I'm having this problem with VBR MP3 audio playback in DivX. Sound cracks and pops and in the mp3 decoder properties the sync lost value is increasing. It only happens in WMP and other divx players and only with VBR mp3 movies. There are no audio problems in games or other apps or playing VBRmp3 in WinAmp.
I've tried the onboard audio instead of my SBlive, WinXP or Win98SE, installed the VIA 4-in-1 drivers and VIA PCI latency patch but nothing helps.
The only thing that works is if i register the l3mpg123.ax dshow filter, which improves the sound quality, but it's still not perfect and it makes WMP crash on some occasions. I also tried the Moonlight Odio dekoda but it sounds worse then the default filter.

I read in this http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&t...&threadid=32453 topic that there's a new version of l3codecx.ax , does anyone know where to get it??

my hardware:
ECS K7VTA3 KT 333
AMD Athlon XP 1700+
256 MB DDR RAM
Winfast GF2MX400 64MB
Creative SBlive value
WinXP and WIN98SE dual boot

Ooooffff....
This has been said a zillion times already.

AVI files DO NOT support VBR, period. VBR with AVI files is a HACK, nothing more. You simply CAN NOT expect AVI files to play video well with VBR MP3's.
Solution: FORGET about AVI and use OGM iinstead. Use OggMux which can be downloaded from here under "AVI editing tools".

avi's with mp3 vbr audio work fine for me. if they ever get slightly out of sync, just pause and resume. many major divx release groups release stuff with vbr mp3's, and none release with ogg... that says something about the "hack's" usability.

my guess is that its likely a via chipset conflict with the sblive, but then onboard sound should work ok. ? I'm sorry Tomas, I'm uncertain what your problem could be.

I personally recommend ogm above anyhing else currently available when macking dvd backups. The reasons are at least three:
1. Super-fast searching (aligned to keyframes) and excellent sync. Especially useful when it comes to cd playback of the movie.
2. Vorbis sound, which save your highly valuable bits for better visual quality. I encode the Vorbis audio somewhere between 70 and 95 kbps, depending on the final video size output.
3. If you care about subtitles, ogm is the easiest and smoothest technology for choosing subtitles in different languages on playback.

To playback to work, look for Ogg Directshow Filters (0.9.9.5) and Ogg Subtitle Filter Collection 1.4.0.0). If you intend to encode the video with Divx5, I recommend ffdshow playback filter.

Ogm is a huge step forward when it comes to gaining a better video quality.

Emanuel

Edited: Updated to the new versions of the filters, available since yesterday).

many major divx release groups release stuff with vbr mp3's, and none release with ogg... that says something about the "hack's" usability.

Release groups typically don't know much about technical details, they just find settings that look good. Some don't even manage that (uncropped black borders, bad/woeful IVTC, etc.).

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=38615&cid=4134450 (account of Avery's findings regarding VBR MP3, with dead link to google cache)

http://prak.org/pipermail/avifile/2002-August.txt (email archive of the work mplayer's developers had to do to emulate Microsoft's bug allowing VBR MP3 in AVI)

-h

Tis true, I have seen quite a few bad releases (bad deinterlacing is the worst). But the 'major' release groups rarely screw up and I've had next to no problems with any of their rips using vbr mp3. Of course, keeping the ac3 track is always preferable

Afaik, the "major release groups" are not using avi, but svcd. That's a big difference.

The release groups (and most people using AVI who know what they're doing) use ABR, not VBR. The confusion is because ABR is often referred to as VBR.

ABR doesn't really cause too many problems in movies if done correctly (although it is still a 'hack') whereas true VBR does.

He means the major DivX releasing groups..
Man, this topic is so illegal ..

any suggestions on how to turn a divx+vbr-mp3 video into "something decent" without having to transcode/re-encode the audio track?

Talking about compression techniques is not illegal in my country
We are not infringing any copyrights by talking.

use virtualdub, in audio settings choose AVI Audio, Direct Stream copy, then File -> Save WAV. It will save a wav file that actually contains the MP3 data. rename the .wav extension to MP3, play it to check if you want.
Voila .

Sure. OggMux 0.9.3 should do it all for you, as long as you have the filter collections mentioned above. I haven't tried vbr-mp3 + divx in ogg myself, but Oggmux do support it (along with vorbis, aac and ac3).

Just point the videostream to you avi-file, add the mp3-stream and possible srt subtitle files and you're set.

Hahaha.. of course not. I mean, he posts a link to a topic made by a person who cracked DivX and various thiings, then there's releasing groups talk.. It's pretty funny.

heh. i tried exactly that right before i posted my question.. works fine as far as oggmux is concerned, but it crashed the player apps i've tried (ZoomPlayer and WiMP). probably a bug in the ogg splitter? (using OggDS 0.9.9.5)

I think there's a new version. Go to doom9.net.

(hmm no, same version, but only added yesterday?? that's strange)

Ahh, that's bad. Try using Windows Media Player 6.4 (not for permanent use, but to figure out where the problems are). If you have Me or XP, just run mplayer2 to fire it up.

