Exporting, compressing and multiplexing
your audio for distribution.

Exporting your Movie

First of all, as you should know by now, when you are exporting your movie from your editing program you should always use uncompressed PCM wav as your audio stream. Also, you shouldn't change the sample rate - if you are using a 44.1kHz source then export it as such. For this guide you should export your audio as a separate wav. See the exporting guide for more info.

OK, this is where the guide will split into 3 parts:

1) Compressing audio for your DivX/XviD

2) Compressing audio for your MPEG-1/2

3) Compressing audio using higher quality but less standard methods (Variable Bitrate, Ogg etc.)

Compressing Audio for your DivX

AVI files can have numerous audio compression types but for most of you the only one you need to think about is MPEG layer 3 audio.

Now, there is much speculation about the best mp3 encoder. Like most of the mpeg specs, the quality varies per encoder although every mp3 player can play back mp3 audio from any encoder. So, which mp3 encoder is the best and where can you get them from?

Frauenhofer MP3 Codec - people call this the "reference" mp3 codec that all others should be compared to. I must admit, it is very very good - especially for constant bitrate MP3s. There is a version of this codec supplied with Divx3.11a. However, I think it's possibly been superseded by the LAME mp3 implementation, which is what I recommend you use. If you want to use Frauenhoffer then try installing the Divx3.11a codec and making sure it overwrites all files. You will then be able to access it in virtualdub's audio compression. However, if you want to take my advice, you'll use LAME

LAME MP3 - this is presently in my opinion the best mp3 encoding option available. Even moreso because it's free :) Although the codec is usually not designed for compression directly in virtualdub there is an ACM implementation which is what we will use to encode our audio. It is part of the AMVapp.

Quality Saving Tip - if you were using an mp3 as a source (shame on you :P) and made a wav file from it for editing, you will be losing quality again when reencoding to mp3. If you can, make sure that there is no silence at the start of your video (so that the first frame of the video is the first frame of the audio) then you can use the original mp3 file for the audio stream using Nandub. See the next page for how to do this.

Encoding your MP3 Audio in Virtualdub/Nandub

This method is very simple and involves importing your wav audio to virtualdub and selecting Lame MP3 compression settings. (You may need to download the AMVapp for the LAME ACM MP3 codec)

For this conversion you will need to have the wav separate from your video which, if you don't have already, you can do with this guide or you can export your audio separately in your video editing program. This is merely to make sure that everyone is doing the same thing :)

Setup Options

You should ideally add your audio either during the 2nd pass of your DivX/XviD encode or by muxing it after. To mux the audio after you have encoded the video, load your encoded video into Virtualdub and in the Video menu choose "direct stream copy".

To compress you audio in Virtualdub, go to the audio menu. Choose "Wav source..." and load the wav file of your audio stream. Now choose Full Processing mode. Now choose "compression..."

Select Lame MP3 on the left. In the box on the right, a long list of settings will appear. The first thing you should ask yourself is what is the "sample frequency of my audio and is it in stereo?". CDs are always 44.1KHz, dvds are 48KHz. There is a problem that lots of people seem to have in Virtualdub with "Audio Compression not possible" errors. So please read this carefully:

Virtualdub cannot encode something at 44.1kHz Stereo if the source is 48kHz or mono etc. The reason you are getting the error is because you are encoding the stream without converting the input to match the selected compression type. So, make sure that you select the right options for your input audio - if you have a 48kHz stream then choose that as the encoding option.

It is possible to convert the audio in Virtualdub or Nandub by Choosing Audio -> Conversion but I personally wouldn't recommend it. The only time I could see conversion to be worthwhile is if you have a 48kHz input stream and want to make sure people with old soundcards can play it but to be honest, if they can't play 48kHz audio then they probably can't play divxes. Converting upwards is a waste of valuable bits, so don't do it.

In the Lame compression box you will see a list like this:

These mean as follows: 44.1KHz audio at 320kbits per second, Constant BitRate, Stereo. The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that there are ABR (Average BitRate) options. This is a "good thing" and they actually work. I recommend choosing 160kbps ABR but anything 128 or higher will be "ok". If you can do 192 or higher then that would be even better but it depends on how much space you want to spend on your audio encode.

