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Topic: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ? (Read 27212 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #50 –
More reason not to use archaic formats at bloated bitrates, even if they can be shown to be superior with 10+ year old test data by people who have not demonstrated any personal listening acuity against codecs/formats that have since received major attention in the way of development.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #51 –
Quote from: Case on
Perhaps Opus won the test because its bitrate was almost 50% lower than the AAC files. Average for the AACs was 127 kbps and for Opus 67 kbps.

I wouldn't say that Opus won that test, as the results are probably similar to within the margin of error.  What you are actually measuring is some tiny difference in power consumption between the decoders on top of a relatively large fixed power consumption just from having the CPU awake and running foobar.    

FWIW, if you want to measure power consumption of codecs on portable devices, I recommend using either a precision current meter, doing a 0-100% battery test, or if you don't want to do a 100% test, log the battery voltage while decoding and then compare to a reference discharge curve.  For rockbox I've usually used the 0-100% method on a spare device, although sometimes I use a current meter if I want to know something very accurately. 

Quote from: IgorC on
And a lot of people have already labeled HE-AAC and Opus formats as "slow" and "power hungry". And it's simply not case.

Opus isn't slow (its similar to MP3 in my experience, maybe a bit faster).  AAC-HE is actually slower (probably 2-2.5x higher complexity due to the QMF).  But both of these formats are relatively fast in an absolute sense, and very likely to be decoded by a DSP on a newer Android device rather than the CPU. 

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #52 –
Quote from: KozmoNaut on
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Are there really any such things as truly hardware MP3 encoders or decoders? Aren't they all specialized microprocessors or DSP executing microcode? Real world examples, please.

I don't have any on hand, but early MP3 players certainly used dedicated hardware to decode MP3, such as the STA013: https://www.pjrc.com/mp3/sta013.html

Some still do, like the cheap Chinese MP3 player in my car. Very basic thing, only plays files in sequence from an SD card, no shuffle or any other features.

It's a dedicated chip, but maybe you would just call it a specialized microprocessor executing microcode. If that's your criteria, yes there are no 100% hardware decoders. I was thinking of dedicated chips running dedicated code.

Most of those are based on the ATJ212X series of processors.  They are a MIPS CPU for the OS, and a 24 bit DSP derived from (IIRC) the ADSP-218x series from analog devices.  They don't run microcode exactly, both the CPU and DSP are general purpose processors running normal code.  They're just highly optimized for audio decoding including onboard SRAM and code execution directly from ROM (to further save memory).  Most don't even have DRAM. 

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #53 –
Quote from: greynol on
More reason not to use archaic formats at bloated bitrates, .....
?????
Case's 8.5 h test shows a battery usage of 7% vs. 9%. IgorC's test also shows the irrelevance of looking at battery life when deciding upon a codec. And these are the only hard facts given here concerning battery life.

I think other than for very special reasons (which a particular person might have) nobody has to really care about
  • storage space
  • battery life
  • sound quality (as long as Opus, AAC, Vorbis, mp3, mpc are used with one of the well-known encoders at an appropriate bitrate setting)
  • device support
The device support may be the most crucial decision factor, but at least in the near future it is not a limiting factor for most people. As long as a lossless archive is available and one is willing to reencode this can never be a problem for the future.

So what we usually see is people figthing for their personal preferences:
  • folks from the dont-waste-any-bit group opt for codecs like Opus or AAC used with low to moderate bitrates
  • folks from the dont-give-away-any-quality group opt for using rather high bitrates
  • folks with a conservative attitude opt for codecs which have shown up well in the past (also if many, many years in the past)
  • folks with a progressive attitude opt for codecs which have shown up well recently (and/or are technically interesting at present) or at least for codecs which are still under development

None of them is wrong, they are all right. Everybody does his choice according to his nature.
We can always find arguments for our personal preferences, but we should not think they are valid for other people.

So as for the OP's question:

I think nobody has given here a strong reason not to use mpc at moderate to high bitrates.
I think the most relevant argument to be considered by the OP is whether he wants to use a codec which is to be considered exotic. This might be a problem in the future under the aspect of device support. Not a problem when willing to reencode from a lossless archive as said before.
lame3995o -Q1.7 --lowpass 17

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #54 –
Quote from: halb27 on
I think the most relevant argument to be considered by the OP is whether he wants to use a codec which is to be considered exotic.

Seems to me that my best reason to choose .mpc for portable use, would be that then I know at a glance what files are transcodes. (Since I do not use it for anything else.)

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #55 –
As long as one doesn't blindly upgrade software and hardware compatibility should not be a major problem.

- Use open formats when possible
- Make notes of your system setup and application versions etc
- Save older and current installers, APK's etc
- Make portable (usb) installations of important apps if permitted
- Keep spare parts / older hardware (pc , nbook, players, phones etc)
- Read changelogs before upgrading anything critical
- If using binary closed formats / apps make sure USB installs can be done easy and no activation mechanism or CP is used.  Older serial number method without activation is OK if you can install it easily with the given code.
- Create VM of a current or older OS.

