I like to encode video and recently I've been experimenting with achieving very low bitrate MPEG4 encodes that subjectively look close to the source (which is much higher bitrate). So anyways, I'm confronted with a dilemma:
My audio source is 192Kbs AC3 Stereo, while my video is 250kbs MPEG4!
Edit: My MPEG4 is actually 37kbs, so my audio file is much larger than my video file!! Well, I guess this emphasizes the point more. Too bad I can't change my title
So, I could encode my audio source to LAME using recommended alt preset standard, but the filesize isn't much improved as you all know.
My source is mostly dialogue with some music sections. As a result, I think I am looking for a variable bitrate encoder that tries to achieve constant quality througout the encode, similar to MPEG4 constant quantizer encoding.
From my limited knowledge of audio codecs, it seems that Vorbis has quality-based encoding. Any others? Also, as my source file is 48 sample rate, perhaps I should lower that too? My goal is to achieve something that sounds good on regular consumer-type speakers with as low a file size as possible and with constant quality. So maybe something that uses low bitrate on speech parts and raises it for the music sections?
BTW, I'd like to stay with the .avi format, although it is not necessary.
Thanks for your ideas and considerations,
Dali