Trouble Muxing with PCM

[JD_Lord1]

Helooo,

So basically I'm trying to encode a video with PCM audio. My main question is whether I can do this with MPEG2 or h.264 and if so, how should I go about doing it? I may be a little confused with codecs vs. containers and such but I've figured out how to mux an h.264 (vid made with zarx264gui) with uncompressed audio on something like Haali Media Splitter but this turns it into an MKV.

When I try to encode with Adobe Premier I keep getting an error that says "Audio Codec selected is not compatible with this multiplexing mode"

I'm curious to know if there is a muxer that can help me put it in the right container or if this is even possible...

[mirkosp]

Why would you even want uncompressed audio? It's just uselessly big. If you want no quality loss, go for some lossless format such as flac. And I see nothing wrong with MKV muxing, it is actually the best container for most usecases (not all, mind you, but as far as AMVs are concerned, it is).

[JD_Lord1]

Why would you even want uncompressed audio?

Ahh, I forgot to mention... this is for a convention. I really don't mind if it was an MKV or if the audio is compressed or not. It's just that MPEG and h264 are two accepted video formats while lossless video (like Huffy) is not and the only accepted audio is PCM.

This is why I want to know if it's even possible without the MKV container, otherwise I'll just send in an h264 with AAC audio.

[mirkosp]

Ah, if it's due to con restrictions then it makes sense. Well, if they only allow PCM audio, which video formats do they allow along with MPEG-2 and H.264? Because frankly, I believe MKV and AVI are your best bets for PCM audio, but MKV isn't accepted it seems, and putting MPEG-2 or H.264 in AVI isn't a good idea.

[JD_Lord1]

Again, maybe I'm getting codecs and containers a little mixed up but it says that accepted codecs are MPEG2, MPEG4, DV, h.264.

[mirkosp]

Those are all video formats, yes. Did they list the containers they accept as well?

[JD_Lord1]

Hmmmm... Pretty sure this is all that was listed.

[mirkosp]

That's... kinda weird. Link to the rules? What actually gets me the most is the PCM restriction, which seems very odd, considering that when they request mpeg-2 video, they generally wanted it muxed in mpg, and that means layer II audio.

[JD_Lord1]

Sorry to drag this out. It's for anime expo:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 5&t=108233

Thanks for the help though, I really thought I was just missing something very basic when compressing.

[mirkosp]

Those rules do look confusing and incomplete. No mention of accepted container formats is done, and limiting audio to PCM means mpg can't be used for MPEG-2, which is really weird. Possibly by audio interleaved they mean they'll take the audio as its own separate file from the video in case of mpeg-2, but it still sounds like a weird thing to ask.
Considering mpeg-4 is allowed, and I think they mean DivX/XviD by that, I think the easiest way out that is most likely to be accepted would be to send in a high quality (q1) xvid (without b frames and possibly by using only keyframes) and doing a direct stream copy of the pcm audio in vdub. That way you'll have a fat hq avi that should be acceptable by the rules, and very high quality (possibly visually lossless, though some actual loss will occur). I'd also suggest zipping it to save some extra space for the upload, as that's allowed.
Either way, perhaps you should try to send an e-mail to the contest asking about further details, if you want to be sure. Otherwise xvid+pcm in avi should work fine, I believe.