With mpc take care with SV8 as it is not backwards compatible with SV7 decoders. This may present issues with older players / OS etc.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #56 –
Or you know, just use a format that is widely supported now, and extremely likely to be widely supported for a long time, without having to expend any effort to keep old software versions going?

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #57 –
Quote from: shadowking on
As long as one doesn't blindly upgrade software and hardware compatibility should not be a major problem.
Does a computer crash count as "blind" upgrade? It does happen every now and then.

Quote from: KozmoNaut on
Or you know, just use a format that is widely supported now, and extremely likely to be widely supported for a long time, without having to expend any effort to keep old software versions going?
Staying lossless if I can. As long as one keeps an eye on support (i.e. does not live under a stone until the last Shorten decoder has disappeared from the Internet), one can convert losslessly.

I think RealAudio was "widely supported", and - being backed by the BBC - appeared likely to be "widely supported for a long time" as well. I have a few ancient downloads in that pesky format with the cook codec, which AFAIK fits nothing sensible. Because it is lossy, I keep them. So for the couple of ADPCM-in-WAV files I have, and there are quite a few .WMAs as well.

And of course I keep my MP2s, MP3s and AACs as they are, unless I need to remux or repair.

Video ... If I encounter .ASF or .AVI videos I would like to watch more frequently, I try to remux them. (And .MPG/.MPEG too, just because of fb2k.)


Quote from: Porcus on
Seems to me that my best reason to choose .mpc for portable use, would be that then I know at a glance what files are transcodes. (Since I do not use it for anything else.)
Hey ... I could use it for the Real Audio files. Keeping the original. If an .mpc file sounds annoying, I can always ditch it and go for a higher quality ... or most likely, the annoyances would be Real Audio encoding artifacts anyway ...

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #58 –
Computer crash..  keep backup *hardware*.  Anyway in windows despite all the cosmetic mess compatibility is still mostly intact. I can probably use winamp 2.xx with sv7 on win 10 and vice versa say XP , recent FB2k and sv8.

 People use non-standard non-open  RAR and others even more than 7zip. it never stopped people.  At least with open-specs theres a better chances of someone writing a plugin, player, viewer etc..

Adopting latest and greatest.  Software development is chaotic nowadays. The whole rapid release stuff is causing instability and unwanted changes. (MS, libreoffice, mozilla, google etc). Sooner or later your gonna hit a wall and not recognize computing as you knew it unless you have a fall back plan as I suggested .

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #59 –
Quote from: Porcus on
I think RealAudio was "widely supported", and - being backed by the BBC - appeared likely to be "widely supported for a long time" as well.

But it wasn't widely adopted and loved by the users.

In contrast, MP3 is the standard format for most legal download services (if they don't offer lossless, which is usually FLAC) as well the de facto standard lossy format for less-than-legal filesharing. Storage and bandwidth are cheap, noone cares about the size difference between 320kbps and 160kbps anymore.

If you stay with MP3 or FLAC, it's extremely unlikely that support will ever be lost.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #60 –
Quote from: shadowking on
Computer crash..  keep backup *hardware*. 

You really need to outright love obsolete lossy formats if you are willing to maintain a working-order set of computers to be safe that they can be used. I would rather keep another lossless. An 8 TB hard drive is enough for most.

That said, I do keep a couple of computers with FireWire just because I have FireWire devices, and I even have a mirrored hard drive with a freshly installed and then updated the day before Windows XP support expired - but I do not cherish any Real Audio-thingy enough to want to keep another set of computers. If for some stupid reason I had my life in Real Audio, then I would have tried to keep it usable, but it is better to stick to something that is going to stay.

Quote from: shadowking on
People use non-standard non-open  RAR and others even more than 7zip. it never stopped people.
They are lossless, just like Shorten and FLAC. If you store as .rar and .7z, you can migrate your files to something different when support dwindles - over and over again.  By the way, RAR decoding is open source, although I certainly prefer the openness of 7-zip.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #61 –
What are obsolete lossy formats ? mpc is open and not limited to the PC as was a decade ago.  mpc can be transcoded to make smaller mp3 / aac without much issues . It can be transcoded to lossless format if needed. BTW real player is still maintained.

What you guys are talking is the periods to the 80-90's where most was closed formats (RA) / hardware undergoing rapid changes .  This is not happening today much. The PC architecture is left intact while mobile area is maturing. Upgrade cycles are longer.  Apple had a major transition 15 years ago and since are stable. Windows can still run a lot of win9x era apps and even win 3.1 era using the 32bit version.

Support doesn't dwindle over and over anymore..  This USED to be the case in 80s ~ 00.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #62 –
The problem today is all the rapid release mentality.  The developers want to break apps  / libraries all the time and expect things like codecs and plugins to be modified in order to remain compatible .  Having lots of codecs, plugins , extensions is another example thats pissing them as it would have been easier just to make them disappear.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #63 –
Quote from: shadowking on
What are obsolete lossy formats ? mpc is open and not limited to the PC as was a decade ago.  mpc can be transcoded to make smaller mp3 / aac without much issues . It can be transcoded to lossless format if needed. BTW real player is still maintained.

