It seems the open source 3GPP AAC+ encoder is broken in this release. Please try CT AAC+ encoder.

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I'm not sure if it's just me or everyone, mencoder crashes everytime video encoding starts.

Hi -
I was dismayed to find that the encoder defaults to VBR for MP3 audio in AVIs. Apparently< almost nobody knows that vbr audio is not supported by the AVI container. It will work, or at least appear to work, and most players will deal with it more or less, but inevitably there will be major sync issues if you try to do more with the file than just play it. As in transcoding it to some other format.

At least 90% of AVIs I have downloaded recently have had VBR audio, which means this problem has become epidemic. I have to rip the audio out of nearly every movie I get, re-encode it at CBR, and most often adjust the level as well if it's going to end up as DVD. Volume normalization seems to have gone out the window as well. Shouldn't be a problem, really, but nobody seems to know about the DIALNORM parameter in AC3, either, so we have lots of DVDs with weak audio and nobody can figure it out.

Ok, so *please* help ease this situation a bit by making Lame default to CBR. Ok?

Thanks
bernie

Well, I've been playing with MediaCoder a bit, now, and I have to say I don't think you should have released it yet. It shows great promise but as yet it has way too many wobbly "features" and the UI is awfully counterintuitive (at least for me). I haven't obtained anything like a good result yet in video conversion, simply because I have to guess at so many things. I am still totally bewildered by cropping and resizing. How the hell do you do it? Perhaps a word of caution here: Trying to make a tool that does everything is a recipe for insanity. It will probably end up being so frustrating to use you will bin the thing in exasperation. For years I have been using VirtualDub and keep looking for something else that does the job faster/better/etc. and there is just no such thing. They all have something horrible about them that makes the good features useless. So I always come back to V-Dub with my tail between my legs. The reason: it has no more bells and whistles than needed to do the job. Now if only it supported more a/v input formats.....

Just some thoughts.

Ever tried this modded version of Vdub: http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/stable/
It can handle several more input formats, including wmv.


Perhaps it would be better to have failsafe presets, than having all possible options visible.
Having a "basic" and an "advanced" GUI option would help avoid some of the confusion.

First, thanks for your words.
MediaCoder can do lots of things VirtualDub simply cannot. That's why I made it, as I have been using VirtualDub for a long time. However some tasks can only be accomplished with some knowledge in this field. Because it's free, I have no duty to make it fit for everyone's needs. It's never the easiest tool in the world and it probably won't in the future. You said I should have released it. Pay your attention please. It's version 0.3.8, not 3.8.

Hint: to make the default setting of Lame from VBR to CBR, get the source code of MediaCoder from SourceForge SVN, modify the it and rebuild it yourself. Good luck.

The latest MPlayer & MEncoder in CVS are broken. I will try to fix it.

Personally, I don't care what the default is, because I will always change it to whatever setting I prefer (which is VBR)... but have you ever stopped to think about the fact that some people only use Mediacoder to encode mp3's rather than AVI's and might actually benefit from VBR?

I am a complete newbie at this. I have been trying to run MedCoder on Windows 2000 Professional. I had tried to use a version a few days ago, but before trying again, I downloaded and installed the latest at this moment MediaCoder-0.3.8-20060502.exe -- should I have uninstalled the old version first? What is the protocol on that?

1) Maybe I am completely stupid, but I cannot figure out the most basic steps to convert an WMV or an AVI to MPG (MPEG-1, I guess ... I want to play on an older version of Real Player). I can get the source file to appear in the list. However, I cannot *consistently* figure out how to tell it what target file type to convert TO.

2) I have managed to get a WMV to attempt to convert to an MPG (at least that is what it says it is doing), but it always creates a zero-length file. What could I be doing wrong?

