I'm going to do some H.264/AAC encoding and found out that x264 is an excellent video codec. But what about audio? Nero, iTunes/QT and FAAC seem to be the most popular AAC encoders out there, but which one would you recommend? I need to use AAC-LC to get full QT compatibility. For bitrate I'm planning to use at least 192kbps. Some of the content includes live audience recordings with lots of noise.. I'm also going to convert some 192kbps mp2 audio to AAC, since the mp2 audio doesn't work with MP4. Hopefully I won't loose that much quality.
All tips, ideas and recommendations will be welcome!

Nero or iTunes will give you the best quality.

Nero now supports 2 pass encoding, which is probably exactly what you want for combining with video.

Might as well use Recode directly to do the encoding, instead of x264. Our video codec is qualitywise also among the top contenders.



This is not true. MP2 (MPEG 1 layer 2) most certainly works in MP4. Some players might not support it, but it's definitely legal, and those players can be considered broken.

I would try:

1. Nero Recode (there is QT compatibility checkbox)
2. MeGUI, x264 and latest Nero encoder
3. MediaCoder, x264 and latest Nero encoder

I have to agree with Garf. You might as well use Nero Recode 2 to transcode your source video files to the mpeg-4 (h.263) or mpeg-4 AVC (h.264) video formats. Additionally, the latest version of Recode 2 uses the newer Nero AAC audio encoder.

Both the iTunes/QuickTime and Nero AAC encoders will provide you with excelent quality. To my knowledge, FAAC hasn't been updated in a couple of years.

The only problem I have with Nero Recode 2 is encoding videos to the mpeg-4 AVC format at the 768kbps video bitrate (128kbps audio bitrate) at resolutions of 320X240 and smaller (the iPod AVC profile). This profile produces bad quality videos. Well, the videos themselves don't really have bad quality but some segments of the video come out pixelated. A 0.5 to 1 second portion of a video may come out pixelated.

However, I have not experienced this problem when using higher resolutions.

Nero Recode 2 would provide you with an all around good video encoding option.

If you don't want to use Nero Recode 2 then either iTunes/QuickTime AAC encoder or Nero's AAC encoder will provide you with good results.

Edit: Removed repeat text. I have no idea how that happened.

A double post within a post! How does that work

I suppose it's Alzheimer - he forgot that he already wrote his post when he just finished it, so he wrote it again.

Forum software automatically merges repeated posts from the same user, so doubleposts turn into what you've seen above.

you can use my latest x264 batch script, now uses named parameters, example:
x264_ng avs-c:\bs\template.avs inp-d:\video.avi aud-itunes met-1NG bit-500

(x264 encoding methods are hardcoded, but it is not a problem to add your own, audio can be encoded with faac or itunes.)

p.s. all video/audio methods are qt compatible.

Must have been my faulty internet connection. Can't complain about free interent!