Emanuel

well, interesting. wimp 6.4 doesn't crash - the video plays fine, but the sound is weird/echoey (if that's even a word )

*slaps self for using vbr-mp3 in countless concert vidcaps*

VBR and ABR are both "variable bitrate", meaning that the mp3 frames have different sizes. VBR and ABR are just two different methods of choosing how big a frame should be. You can't be sure by looking at a file, if it was encoded using ABR or VBR.

due to the very quick averaging in abr files, there are no significant bitrate fluctuations over longer periods of time - guess that's why divx+abr-mp3 is not quite as problematic as divx+vbr-mp3. still, it's quite a dirty hack.

You are a minority here.



That does not always work.



That still does not make it a smart thing to do. Most of these major groups honestly are not that knowledgable of the overall process and its results.



Wong. They do indeed.



It says simply that it works for them and they don't give a rats arse about compatability or anyone else and their problems.



VIA is fairly bad on many points. But this is oddly enough a problem pretty much stemming solely from Microsoft. AVI is a Microsoft format. Microsoft with their infinant foreseight did not take into account VBR audio. Add on top of that the fact that Microsoft's directshow filter is broken when it comes to VBR MP3. On top of that it can be a pain to remove the MS decoder and get it to use another one. And even if you did the format is still deficient and causes lack of synchronisation. There is abosolutely no way to achieve synch with VBR MP3 in AVI. It will never be in synch. It may or may not get way out of synch. But it is never in synch like CBR MP3.
editing

Stupid question, but better check for sure : Thomas Otto, did you use a VBR-compatible AVI program to make the DivX ? Like Virtual dub VBR edition ?

Release groups also say that we should encode CDs in CBR 192 with simple stereo turned on. Obviously, release groups are a bunch of 1337ist morons.

Ogg stream is the best way to go for movie rips with VBR audio streams whether VBR MP3 or Ogg Vorbis.

Who came up with that rule anyway? (Must encode mp3s in CBR 192kbps Stereo)

Hmm.. I certainly have never seen it. I have nothing against ogg for movies (except when used at very low bitrates), just as I have nothing against vbr-mp3. Both work fine, and the systems I run are hardly special. p2-450 on a bx mobo, tbird 1.4 on a amd 760, and p4 2.1 on a sis645, all running win2k.

As an aside, Neo Neko, no offense meant but that style of quoting every phrase in a post(s) is very irritating.

I tend to stear clear of it most times. It is rarely aplicable. But in this isolated case phrase quoting fit well for me. I generally respond to single paragraphs as a whole or at least well over a sentance or two. But in this case I was in a hurry and responding to those sections individually allowed for quick, simple answers. =P

As for the OGG releasers. Well they are a minority. Which tells you common sense is indeed rare. As for VBR MP3 in AVI working for you, well you are indeed a lucky man. It works for me on most of my systems. But I don't use it because it is wrong and I am interested in maximum compatability. And if release groups are not interested in the same then they are pointless and should be ignored for the ignorant clods they are.

To be quite honest release groups are an all around bad idea. They are almost single handedly responsible for all the backwards thinking in any encoding scene today. Whether it is the lie that Joint Sterio is not as good as Simple Sterio. Or that Divx3 is better than Divx4, 5, and Xvid. Release groups and the massive ignorant group think that takes place there are the most detrimental element effecting the entire encoding scene to date. Amature wannabe experts is all they are. Something like a larger over-ruling standards body where actual experts contribute would be much more advisable. But the egos of the encoding groups are to big to contribute to something like that or abide by it's decisions.

I have seen some mp3 "releases" with the command line "--alt-preset extreme -m s -b 128 -V 0 -q 0". Wouldn't it be a good idea for alt presets to ignore additional parameters that are obviously stupid such as "-m"?

It's nice that some are encoding with alt presets but they tend to screw up with such backwards thinking...

Can someone tell me _any_ disadvantage using ogm above avi? In both cases you need extra software to get the playback to work. The advantage of using svcd is pretty obvious since many dvd-players handles svcd, but avi... Let's get rid of it once and for all.

The only disadvantage of using OGG containers ATM is that not all platforms currently support it. They will but not yet. Also it looks as if the Xiph implimentation might be slightly different.

All I can think of:
You need another DS filter to play the file = bad for newbies
Also, I can't confirm this, but I've heard that win9x, and ME have serious problems with OGM. There are still alot of people on those OS's (why I don't know...)

Still, using the ogm container format seems a good idea. I believe it even saves a few megs in space in muxing overhead as well.

True, but the newbies still needs to install Divx for avi playback. To to get subtitles working (if someone want them), there is also the need for another DS filter or playback program.

With ogm, there is just Ogg DS and ffdshow.

To me, the "difficulties" for a newbie sounds equal between the alternatives. Am I right?

You're perfectly right.
There are no "difficulties".

most newbs already have divx installed though... and like I said, if they are running win98 they may have to deal w/ some major frustrations using ogm.

and on the topic of ffdshow... postproc has some serious bugs, and it has problems with divx5 gmc-encoded stuff. i watched a few csi eps on it and they were noticeably uglier than divx5 decoder. Thats too bad, because ffdshow is very versatile, and consumes little cpu power. Hopefully some more development will help it equal or surpass the divx5 decoder.

