There is a new oggdrop soon to be released offering bitrate and quality selection. As ff123 said in another thread, this is clear evidence that Monty does listen. The preview of the new version will be available a little later from: http://www.inf.ufpr.br/~rja00/ as usual.
This is NOT an official release. Functionally, it works correctly, but it may be subject to change.
john33
Full Version: Preview of new OGGDROP
It's already there, in the vorbisdaily package.
Regards;
Roberto.
Regards;
Roberto.
yeah, this one is really good!
For all of those newbies it should be mentioned somewhere that Quality mode should be prefered!!
For all of those newbies it should be mentioned somewhere that Quality mode should be prefered!!
Interface is a little nicer than the BQ Oggdrop because you don't have to check the subdirectory (i.e., look under quality 4 to make sure that you set quality to 4.9, but I really don't see it as being much different. As Benjamin said, it would be good if there were some note that the quality settings are better to use than the bitrate settings. To help people buy into this, it may be useful to provide some sort of table relating quality to bitrate. Not that it's difficult to figure out by testing a couple short clips, but ogg will catch on more easily if it is more user-friendly.
On Monty being receptive to input, I sent him the clip of the opening few seconds of Nirvana's song, "In Bloom." Where I could easily distinguish between wav and ogg until quality level 6, around 200 kbps average bitrate. I find this to be really useful for testing; it's one of the few I've got on which ogg sounds noticeably different from the original. I can't put it out for upload, but if anyone wants it I can email it to them; just drop me a note at . The wav file is 885 kb.
On Monty being receptive to input, I sent him the clip of the opening few seconds of Nirvana's song, "In Bloom." Where I could easily distinguish between wav and ogg until quality level 6, around 200 kbps average bitrate. I find this to be really useful for testing; it's one of the few I've got on which ogg sounds noticeably different from the original. I can't put it out for upload, but if anyone wants it I can email it to them; just drop me a note at . The wav file is 885 kb.
It's an improvement to the previous OggDrop RC3, however, I think a better arrangement would be:
Remove the bitrate selector. Replace it with a textbox which changes and tells you the nominal bitrate (call it approximate bitrate) as you change the quality slider. This is the easiest and best way to educate people to use the quality slider rather than an ABR.
Now provide a button which takes you to "Advanced bitrates settling" which provides the other options such as a selector between VBR (default)/ ABR / CBR, "Minimum bitrate" and "Maximum bitrate".
Remove the bitrate selector. Replace it with a textbox which changes and tells you the nominal bitrate (call it approximate bitrate) as you change the quality slider. This is the easiest and best way to educate people to use the quality slider rather than an ABR.
Now provide a button which takes you to "Advanced bitrates settling" which provides the other options such as a selector between VBR (default)/ ABR / CBR, "Minimum bitrate" and "Maximum bitrate".
Yes, I think that putting in the nominal bitrate is a great idea, as it gives people some inkling of what they're going to get. Especially when they move it to 128 and then find out that it sounds a hell of a lot better than that mp3 that they had from the same bitrate. 
Some notes though, just as UI quirky things go:
The quality reading shouldn't be an edit box unless we can edit it. I was a little surprised when I hit a key and it jumped to 10.0. Changing that to a label would be more intuitive.
Is it possible to not have so many tickmarks in the slider? This is nitpicking, I know, but it would be nice to only see 10 ticks on the slider.
Managed bitrates should probably be stuffed under another dialog box, or perhaps an "Advanced >>" button that expands the dialog itself. A message should be in this new area (preferably not a dialog box) stating that quality settings sound better and that you shouldn't be using this stuff unless you know what you're doing. Maybe even a web link if someone's feeling particularly saucy.
[Edit]
Realized this right after posting: If we make the managed bitrate settings LOOK intimidating, users who don't know what they're doing will probably be much less likely to fiddle with them. Sprinkle in some technical terms 10 cent words with the warning that your files will sound worse unless you're some kind of guru, and it might work. It does for me, at any rate.
[/Edit]
Finally, is there any particular reason that the default quality setting is 7.5? Maybe it's not, and I changed it and wasn't paying attention. But if that's the case, perhaps we should consider moving it back down to 3.0 to match oggenc.
Yeah, this is probably over-engineering when the most used encoders will probably end up in Audiograbber, CDEX, or whatnot. I think it's a Good Thing to be the shining example of what to do for the programmers of these programs, who may use OggDrop as inspiration (especially if everyone goes "look how they do it, it should be that cool!"
).
Some notes though, just as UI quirky things go:
The quality reading shouldn't be an edit box unless we can edit it. I was a little surprised when I hit a key and it jumped to 10.0. Changing that to a label would be more intuitive.
Is it possible to not have so many tickmarks in the slider? This is nitpicking, I know, but it would be nice to only see 10 ticks on the slider.
Managed bitrates should probably be stuffed under another dialog box, or perhaps an "Advanced >>" button that expands the dialog itself. A message should be in this new area (preferably not a dialog box) stating that quality settings sound better and that you shouldn't be using this stuff unless you know what you're doing. Maybe even a web link if someone's feeling particularly saucy.
[Edit]
Realized this right after posting: If we make the managed bitrate settings LOOK intimidating, users who don't know what they're doing will probably be much less likely to fiddle with them. Sprinkle in some technical terms 10 cent words with the warning that your files will sound worse unless you're some kind of guru, and it might work. It does for me, at any rate.
[/Edit]
Finally, is there any particular reason that the default quality setting is 7.5? Maybe it's not, and I changed it and wasn't paying attention. But if that's the case, perhaps we should consider moving it back down to 3.0 to match oggenc.
Yeah, this is probably over-engineering when the most used encoders will probably end up in Audiograbber, CDEX, or whatnot. I think it's a Good Thing to be the shining example of what to do for the programmers of these programs, who may use OggDrop as inspiration (especially if everyone goes "look how they do it, it should be that cool!"
).
Actually, the maintainer of oggdrop is a guy called Chris Wolf. It was he that picked up the previous constructive criticisms from here. Since the above is also very constructive, I suspect we shall find he is listening, again.
john33
john33
Another preview version will be up at: http://www.inf.ufpr.br/~rja00/ sometime soon.
Basically the same as the last one, but you get to see the nominal bitrate used and the name of the file being encoded. Give it try, see what you think and report comments back here. Big Brother is obviously listening.
john33
Basically the same as the last one, but you get to see the nominal bitrate used and the name of the file being encoded. Give it try, see what you think and report comments back here. Big Brother is obviously listening.
john33
Guess what? It's already there! Yay!!!!!!
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