Can VV deal with mp3 files ?

Shredder wrote on 8/9/2002, 3:39 PM

Robert,

This works fine. I've mixed mp3s & wavs of differing sample rates. I've also used all kinds of mp3s of different bit rates, CBR & VBR.

Just make sure that in Project properties you set The audio sample rate to whatever your output medium will be (44.1 for CD or 48 for DV), and set "Resample quality" to "Best" -- A word of warning, the resample quality setting does not stick, even if you check 'Start all new projects...' so make sure you check it for each new project.

Keep in mind that the need to resample is the same for CDs @ 44.1 as it is for mp3s.

Whenever you render the project it will resample to the appropriate rate.

- Jon

salad wrote on 8/9/2002, 4:53 PM

Speaking of mp3's....
Is VV 3.0C supposed to have the ability to encode mp3's? It's showing I have 19 evaluation encodes left. The registration process doesn't work.

Kills me......I must have 3-4 programs that can encode mp3's for free. Windows Media Player(via some free DL I stumbled on), Music Match, to name a few.

Is this right?

Chienworks wrote on 8/9/2002, 5:04 PM

You should be able to register the MP3 encoder and receive unlimited encoding right there at that screen. Call tech support and they'll walk you through it. I've done it several times with every SonicFoundry title i have and it's always worked.

salad wrote on 8/9/2002, 5:21 PM

Thanks Chienworks............I could have sworn that this was all set up and registered way back.
SoFo & registry quirks.....
The utility called "System Mechanic" is natorious for wiping out the Options/Pref's in Vegas, with it's registry cleaning tool. Has no affect on any other program.
Like Premiere, VV should have it's settings and preferences stored somewhere other than the.........Metrics???...in the registry.

Call tech support? Hmmm! No, I'll try fixing this myself. Must be an old registry entry getting mixed up, maybe Video Factory did this. I don't have time for being put on hold again.
NOT a big deal.
Thanks for the come back!!!
Love the website!

Shredder wrote on 8/9/2002, 5:23 PM

I still wouldn't use SoFo's encoder. The LAME encoder is the widely accepted standard in the mp3 community. It has been collaborately developed in the open source community by a numbr of acoustic engineers and has had extensive psycho-acoustic model tuning to get as near to CD quality in blind listening tests. Noting beats the '--alt-preset standard' setting. It works right from the command line, if you give it a wav file name it will give you back an mp3.

I lot of the well known encoders bundled with the apps you mentioned have been known to balk at certain types of complex music. LAME has lots of routines that analyses the type of music & applies different models as needed.

Check out http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/ for more info.

It would be really cool if VV could link in an external encoder, like other apps do (Audiograbber etc.)

- Jon

Sr_C wrote on 8/9/2002, 5:39 PM

"I mix audio from CD and audio from the miniDV camcorder, which is 16 bits/48 KHz."

If you are ripping tracks from CD's to use in your project then you should always always always rip them directly to .wav format. If you do not then you are compressing/decompressing unnecessarily which will result in a significiant loss of quality. On the other hand, if you download a Mp3 then I wouldn't bother converting to .wav before using in your project, loading the Mp3 into Vegas would be just fine, and it is a nice option to have.

A good analogy would be that if you chose to convert all of your DV clips to Mpeg before you loaded them into Vegas. Doesn't really make sense.

salad wrote on 8/9/2002, 5:39 PM

Thanks!
I've heard that it's not the best idea to rip mp3's to the HD from the CD. Is this true? Better to transfer as a wave file 1st? Less chances of corruption?

I have that cdfs.vxd for 98 that let's explorer "see" the contents of an audio cd as wave files. Is there something like that for XP?

Pat

Shredder wrote on 8/9/2002, 6:03 PM

I've encoded about 15,000 mp3s over the years, and have had every problem you could imagine, and used every tool.

