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: Ac3 encoder Quality & MP2 (Read 10680 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Ac3 encoder Quality & MP2

Hi,

I am new to AC3 (Dolby Digital) audio quality differences between encoders.  I know of a few (Steinberg, Sonic Foundry, SonicDVD, etc).  What are your opinions of these in terms of quality?  Also how do the free ones stand up?

Also how do the best MP2 encoders compare with AC3 for stereo?

THanks.

Ac3 encoder Quality & MP2

Reply #1 –
Quote
I am new to AC3 (Dolby Digital) audio quality differences between encoders.  I know of a few (Steinberg, Sonic Foundry, SonicDVD, etc).  What are your opinions of these in terms of quality?

IIRC, they all use the same encoding libraries provided by Dolby (v6.2.2), so the quality would be the same.

Quote
Also how do the free ones stand up?


The only free AC3 encoder I know of is ffmpeg's. It's just a basic implementation of teh algorithms with minimal tweaking. Quality is quite bad.

Quote
Also how do the best MP2 encoders compare with AC3 for stereo?


They have more or less the same quality at same bitrates. It depends a lot on the material being encoded, since MP2 is a subband encoding scheme and AC3 is transform.

Ac3 encoder Quality & MP2

Reply #2 –
Is BeSweet's ac3 encoder based on ffmpeg? Is the quality using BeSweet quite bad then?

Ac3 encoder Quality & MP2

Reply #3 –
yes, hence yes.
your attention to my (old) warning in the BeSweet FAQ.

btw, support for ac3enc.dll had been removed since v1.5b24.

Ac3 encoder Quality & MP2

Reply #4 –
Yeah, I can confirm that the quality is fairly bad using BeSweet's ac3enc. I've re-encoded a 448 ac3 track to 384 ac3 (because of doing an NTSC --> PAL conversion), and the output is fairly bad (listenable, but not great).

Also, the speed wasn't great either: I get about 2x realtime on an Athlon XP2000+. I guess this is still quicker than commercial encoders though...

Ac3 encoder Quality & MP2

Reply #5 –
so what about the intervideo encoder (iviaudio.ax) and cheap commercial programs like imtoo mpeg encoder and TMPGEnc AC-3 encoder plugin?

anyone know about the speed / quality of these encoders? or what source they're based on? (dolby digital libraries, ffmpeg, ...)