3) Using the last version, I was able to get an AVI to convert to an MPG, but the MPG would not play (it "played" but only showed a black screen) on Real Player. That might have been to MPEG-2 instead of -1, I am not sure. Then in my most recent attempt with that file, I could not get MediaCoder to try to convert the AVI to an MPG -- it kept trying to convert it to itself (and itself already existed -- duh).

Obviously there is much that I do not know. Since I don't understand the basic terminology and I have not been able to find any Help or Usage documentation for basic tasks, I am at a loss.

Is there any Help/Usage documentation that I am overlooking? If not, can somebody give me the basic instructions of how to do a simple conversion from WMW and AVI to MPG?

Thanks. Sorry for the bother.

McNewbie,
Sorry, I can't help answer your question, but I just wanted to suggest videolan player as an alternative to your old version of RealPlayer for playing MPG's. It's free and works great.
You can download from http://www.videolan.org

Once you change the settings, it will be saved for next session.
As for VBR, it's superior to CBR in all aspects, especially for audio only encoding.

No need to uninstall. Just install it.


Set video format in Video tab.
To set audio format, first set audio encoder in Audio tab. Usually an audio encoder is corresponding to one audio format, except FFMPEG audio encoder, for which you need to set audio format in the right side panel.


To transcode to MPG, you need to set Video format to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2, set audio encoder to FFMPEG, and set container to MPEG. If you need MPEG-2 container, click option button on the container tab and set container to MPEG-2.


Sorry for lack of document, for I've nearly devoted all the free time I can spare to the development of MediaCoder.

A HTML based wizard will be available in 0.3.9. By that time, I think nobody will complain about the difficulty to use MediaCoder.

I am really not sure it's a problem, Bernie. I personally would suggest everyone to encode to VBR, because I never had sync issues with AVIs containing VBR tracks. VBR encoding just makes sound quality better and leaves more space for video track. Media Player Classic + ffdshow never fail.

Hello there.. I'm a newbie here on HA so excuse my stupid questions or bad english ... i just want to say that this is one serious thing....

Congrats Optimus ... i've been using this for almost 6 months now and i like it... but there is smtg i would really like to be improved... I don't know if this was disscused here recently or not... but have you gotten around to solve the ID3 problem when using the Nero AAC encoder? I like the 3.1.0.2 encoder very much and i'm currently transcoding my entire music collection into mp4 ... and i'd like to copy the ID3 tag also. I'm currently doin' this using foobar but i know that this program would do the job easier and better...

Sorry, my apologies. We are not up to release version yet.

I stand by my comments re VBR mp3 audio in AVIs. As I said, AVI container does NOT support VBR. Go to VirtualDub website and read Avery Lee's opinion about VBR. Maybe you've noticed if you play movie with VBR audio in standalone player the audio goes out of sync. If it is CBR it doesn't.

Hmmm... I am persevering and trying to not let the frustration get to me. I really want to believe that this one tool can replace the half-dozen or more that I now use. 2 things that are mystery to me: I can't make any sense out of resize/cropping. Cropping at least gives you a preview but only plays from the beginning. You can't even pause it when you get to a useful part of the movie. Resize just makes no sense at all. There is no preview at all; there is a "Use Custom Settings" selection, but nowhere I can find to specify what they are. A preview function is essential for this so that, as I usually do, you can find a round object somewhere in the movie and use it to correct the aspect.

I sometimes have need to change video file to VCD. I don't see any way to do this. Especially to make 2 hour movie fit to one CD as I used to do with TMPG using VBR MPEG1 and non-standard VCD. And where is the MP2 encoder? Believe it or not, large chunks of this planet are still using VCD as the primary video container.

Great flexibility is needed in a tool like this to be able to cope with all the strange situations that arise. There are people out there encoding movies who have no idea what they are doing. I spend a lot of time trying to fix up their mistakes.

Maybe you should consider splitting the project into two versions: one for audio only and one for video. That way, there wouldn't be so many confusing options.

