Hi all, quick question.
I'm reviewing a program called ShowShifter, that captures and compresses tv-signals to eg.. DivX and MP3.
However, I wanted to use LAME to compress the sound, but when I explored this a little further, I got the following answer from the company behind the program:

"Unfortunately it isn´t possible to use LAME at lower datarates than 128K. The reason for this is that we need the datarate to be constant (CBR) so that the sound on the recordings remains in sync with the picutre, and LAME doesn´t provide any CBR settings lower than 128K."

I was certain LAME also did sub-128 CBR encoding, and the HA FAQ says that LAME supports CBR encoding from 80 to 320 kbps.

Can anyone set me straight on LAME CBR encoding? Any differences beween the different LAME versions?

Sincerely, Kristian

LAME certainly does sub-128kbps CBR in all versions.

Lame also supports CBR at lower bitrates than 128kbps.

However, I tryed Showshifter in the past and I encountered a problem: as the Lame acm codec does not support decoding (only encoding), another codec (availaible on every computer) should be used. It seems that Showshifter was only trying the same codec for encoding and decoding, and so did not worked with Lame.

Thanks a lot, both of you. Right after Garfs reply, I mailed the ShowShifter-team again. This was their answer:

"The LAME codec comes in more than one form. There is a command line form, a .dll form and an ACM form. We use the ACM interface when recording video, and it is the ACM interface that doesn´t allow CBR below 128kps. If a rate lower than this is selected, it automatically changes it to ABR."

My question: True also for newer versions of LAME? (couldn't find this info in the FAQ og on the LAME website).

Sincerely, Kristian

Well, I tryed....and was unable to use cbr lower than 112kbs with the acm codec.

Something should be corrected in the acm version.