[X4U] Most advanced Video Codec WMV?

[Philip J Robar]

On Jan 21, 2007, at 5:08 AM, Stroller wrote:

> On 19 Jan 2007, at 19:58, B. Kuestner wrote:
>> ...
>> By the way, you also have that for MP3: You can tell iTunes to  
>> encode MP3 and invest more or less effort in the task. So setting  
>> it to 128 kb/s VBR will give you different results if you tell  
>> iTunes to be quick about it or analyze the audio material much  
>> longer to get the best result. But even then the LAME encoder still  
>> does better at the same bitrate than iTunes' built-in encoder as  
>> far as MP3 is concerned, even if you put iTunes to the highest  
>> encoding effort/quality.
>
> Hi there,
>
> I'm not doubting you, but curious. What are your grounds for this  
> statement? Have you done a blind listening-test of LAME v iTunes  
> encoding yourself, or is this widely documented on the web? Or is it  
> simply that posters to the LAME mailing list regularly make the same  
> assertion?

Yes, there have been extensive blind tests done of various audio  
encoders. LAME is consistently found to be one of the best lossy  
encoders and iTune's MP3 encoder is consistently an also ran. Lame,  
using --preset fast extreme (best VBR setting) or  --preset insame  
(320 kbs CBR), gives results that are indistinguishable, by most  
people, from the source.

I no longer have the references from when I looked into this, but some  
web searching, particularly at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/ will turn  
them up.

I use the iTunes-LAME script (with a Velocity Engine optimized version  
of LAME) from within iTunes to encode to MP3. Several other programs  
use LAME as their MP3 encoder.


Phil
--
Lanie, I'm going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for  
everyone. That's worth going to jail for. That's worth anything. --  
Cory Doctorow, Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present - Printcrime