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Topic: Opus 1.3.1 (Read 47016 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #50 –
Quote from: o-l-a-v on
Quote from: MinPower on
How do i use this in foobar?
If you want to use the default Opus encoder profile, it will prompt you for path to opusenc.exe if it does not already have one. Else you can change it in advanced settings, I think.

Or you can make a custom converter profile/ setting, telling foobar2000 what excact EXE to use in that profile.
Example command line parameter for VBR 128kbps.
  • --quiet --bitrate 128 --vbr --ignorelength - %d


Thanks so much for the help!

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #54 –
Thank you NetRanger! 

And now I hope there is someone out there that could fork Opus and modify it so it behaves like all the other codecs in the Replaygain arena like  FLAC, M4A, MP3 and Vorbis!  Opus  just wrecks havoc with players that can not read or handle that special little R128 gain header correctly.  Opus is an auditory nuisance when you have a mixed playlist when each selection is using a different codecs.  Sorry for the rant, I love opus but I don't think any developer out there is going to make special accommodations for Replaygain compliance for Opus in their player(s).  I would love to use Opus as my primary codec but it is on that Replaygain beat of its own and that is why I can't use it so forkit!

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #55 –
Quote from: dave_swanson on
And now I hope there is someone out there that could fork Opus and modify it so it behaves like all the other codecs in the Replaygain arena like  FLAC, M4A, MP3 and Vorbis!  Opus  just wrecks havoc with players that can not read or handle that special little R128 gain header correctly.  Opus is an auditory nuisance when you have a mixed playlist when each selection is using a different codecs.  Sorry for the rant, I love opus but I don't think any developer out there is going to make special accommodations for Replaygain compliance for Opus in their player(s).  I would love to use Opus as my primary codec but it is on that Replaygain beat of its own and that is why I can't use it so forkit!

I'm not sure what you think forking the codec will achieve, because
  • if the forked codec still produces the same format, then you're still facing the exact same issue as with libopus, and
  • if the format produced by the forked codec isn't compatible with the current Opus format, then you're facing an entirely separate - and worse - issue, which is that your forked format isn't even playable anywhere.

What you can do if you're desperate, is to either manually add the REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN, REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK, REPLAYGAIN_REFERENCE_LOUDNESS, REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN and REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK Vorbis comment fields to Opus with a tagging tool which supports custom metadata field entries like TagScanner, or to use an encoding tool/frontend which automatically copies these fields to the created Opus files if the source files (presumably FLAC) contain them, like XMedia Recode.

Now, it's important to note that these Vorbis comment fields are discouraged - but technically not unsupported - by the Opus format specification:
Quote
   To avoid confusion with multiple normalization schemes, an Opus
   comment header SHOULD NOT contain any of the REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN,
   REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK, REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN, or
   REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK tags, unless they are only to be used in some
   context where there is guaranteed to be no such confusion.
with the phrase "SHOULD NOT" explicitly meaning:
Quote
4. SHOULD NOT   This phrase, or the phrase "NOT RECOMMENDED" mean that
   there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances when the
   particular behavior is acceptable or even useful, but the full
   implications should be understood and the case carefully weighed
   before implementing any behavior described with this label.

That said, I know for a fact that Rockbox supports using these fields for ReplayGain purposes, but I haven't tried it with any other players, so your mileage may vary.

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #57 –
I remember reading on the codec's official website that the goal was to keep improving, but several years have passed and there have been no improvements in terms of quality. Version 1.3.1 had no significant changes in that, what future holds for Opus?

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #58 –
You have to divorce from the notion that software always has to be updated. As long as it is around, performing, stable, compatible, and simple is all we should care about. It is good enough.

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #59 –
How long has it been since LAME had any changes that theoretically would lead to quality improvements?  Over a decade?

(My point is as far as I can tell, most CODECs have probably gotten all the low hanging quality improvements)

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #60 –
LAME hasn't had any major quality improvements since 3.99 beta 0 in 2011 or so, but that's also around the same time Opus was released. It seems Opus reached maturity much faster than LAME did, which isn't too surprising, since the field of lossy audio compression was well established by then.

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #61 –
AFAIK Vorbis's full potential likely remains unachieved. Maybe that's just how the cookie crumbles - the formats are designed with headroom for improvement potential that just becomes too cumbersome to reach.

Presumably by now only MP3 is in the opposite of that situation.