Interleaving - This is worth talking about briefly as it designates how your audio will be 'joined' to the video. Audio is separated and processed in frames just like video and for playback it is best if they are interleaved. Check out the interleaving option but the default setting of 1 frame is fine for this.

When you've set everything up, choose "Save as Avi" and you're done.

Note: If when trying to compress your audio in Virtualdub you notice that the Audio Stream stops at a few kb, then you will need to go into Options > Preferences... then choose the AVI tab and select Do Not Correct MPEG Layer III Audio Streams. If this is not selected then the Lame encoder and Virtualdub fight it out and you don't get any audio. Don't worry though, it will all work well all the same.

Compressing Audio for your MPEG 1/2

Most of you will be wanting to know about encoding audio for MPEG 1 but this guide is also useful for MPEG2 stuff.

MPEG audio

For most people the choice of audio compression will be no choice at all. Mpeg-1 layer 2 audio is what ErMaC recommends in his guide and indeed it is the standard... you should never use Mpeg1 layer 1 audio because it's seriously old and seriously crap (it's pre-vcd which is pre 1993). So, mpeg1 layer 2 it is.

Mind you, it is possible to use MP3 audio in your mpeg video files. The only problem with this is that they aren't compatible with hardware playback - so vcds, dvd players and hardware mpeg players will all have trouble with mp3 audio but in terms of playback in software mode there is no problem whatsoever in using an MP3 stream for the audio (except really really old pcs like P100s etc might get lagged).

[note - do not use mp3 for convention submissions as they often use hardware players]

The choice is yours - I'll describe how to do good encodes with both mp2 and mp3 audio but you need to decide whether you want to have the video more compliant (which, if you are using ErMaC's TMPGenc method it wont be anyway) or smaller/better quality audio-wise. If you are doing an MPEG2 video file for a DVD master then you'll have to choose mpeg layer 2 audio (unless you are DVD authoring where you could possibly use WAV PCM but if you know much about authoring then you know more than me already)

For this, the program used will be TMPGenc which you should know about from ErMaC's guide.

mp2 - TMPG's audio encoding capabilities are ok.. but they're nothing special. There is a better way to get quality audio when encoding with TMPG using an addon program called tooLAME. This is a simple .exe file that you can put anywhere on your computer. Once you've extracted it, load up TMPG and choose Options -> Environmental Settings:

In the External Tool tab you can point TMPG to programs that will do parts of the conversion for you. As you can see I have external programs for layer-2 (mp2), Layer-3 (mp3) and sample rate changing. The one you need is the Layer-2 (mp2) audio which you should point to the tooLAME file you have extracted like I have done.

Audio encoding settings in TMPG are fairly simple and the minimum quality settings I think you should choose are:

Of course, make sure the sample rate is the same as your input file. If you think that Joint Stereo loses too much of the stereo separation for you then by all means choose normal Stereo for better sound. As for bitrate... well larger is better but for mpeg layer 2 audio you don't really want to be going any less than 192. 128kbps may be ok for mp3s but it's not good for mp2 audio. 224kbps is the standard for vcd audio so that's what I recommend. If you are doing an MPEG2 DVD master of your video then don't skimp on the audio - choose 384kbps.

That should be all you need to know for mp2 audio in your mpeg file.

mp3 - TMPG doesn't have a default option for mp3 encoding, you need to use an external compressing tool. Look at the setup above for the TooLAME mp2 encoder and you will see that I have a LAME mp3 encoder for layer 3 audio compression. This is what you should do for mp3 audio. Get the LAME mp3 stuff from here.

Extract the files into a directory on your computer and then point to the LAME.exe from TMPG the same way as you have done for tooLAME.

Again, the audio settings are the same as before except now you can choose Mpeg1 Audio Layer III as your compression type. So, again choose the correct sample rate and choose Joint Stereo (or Stereo if you want that extra edge with the sound). For the bitrate you should choose 128kbps or above. Personally I think 160kbps is a good value for a reasonable quality/size ratio. If you can go higher, please do ^_^ - if you do a 224kbps encode it will be the same size as the layer 2 audio version but the quality will be much much better.

AbsoluteDestiny - October 2002