Why would you ever transcode a lossy format to lossless?

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #64 –
Quote from: KozmoNaut on
Quote from: shadowking on
What are obsolete lossy formats ? mpc is open and not limited to the PC as was a decade ago.  mpc can be transcoded to make smaller mp3 / aac without much issues . It can be transcoded to lossless format if needed. BTW real player is still maintained.

Why would you ever transcode a lossy format to lossless?

If you have to, in order to play it on a different device - or in order to transcode to lossy? The good thing is to avoid the problem and keep the lossless source, but sometimes you are stuck with files someone else decoded.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #65 –
Staying with standards don't guarantee stability :
https://s7.postimg.org/b8n56jkgr/codecs2016.png

You see many are migrating from one to the next While vorbis, mpc are steady. 

MS Word was  / is a 'de facto' standard. How many iterations of the .doc format and now .docx where there ?? many of them totally incompatible.  In contrast wordpad and other RTF / text editors remained steady out of the spotlight without enduring this.  Even a simple ODT  document opens fine in openoffice 1.1 from 2003 without needing any converters.

Migrating many TB's of data for popularity sake regularly is silly even dangerous.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #66 –
Quote from: shadowking on
Staying with standards don't guarantee stability :
https://s7.postimg.org/b8n56jkgr/codecs2016.png

That graph is the result of polling Hydrogenaudio members, who are generally geeky and a lot more interested in new formats than the average Joe.

That this segment of users decides to migrate to newer formats does nothing to diminish the universal support for older formats, such as MP3.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #67 –
The 'universal' mp3 doesn't guarantee anything. When the corporate world will have enough of it for whatever reason they will transcode your collections via some 'auto-tool' to something else like aac or some drm-codec.  I believe at a time this was standard in WMP or Itunes.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #68 –
That sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory to me.

I am not aware of any automatic transcoding being performed in WMP nor in iTunes.

And that doesn't adress the widespread use of MP3 by illegal up/downloaders.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #69 –
There was a time that a collection was auto-transcoded to MS wma or apple aac I can't remember which player it was. There was an option to turn it off but it was on by default.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #70 –
"Auto-transcoded", or transcoded after specifically asking the user whether he wanted to transcode WMA files to AAC? (which I think iTunes would ask to do, as iPods cannot play WMA files).

Remember the cases where people whined that Apple Music deleted their collections? In every case, they had answered "Yes" when asked whether they wanted their local collection deleted after matching it to Apple Music.

In other words, it was perfectly ordinary user error, and it's a non-issue for anyone who doesn't just blindly click "yes" to every dialog box.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #71 –
No asking. They prompted that media files where found and do you wish to 'import' them.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #72 –
Most non geeks wouldn't notice after all the player will play the music.  On a different note try upload a txt, rtf, doc, odt file to MS online / google drives and see what you get back.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #73 –
Quote from: shadowking on
No asking. They prompted that media files where found and do you wish to 'import' them.

ITunes specifically asks you whether you actually want to do this. No, it doesn't show all kinds of warnings about transcoding, but it does specifically tell you what it's going to do (transcode to MP3 or AAC) and lets you cancel the action. And it only happens if you specifically add incompatible formats to your library.

You seem to be extremely invested in continued to use a lossy format with extremely spotty application support and no active development, even going so far as to have elaborate update rituals to keep using it. For no real reason other than sheer stubbornness.

The sheer market penetration of MP3 means its users will never have to face this problem, and the quality at -V0 or 320kbps is comfortably beyond the limits of human hearing.

Re: Compressing Lossless to Lossy - Codec Recommendations ?

Reply #74 –
Keep calm & carry on - and make sure in advance, that you can keep on carrying on calmly.

KozmoNaut:
There was indeed an iTunes bug that deleted what should not have been deleted. But more crucially, license agreements are written so that nobody reads them anyway, and Microsoft did once push WMP "update" where deep down there was a clause that allowed WMP to change the entire operating system and throw out competition. Sounds like a conspiracy theory? Not if you know Apple's and Microsoft's track records. Hey, even the Windows 10 "upgrade" and spyware ...

But that is not going to kill mp3.  There are too many files out there, and mp3 is a lossy format (meaning, one cannot freely migrate existing files). And now patents have expired as well. Even if some other format (AAC?) should happen to take over file lossy file sales - or (more likely!), lossy files for sale is reduced to a niche product - then that is not enough to kill off mp3.

But MPC? Why even recommend it for anything but disposable files? Just did a little websearch for πr8ed discographies and found twenty times as many hits with WMA than with MPC - and that was for BTs where the indexers keep magnets for stuff that has not been found in ten years. And that is MPC vs WMA. Less than half a percent of my lossy audio files are WMA, despite not having attempted to get rid of them (tracking down other formats ... could be hard for old demos).

And the WMA and Vorbis codecs will stay on because there is a lot of video encoded with them. Well I am not so sure about Vorbis, because Google/Youtube will reconvert whenever it suits them, right?