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #62 –
There are developments in lossy audio, depending on its intended use. Sound quality isn't all, sometimes latency is more important. And in the age of COVIDeoconferences there will often be so much bandwidth that squeezing audio size isn't the chief concern. The listening tests subforum has some food for thought. E.g. https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=120997.0 and several threads by @Kamedo2

It would surprise me if Opus couldn't be improved in some areas, but are those what it will be used for? If not, ... fine! That said, when https://wiki.xiph.org/OpusTodo still has "To do" for 1.2 when we are at 1.3, ...


(As for Vorbis' potential, it provided for bit peeling - did anyone ever get a working implementation?)

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #63 –
Quote from: doccolinni on
AFAIK Vorbis's full potential likely remains unachieved. Maybe that's just how the cookie crumbles - the formats are designed with headroom for improvement potential that just becomes too cumbersome to reach.
Vorbis's main purpose was to be an open competitor to MP3, and now that Opus exists and does everything Vorbis did, except better, there's probably no point in trying to improve Vorbis further. I doubt the lack of development is due to technical limitations; it probably just stems from a lack of developer interest. Why work on Vorbis when you could work on Opus?
 

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #64 –
Quote from: Aleron Ives on
now that Opus exists and does everything Vorbis did, except better, there's probably no point in trying to improve Vorbis further. I doubt the lack of development is due to technical limitations; it probably just stems from a lack of developer interest. Why work on Vorbis when you could work on Opus?
That was kinda the situation a number of years ago, I guess when WebM and YouTube went full Opus.
Now ... why work on Opus when Opus works by itself?

(Uh, and Theora is long forgotten I guess.)

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #65 –
Quote from: Aleron Ives on
Vorbis's main purpose was to be an open competitor to MP3
Is "open competitor to mp3" really even a selling point now since the last known mp3 patent expired over 5 years ago?
And this is coming from someone, who to riff off of the "most interesting man in the world" meme,  can say "I don't always encode lossy audio, but when I do, I encode to Opus."

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #66 –
Quote from: Aleron Ives on
Quote from: doccolinni on
AFAIK Vorbis's full potential likely remains unachieved. Maybe that's just how the cookie crumbles - the formats are designed with headroom for improvement potential that just becomes too cumbersome to reach.
Vorbis's main purpose was to be an open competitor to MP3, and now that Opus exists and does everything Vorbis did, except better, there's probably no point in trying to improve Vorbis further. I doubt the lack of development is due to technical limitations; it probably just stems from a lack of developer interest. Why work on Vorbis when you could work on Opus?

I mean sure, but the question is incomplete - what was the incentive for making a technical improvement to Vorbis in the form of Opus, when Vorbis itself wasn't even developed to the point that its technical limitations started being a hindrance?

It's a sort of chicken-and-egg problem - sure, once you have a new format that's better than a pre-existing one, it doesn't make much sense to further develop the older format (although it's debatable how much that applies to Vorbis, because the hardware support for Opus is lagging behind Vorbis even more than it is lagging for Vorbis behind MP3 - just check any currently manufactured portable media player). But in order for that new format to come into existence in the first place, a shift of energy and effort away from improving the pre-existing format and into the development of the new format was necessary. And that clearly can't be explained by the new format being better than the old one, because the new format doesn't even exist before it is developed.

And also, is this what awaits Opus itself as well? Opus likewise still has room for improvement, yet it seems the energy and pace of development has sort of lulled.

I suppose the crucial question is - are lossy audio format developers stuck in that same loop I get stuck in with Bethesda games, where I'm all excited about creating a new character, but then when I actually start playing the game with that new character, I get bored?

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #67 –
Quote from: binaryhermit on
Quote from: Aleron Ives on
Vorbis's main purpose was to be an open competitor to MP3
Is "open competitor to mp3" really even a selling point now since the last known mp3 patent expired over 5 years ago?
No, but note the past tense in what you quote.

And - I guess with the exception of YouTube before they turned Opus - Vorbis never really turned out to be as much of an open competitor as it served as a threat of such competition. Thus it fulfilled part of its purpose by chilling Fraunhofer and other MP3 IP claimants at bay. Read the introduction of the Wikipedia entry about that. It refers to https://www.xiph.org/about/  for this - see the headline "Example: An 'open' standard closes".

