretty safe now to mux VBR into an AVI without any A/V problems? I couldn't tell any diffence between the quality of CBR and VBR, but maybe other people will be able to. One more question, is there a simple way to append 2 of these VBR avis together? I tried the normal way with VDub and it said the audio streams were different. I'm guessing i have to rip the audio and video into separate files, append the 2 audio streams, append the video streams, and then mux it back together.

[Capturebat]

BUMP