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Topic: GStreamer Encoder vs Official Opus Encoder (Read 3599 times) previous topic - next topic
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GStreamer Encoder vs Official Opus Encoder

Hi All,
I am about to encode my Flac files to opus files but was wondering if the encoder used matters.

For example, I use Soundconverter on Debian Linux for transcoding and I believe that Soundconverter uses Gstreamer to encode audio. I could use the "opusenc" program directly from opus-tools to convert form Flac to opus, but would there be a difference between the two encoding options (i.e. Gstreamer vs opusenc)?

As far as I am aware, the Gstreamer encoder and the opusenc from Xiph will both ultimately use whatever version of libopus0 I have installed (1.2.1 for Debian Stretch).

It makes me wonder why Soundconverter uses Gstreamer at all for opus or vorbis encoding. Why not just use the opusenc or oggenc encoders directly?

Hopefully there is no difference and that the Soundconvert/Gstreamer encoder is not inferior to the Xiph encoder.

Appreciate if anyone can help clarify.

Thanks.


Re: GStreamer Encoder vs Official Opus Encoder

Reply #1
soundconverter use GStreamer because it is a single interface that does all the work, assuming the plugins are present.

GStreamer uses libopus0.  Depending on the version, opusenc may or may not use libopus0 so the results may not be (exactly) the same.

Re: GStreamer Encoder vs Official Opus Encoder

Reply #2
soundconverter use GStreamer because it is a single interface that does all the work, assuming the plugins are present.

My understanding is that GStreamer provides a universal interface to decode any format supported, but weirdly not to encode. Not quite a "single interface". :(

The difference is that merely listing every output format supported by GStreamer in the settings dropdown isn't doable without writing a bunch of code for each.

From a practical standpoint, this means I can't just rip an audiobook, set Soundconverter to downsample to 16 or 22.05KHz mono, and encode the result as Speex for my underpowered DAPs. I keep meaning to give the code a look and figure out how to wire it up, but I never have time or gumption to learn it.

Re: GStreamer Encoder vs Official Opus Encoder

Reply #3
I'm not sure what your point is.  You asked a couple of questions and I answered them.  Now you're complaining about the way Soundconverter works?  Probably the wrong place to get much joy on that front.

Re: GStreamer Encoder vs Official Opus Encoder

Reply #4
I'm not sure what your point is.  You asked a couple of questions and I answered them.  Now you're complaining about the way Soundconverter works?  Probably the wrong place to get much joy on that front.

I'm not the OP. ;)

I just wanted to clarify a technical detail, is all, give a small example of how the difference is relevant to the OP's issue and pull back the curtain a bit, so to speak. Sorry, carry on.

Re: GStreamer Encoder vs Official Opus Encoder

Reply #5
I have converted few flac files to opus using soundconverter and they were all CBR instead of VBR and there is no option for choosing between VBR and CBR. I checked them in foobar2000 which i'm using under wine in Ubuntu. So, i stopped using soundconverter for Opus. Foobar2000 works perfectly under wine on linux.

 

Re: GStreamer Encoder vs Official Opus Encoder

Reply #6
I have converted few flac files to opus using soundconverter and they were all CBR instead of VBR and there is no option for choosing between VBR and CBR. I checked them in foobar2000 which i'm using under wine in Ubuntu. So, i stopped using soundconverter for Opus. Foobar2000 works perfectly under wine on linux.

That's not too clever.  CBR is a fairly specialised feature that definitely isn't the best unless it is absolutely needed.  One of the problems using generic programs, they can be simple to use or powerful, but rarely both.  opusenc doesn't have a massive options list compared to some, but it lets you control the important aspects of an Opus track.  Wrappers like Deadbeef of Foobar are more useful in this respect, they allow all those features to be accessed.  In this case they also allow the newest features to be used, like those in libopusenc, even if they apparently have a few glitches right now.