I play movies with VBR MP3 audio on a standalone and they don't go out of sync. So um, yeah. I don't know what kind of standalone you have, but just about everything I've seen can handle VBR audio no problem, and gives you the benefit of much higher quality.

Changing to a better PC and upgrading to mediacoder 0.3.8 changed a lt of things. Let me tell the new experience.

But first of all: the link to the newest build has something wrong, I couldn't download it.

The second (and last) problem: the "Add Track" button doesn't work. But... Now to the good news!

1- I made some CD ripping (had to "Add Dir" or "Add Track", as the specific button made the program crash) and it worked nicely! From CD to mp4, perfectly!

2- Now I could encode from wav 44.1khz to mp4...! I don't know what was happening before, but now it works!

Now to the suggestion: is it possible to add a "CDDB Search" (or any other online database for artists and songs)? It would help a lot!

Well, that's it! Mediacoder working just like I expected! GREAT JOB OPTIMUS!

Hi everyone, just come back from a trip to the eastiest territory of China, the East Pole Island. It's really nice there!



1. add track has compatibility issue. I will look at this issue.
2. cddb support has been implemented long ago, but maybe it's broken now...


Yes. VBR is especially suitable for movies, in which silience and other compressable sound are very often. I myself never use CBR.


I know MediaCoder is still far from perfect, but I'm a person pursuiting perfection. When it comes to 1.0, it's when one of my dream comes true.
The other reason that restrict me is I cannot devote all my time and energy to the project.


To resize, you can either pick up a resolution from the list or enter your own in the format of widthxheight, like 320x240.
To crop, you can click Easy Cropper button to pop up the cropper dialog, which is a very handy tool to do cropping.

There will be a wizard to handle this kind of applications.


This is why I need to release before it becomes perfect. This is the scheme of free software development, because I can never hire people to do analysis and QA. Ideas and suggestions from users usually really give me ideas.


MediaCoder is now in the form of a core and a UI app. It will be easy to write different kinds of applications based on the same core. Just like the command line version included in the Full Pack, it's an audio only CLI encoder.

Here is the official MediaCoder support forum:
http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/forum/

Optimus, what's going on, you released new build, 1846. Explain changes, please.

The changes are written in the changelog, as usualy.
http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/changelog.htm

What about Joiner mode, can you fix it in 0.40 build?

First i have to say, great program. Keep up that good work.
I have a little problem. I have to transcode MP3 to ogg (i know it's bad, but i have to). Mediacoder isn't keeping the ID3Tags when transcoding to ogg. Is there a solution?

I do have to mention that Avery Lee is wrong about AVI not supporting VBR. AVI supports constant bitrate and constant framesize with audio. This is the reason why Vorbis cannot be used (it is neither). MP3/AAC frames are fixed in size (they always decode to the same # of samples), so they CAN be used, even in VBR mode.

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-...avi-limitations

Avery is more referring to the Video for Windows framework, not to AVI the container itself. ACM codecs can not work for VBR, and his tool is strictly limited to using this interface for audio.

Christian
matroska project admin

Isn't that what I've told for years? ... But OGM and MP4 zealots usually refuse to learn anything, which is the main problem.

It's actually more correct to speak about constant frame duration instead of constant frame size. I didn't even notice that you wrote frame size and not duration

ChristianHJW: oh, really? I didn't know that.
Well, I presume he could provide support for handling VBR audio if he really wanted to anyway, VirtualDubMod and NanDub already proved it can be done.

And okay, I'll say frame duration from now on then alexnoe

There is a bug in FLAC encoding. It isn't lossless at least for transcoding from FLAC to FLAC. Decompressed WAV files aren't bit identical . The same file encoded by the mediacoder at the same setings each time smaller when it transcoded FLAC to FLAC.

I know it's old discussion but I couldn't communicate to developers neither register on their forums.

MediaCoder Audio Edition 0.6.0.3998 is just release. It supports more encoders than ever. Check it out here:
http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/device/audio.htm