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Topic: Check resulting filesize without full encoding process (Read 3983 times) previous topic - next topic
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Check resulting filesize without full encoding process

Hi, people

I am testing some codecs, which one I will use for my collection.
Received interesting result for one album:
Code: [Select]
Album "Epica 2017 The Solace System"
Encoder stream format: 96000Hz / 2ch / 24bps
Filesize: 1 035 125 890 bytes

Command line: "flac.exe" -s --ignore-chunk-sizes -8 - -o "out.flac"
Total encoding time: 0:32.265, 55.69x realtime
Filesize: 662 965 887 bytes

Command line: "takc.exe" -e -p4m -ihs -md5 -tn4 -silent - "out.tak"
Total encoding time: 0:22.235, 80.82x realtime
Filesize: 481 876 903 bytes

Command line: "wavpack.exe" -i -q -hh -m - "out.wv"
Total encoding time: 0:27.078, 66.36x realtime
Filesize: 642 835 347 bytes

Command line: "wavpack.exe" -i -q -hh -x6 -m - "out_x6.wv"
Total encoding time: 24:43.625, 1.21x realtime
Filesize: 458 503 627 bytes

Last result with wavpack -x6 very amaze me. And I have a question:
How can I check resulting filesize for -hhx6 wavpack without full encoding process? Because it's take much time for encode.

p,s. sorry for bad english :)
“We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.” – Norbert Wiener

Re: Check resulting filesize without full encoding process

Reply #1
In my experience, TAK and WavPack Extra are more efficient with streams of low entropy/complexity that are highly compressible, such as upsampled content, LFE bass channel in surround sound, or with near mono sound with tiny differences between channels. You could make a guess based in these criteria. I would never use WavPack with more than x4. Most compression gain is usually attained with this mode.

Re: Check resulting filesize without full encoding process

Reply #2
You simply cannot. When a huge wavfile has a very low complexity at the beginning and very complex sound at the last parts of the file, the ratio at the end can differ a lot. You can only know that when encoding the file.

I once had my entire collection encoded to FLAC and WavPack at the same time. I converted the FLAC's to WavPack and compared the size. At a collection of about 1TB, the difference was (if I recall correctly) less than 20GB's.

The programs I use (Foobar, Kodi) are compatible with WavPack, but an analyzing tool I have didn't.
For that little gain in compression ratio I chose to keep using the FLAC's.

Maybe some time in the future when at my work the current VM hosts are beïng replaced (those are 48 core servers with loads of memory >100GB+). Maybe I will test again and convert with the most insanely slow compression possible with WavPack. Plenty of Xeon power then ;-)

Re: Check resulting filesize without full encoding process

Reply #3
I would never use WavPack with more than x4. Most compression gain is usually attained with this mode.
Thanks. My bad, I never even tried other modes x1..x5. x4 gave me more encoding speed with slight difference in size.

You simply cannot. When a huge wavfile has a very low complexity at the beginning and very complex sound at the last parts of the file, the ratio at the end can differ a lot. You can only know that when encoding the file.
I thought, maybe WV has option for one-pass testing of wav-file, that can show me estimated size in extra mode. Very approximate size will be good too.
In my opinion, TAK will be the best choice. But its proprietarity and no activity about 5 years troubles me very much. Now I tend to choose FLAC because of its great decode speed and slight difference in filesize compare to WV in most cases. But if some albums can give me this amazing compression in WV extra mode, hell yeah, I glad to use WV.
“We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.” – Norbert Wiener

Re: Check resulting filesize without full encoding process

Reply #4
I would never use WavPack with more than x4. Most compression gain is usually attained with this mode.
Thanks. My bad, I never even tried other modes x1..x5. x4 gave me more encoding speed with slight difference in size.

You simply cannot. When a huge wavfile has a very low complexity at the beginning and very complex sound at the last parts of the file, the ratio at the end can differ a lot. You can only know that when encoding the file.
I thought, maybe WV has option for one-pass testing of wav-file, that can show me estimated size in extra mode. Very approximate size will be good too.
In my opinion, TAK will be the best choice. But its proprietarity and no activity about 5 years troubles me very much. Now I tend to choose FLAC because of its great decode speed and slight difference in filesize compare to WV in most cases. But if some albums can give me this amazing compression in WV extra mode, hell yeah, I glad to use WV.

I use flac. At 1TB of music the difference between WV and Flac was about 20-30GB. Flac is supported by even my car, so at this moment it's the best choice for me, even though I like WV very much.

Re: Check resulting filesize without full encoding process

Reply #5
even though I like WV very much.

Me too. I use FLAC for nearly everything, but WV for 54 rips with pre-emphasis. Reasons:
* I keep rips unprocessed (good for later AccurateRip verification) and process on-the-fly with fb2k using foo_deemph and a PRE_EMPHASIS tag
* Should I happen to accidentally lose the PRE_EMPHASIS tag, then I can easily find WavPack files among my FLACs
* Since they sound wrong on everything else, I do not bring them around (only encoded to lossy), so I need not worry over compatibility
* I like WavPack, and so I thought that this is a valid excuse to use it :-)

Later I got a different "excuse", when floating-point PCM files started showing up in the wild. Evidently some artists justs publish wav files straight from their editing applications, without thinking that 32-bit float is not your usual CDDA stream. For those files, there are not so many choices. WavPack and OptimFrog, I think that's it? Plus .wav then, for those who don't fancy checksums ...