I used audiograbber to do my extractions. It's simple but has nice jitter correction routines that let you know if you've had any problem. It's really fast & the guy who writes it is really nice & helpful when it comes to support.

AG will rip to an intermediate wav file, and then make an mp3. A nice thing audio grabber does is let you extract the wavs, but batch encode them later. That way you can rip a bunch of CDs, a few minutes a piece and then 'set & forget' the encode to go overnight.

Some people swear by a ripper called EAC (Exact Audio Copy) -- it does all kinds of insane double & triple checking to make sure the rip was 100% accurate. While i'm sure that this is the only way to be sure, it's not worth the fact that this app is insanely slow. I've had NO problems ripping any tracks with AG. That's the way I go.

As far as your cdfs thing, I don't know. Check google.

- Jon

Sr_C wrote on 8/9/2002, 6:26 PM

programs that rip tracks directly to Mp3 from a CD are just compressing on the fly. If your goal is to create a Mp3 then there is no need to rip to .wav first and then compress to Mp3. However if your goal is to import the best quality music into Vegas then you should rip to .wav and leave it .wav. If file space is not that much a concern then I would have all of your audio files to be used in projects originate as the .wav format.

salad wrote on 8/9/2002, 6:48 PM

That's good 'sound' advice! "I hear ya"

Thanks!

Sr_C wrote on 8/9/2002, 7:01 PM

Wow, those were some pretty bad puns man.

I don't think I can 'listen' to this any longer, I'm gonna have to 'sound' off ;)

later, -Shon

salad wrote on 8/9/2002, 7:16 PM

15,000 mp3's.......ripped?! WOW! How many DL'd?

OK, I just happen to have Audio Grabber 1.6 on file........I just installed it.........It went right for the audio CD in the other drive....Nice! This looks good! Let's see if it works in XP. I'm assuming this is an old version...
I haven't been ripping much lately, but I better get busy before it's illegal or impossible:-)

What do you like to use for sample rate on archiving audio cd's? 192.....320?

Thanks for the wave advice. Vegas seems to do a nice job at extracting the cd track to wave. It actually helped me pinpoint a "dirty" spot on the cd. One of the tracks ripped to mp3 in MM & WMP played back horribly. I used Vegas to extract the problem track, and it gave me an error message about half way thru. Took some mineral spirits to the cd, then dried it. Vegas then extracted it perfectly. Phewww!
I heard those CD polisher things are pretty good! ?

Thanks Jon

pat

Shredder wrote on 8/9/2002, 8:00 PM

Pat,

AG's good helping you detect bad tracks, it has status displays for each track, indicating sync issues etc. It has various modes to rip & can usually get the track one way or another in one piece.

My wife's brutal on her CDs (laying on the car floor etc.) & they get scratched to the point that they won't play. I use AG to rip them & then make a new CD for her which works fine... since AG does jitter correction & re-reads, usualy the copies are perfect.

99% of my collection is legit, ripped from CDs my wife & I had (I used to work at a raido station), or from friends & family (I guess those are only semi-legit). I have them all on a single 80GB hard drive, serving to my whole house. I'm looking into getting a Rio Receiver audio device on ebay to access the files via internet (hooked up to my stereo) (about $180).

I also make my own mp3s, recorded off of satellite. I have a huge collection of comedy, a lot of which isn't available on CD. I just finished making Robin Williams' new HBO special, I used VV to break out the tracks (the guys so manic - 56 topics in the first 50 minutes!), and then AG to encode the mp3s.

As far as quality goes, the LAME encoder has quality based settings, that encode based on a perceptual quality level. These are VBR files, and they vary depending on the music. I use 'alt-preset standard', most are 256-320KBps average, but these bad boys are 99.9% CD Quality. Now I don't care if my wife trashes a CD, I just rip a new one from backup...

LAME's really the way to go. If you're gonna use AG more, you should get v 1.81 -- lots of improvements over 1.6

Enjoy the revolution... while it lasts

- Jon