Skip to main content

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Any plans for Freeformat VBR in LAME? (Read 3973 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Any plans for Freeformat VBR in LAME?

This is purely for curiosity's sake...off the top of my head I can't imagine any practical application for such a format.

Any plans for Freeformat VBR in LAME?

Reply #1
Freeformat is always CBR.

Any plans for Freeformat VBR in LAME?

Reply #2
In theory, it could be VBR if it's packed inside another container format such as MP4, AVI, MKA, etc.  However, such a scheme would be non-standard and would require modifications to existing decoders to play properly

 

Any plans for Freeformat VBR in LAME?

Reply #3
In theory, it could be VBR if it's packed inside another container format such as MP4, AVI, MKA, etc.  However, such a scheme would be non-standard and would require modifications to existing decoders to play properly


Isn't it mp3 stream in mp4 container a standard? I thought so...


Any plans for Freeformat VBR in LAME?

Reply #4
In theory, it could be VBR if it's packed inside another container format such as MP4, AVI, MKA, etc.  However, such a scheme would be non-standard and would require modifications to existing decoders to play properly


Isn't it mp3 stream in mp4 container a standard? I thought so...


It is.  But for such a scheme to work, decoders would have to rely on the size stored for each "sample" (packet) in the MP4 mdat, rather than trying to parse it from the MP3 header.  I'm not aware of any MP3 decoder APIs that are capable of this, although it would be trivial to add.

Any plans for Freeformat VBR in LAME?

Reply #5
Newer codecs (AAC, Vorbis) are more robust in every way, they've got a better quality-to-filesize ratio. The only reason people still use MP3 is because it's compatible with everything and will play everywhere.

When you go to free-format, you've broken that compatibility, and there's no reason anymore to stay locked in to MP3. Might as well go to better codecs if you're going to break that compatibility. So there's very little incentive for anyone to improve upon freeformat encoding.

Besides, I've got some FLACs that weigh in at under 640 kb/s.