That was 1998. Fifteen years later, Vorbis had helped - not single-handedly though - achieve quite a few of the objectives for launching it, by just being there and being good enough. Fraunhofer had to think twice over trying to charge a cent for each .mp3 file created. And the DRM infestation could have fared much better hadn't the big competition - which turned out to be MP3, but which might have been "MP3 & Vorbis" had Fraunhofer & friends been more careless - been so much more tempting.

... dang, the Xiph.org wiki still hasn't picked up that Opus even allowed in WebM: https://wiki.xiph.org/index.php?title=OpusFAQ&oldid=13856#Will_Opus_replace_Vorbis_in_video_files.3F

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #68 –
Quote from: Porcus on
(Uh, and Theora is long forgotten I guess.)
Theora was an open competitor to DivX/XviD, and all of them were obsoleted by VP8/H.264, so I don't blame Xiph for abandoning Theora at all.

Quote from: doccolinni on
And also, is this what awaits Opus itself as well? Opus likewise still has room for improvement, yet it seems the energy and pace of development has sort of lulled.
I suppose that's possible, but it seems like the momentum on lossy audio development has slowed overall, perhaps because it's reached the point of diminishing returns. Although AAC and Opus are superior to MP3, they don't even manage to reach a 2X compression advantage over MP3 if you're trying to reach transparency. HA listening tests indicate that 96 kbps AAC/Opus are very respectable but not quite transparent, whereas 128 kbps MP3 is very respectable but not quite transparent, either, at least as far as the test samples are concerned.

Compatibility is also a huge factor. I see no reason to use AAC or Opus at ~128 kbps when LAME V3 has essentially perfect compatibility and produces only slightly larger files.

Is it possible to come up with a new lossy codec that will achieve transparency on most material at 64 kbps? Maybe, but considering how fast Internet speeds are and how large hard drives have become, is there any point in trying to develop that codec when current lossy options are more than adequate?

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #69 –
There are other reasons to use Opus than sound quality. It was developed for low latency. Of course it had to perform well in order to be adopted, but with all the know-how of twenty years of lossy compression (and the CPU available to do the compression job!), it isn't much of a suprise to see it outperform MP3 in tests.

As for compatibility ... sure, MP3 plays everywhere, but what current players cannot handle AAC in MP4 container?
Myself I started using Opus for portable use because at the time, all my .opus files would be transcodes and I would know they were therefore disposable. Besides, it was for a while fun to hear 32 kbit/s sounding like music, but the "disposable" part came into play quite soon. (At the risk of TOS8 violation here, but ... I guess the intransparency of 32 kbit/s isn't controversial.)

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #70 –
Quote from: Aleron Ives on
Quote from: doccolinni on
And also, is this what awaits Opus itself as well? Opus likewise still has room for improvement, yet it seems the energy and pace of development has sort of lulled.
I suppose that's possible, but it seems like the momentum on lossy audio development has slowed overall, perhaps because it's reached the point of diminishing returns. Although AAC and Opus are superior to MP3, they don't even manage to reach a 2X compression advantage over MP3 if you're trying to reach transparency. HA listening tests indicate that 96 kbps AAC/Opus are very respectable but not quite transparent, whereas 128 kbps MP3 is very respectable but not quite transparent, either, at least as far as the test samples are concerned.

Compatibility is also a huge factor. I see no reason to use AAC or Opus at ~128 kbps when LAME V3 has essentially perfect compatibility and produces only slightly larger files.

Is it possible to come up with a new lossy codec that will achieve transparency on most material at 64 kbps? Maybe, but considering how fast Internet speeds are and how large hard drives have become, is there any point in trying to develop that codec when current lossy options are more than adequate?

Pretty much everything you've said provides all the more reason for me to wish you had addressed the first question I've posed in that post (as well as the elaboration of the rationale behind it in the 2nd paragraph), rather than the second one which was more of a rhetorical aside.

Re: Opus 1.3.1

Reply #71 –
IIRC there was some disagreement regarding whether Vorbis was truly unencumbered by patents, so perhaps Xiph simply wanted a clean break to ensure the next format would be indisputably open. As for any technical reasons why it made more sense to start developing Opus instead of continuing to improve Vorbis, I'm not qualified to make such an assessment. All I know is Opus uses some newer techniques (CELT, CELP, SILK), so maybe those techniques are so much better than the plain MDCT approach that Vorbis uses that improvements to Vorbis would not transfer over to Opus. Maybe a developer can give a definitive answer to your question.