In fresh SummonPatch or DX i suppose. Anyway seems that xkodi guy too freely handles version numbers.
BTW this DivX ;-) revival has newly hacked WMA codec and DS filter (with EQ in it... wow). So you can now forget about vbr mp3.


I bet these groups (if they can be considered an authority) still publish good old DIV3+Divxa32 'releases'. That is real DVD backup for masses.


Have you tried one of those vbr-fixing utilities, don't know thou how they impact playback issues (if they do impact at all).

I personally use ogm for my tv shows backups and music videos, and am pretty happy with it. Some of my friends thou call me a freak because of using some weird formats.
And this brings us back to DIV3 + divxACM = best compatibility.

WMA in my AVI? You must be joking. Unless it is WMA 9 which it is not and even then I would question using it. It is better than MP3 at 64Kbps but it still is unlistenable crap. It is less compatable than MP3 as well. Why would anyone want to shoot themselves in the foot with WMA?



I guarontee you that they dont use Divx3.11 or VKI. They use SBC. And even SBC is dated. The MS codecs themselves are dated. That is not DVD backup for any group. It is just plain group think and ignorance.



The "only" way to "fix" an AVI with VBR MP3 is to convert the MP3 to CBR. There is no way to fix an AVI with VBR MP3 and keep the VBR MP3. An AVI with VBR MP3 is broken by it's very nature.



Divx3 is always a bad choice. And if you mean the Divx audio hack when you reffer to "divxACM" you must be honestly joking. The WMA hack is the pinnacle of incompatability.

If I read your comments and attitude correctly it sounds like you ascribe very much to the ripping groups backward group think. Which is a sad thing.

You talk of compatability and quality. Yet everything you suggest is either the lowest quality or least compatability. The old 2-pass Divx4 codecs all run rings around divx 3.11 and vki. And Divx5 and Xvid make Divx3.11 and vki look downright embarrasing. Not to mention that all MSMPEG4 based codecs produce incompatable bitstreams which means that any videos produced with them have almost no hope of ever being played on a set top player or going in MP4 containers. And as stated the Divx Audio hack sucks at 64Kbps and is inferior to MP3 at propper bitrates. And even the newer WMA versions are not that much better and are still just as incompatable.

Please tell me you are joking and that you don't honestly believe contrary? There is room for lots of oppinions and methods. But if what I laid out is what you truly believe I can safely say that you are 100% wrong. I sincerely hope I have somehow misunderstood you and that you did not say what I think you just did.

This post was supposed to be brimful of irony.

To clear up misunderstanding:
- i bet there are lots of div3 crap still being produced by those 'groups' and accumulating on peoples hdds, they've got their DivX ;-) installed and don't wanna hear about anything else (that's what i meant by 'compatibility')
- did you read that thread mentioned in start post? (this one really 'touched' me) personally i've never used that hacked WMA codec in avis, only mp3 before OggDS has arrived.

So excume me for possible ehrm... misconception?

Phew you had me scarred! The irony/sarcasm was lost on me totally I guess. It was just so slight I glossed over it. But there are honestly people who do believe that Divx3 is the "shiznat" and that WMAv2@64kbps and it's metalic chirps faithfully reproduce the original audio. Had it not been for me running into rabbid supporters of those ideas I would have taken you much less seriously.

In all my encodes, OGM had a higher muxing overhead compared to AVI (with MP3 or AC3)... But I still like it, because of chapter support and of course, OGG audio.

How did you calculate it? The last I saw OGG had less overhead.

To me, so far it seemed as if there were less problems playing ogm files rather than editing ogm later. That might be wrong:

I have tried DivX with Vorbis audio using OGGMux and was content. But usually I mux DivX and MP3-ABR (Lame --alt-preset) as AVI using Nandub and never got problems, even when muxing in two different audio streams (they just must not have the same setting for interleaving).

Question 1: Is there a tool for ogm that enables me to determine the exact frame where to split the file (like Nandub for avi does)?

Question 2: Sometimes, I need to substitute an audio track. Do the tools available for ogm (like OGGMux) support this feature like Nandub does?

So actually I need something equivalent to Nandub. If I can edit DivX-ogm files later on like DivX-avi files, that will really encourage me to switch to ogm.

Q1. Ogg Cutter. get it from http://tobias.everwicked.com

Q2. This should be possible using Graphedit. Haven't tried it myself, but you can add the file, add an Ogg Demuxer object to demux, link the video stream to the Ogg Muxer object together with the new audio stream, then to a file output..

Well, I often use AC3 audio and I find that the final AVI (with video and audio muxed) is smaller than the OGM (with only video and audio streams). But I guess that isn't really fair since OGM is meant for OGG audio.

However, with OGG audio the results are very inconsistent. Also, the overhead for OGM isn't linear meaning longer video length doesn't necessarily mean larger overhead size. I think the higher bitrate the OGG audio, the more overhead required... Not too sure though.

Yes. VBR is hard to bredict. No (kbpsXseconds)/8=length formula for that. But VBR is still a good thing.