I stumbled onto this little thing called FLAC

CaTaClYsM · Post by **CaTaClYsM** » Fri Jan 07, 2005 5:33 pm

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

And I had a few questions about it.

Is it truly lossless?
How much, on average, does it chizzle off the file?
Can it be crammed into a video file?
If so, how?

madmallard · Post by **madmallard** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 5:21 pm

Why not try it and find out?

There are a few other lossless audio compression methods including APE.

wether or not you can use them in a video is unlikely.

Tab. · Post by **Tab.** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 12:29 pm

CaTaClYsM wrote:Is it truly lossless?

No. The name is Free Lossless Audio Codec to trick you. It's a conspiracy to give you bad quality audio masterminded by the RIAA.

CaTaClYsM wrote:How much, on average, does it chizzle off the file?

Herro.

More info and comparisons here.

My own results on TBM's Violet CD:

Code: Select all

fmt	 size(mb)  size(byte)	 % PCM   extended fmt
LA 	 191	    200,335,363	61.63	Lossless-Audio
OFR 	191	    201,232,895	61.91	OptimFrog
APE 	192	    202,138,104	62.18	Monkey's Audio
WP 	 197	    207,398,538	63.80	WavPack
WMA	 198	    207,877,349	63.95	Windows Media Audio 9 Lossless
WMA	 198	    207,913,831	63.95	Windows Media Audio 9.1 Lossless
LPAC	198	    208,074,925	64.01	Lossless Predictive Audio Compression
RALF	199	    208,836,442	64.25	Real Audio Lossless Format
TTA 	199	    209,355,992	64.41	The True Audio
FLAC   203	    213,396,774	65.65	Free Lossless Audio Codec
PCM 	310 	   325,060,908	100.0	Pulse Code Modulation

CaTaClYsM wrote:Can it be crammed into a video file?

Yes.

CaTaClYsM wrote:how?

http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/
http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/

The latter of which being infinitely more useful, because you're only going to be using Theora with the former.

madmallard · Post by **madmallard** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 9:46 pm

i would say its good for archiving. . .

would you say its mostly useless for distribution

Tab. · Post by **Tab.** » Thu Jan 13, 2005 10:54 pm

Not really useless, it all depends on if you really care whether your audio is perfect quality or not. If you do care, you're not taking much of a hit... audio bandwidth is miniscule in comparison to the video even losslessley, and if you're in the range of the 100 mb videos hosted on the org, you could probably get away with PCM with no one the wiser. Let's be conservative and say that lossless compression on average will give you about 2/3 the bitrate of PCM: 1411 * 2/3 = 941 kbps. Now, that's about the same rate as even a moderate quality video using XviD, let alone an excellent quality video, which for no reason should need to be any more than 1.5 mbps unless you've got some serious mftooning going on, in which case 2 is a reasonable ceiling. Either way, with a four minute video, that's not much more than 1/3 of the bandwidth. You've got 3.3 mb to work with before you cross the max for the donut or carrot or whatever it is these days, so you really don't have a problem donating 1 of that to the audio. It's a taste thing though -- and a courtesy to your viewers, if you're not scared of the kind of thought that the RIAA would like to do away with. In addition to that, if you're using flac, two important things are very probable. 1. You're using matroska. 2. You don't care much about vast user compatibility. Those two factors free you up to using video codecs far superior to XviD (well, decently superior. XviD rocks pretty hard.), giving you even more leeway with your audio bandwidth. Thought for food.

badmartialarts · Post by **badmartialarts** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 10:48 am

Looks like these codecs in general work really well with classical pieces. I guess it's the repetition or phrases or something. Wonder how they'd fare against a techno track....

madmallard · Post by **madmallard** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 6:57 pm

that was the point I was making.

if you're using any combination of those things for -distribution- then you're cutting yourself off at the knees trying to get more people to watch (as opposed to mpeg or xvid or somesuch.)

I use monkey for my own archiving purposes, but if you're going to distribute online you're going not for 60% but more like 90%. At least most of the ORG stuff hovers around that.

Tab. · Post by **Tab.** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 12:29 am

sixstop wrote:if you're going to distribute online you're going not for 60% but more like 90%. At least most of the ORG stuff hovers around that.

Isn't that a bit of circular reasoning? :| You should distribute at 90% compression because everyone does that already. The only compression available thus far for video distribution has been lossy ~90% compression. I am logic champ.

Still, I'm not sure if the cut in userbase is worth the sound quality. We need a rebel to set the precedent.

madmallard · Post by **madmallard** » Mon Jan 17, 2005 9:08 pm

Thats what i said... ;p

If you're distributing, you're not going for 60% compression (even if it is lossless). You're going for 90% so people will be more likely to download, watch, then hopefully tell you they did so.

Zero1 · Post by **Zero1** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:15 pm

I go for what looks good, and also turns out a reasonable filesize.

I'm currently using 1900kbps for video (abr) and 160 kbps for mp3 audio (abr).

Lame and XviD, winning combination for .avi files.

I dare say I could encode my videos at around 1200kbps with some tweaking and maintain a good amount of the quality, after all XviD's sweetspot seems to be in the region of 800-1000 kbps.

I'm picky and a perfectionist where quality is concerned, and my recent encode looks good to me, except a glitcy patch or two where XviD struggled deciding what quantizer to dish out to some macroblocks.

XviD 1.1 is significantly better, it would probably encode just fine now.

AnimeMusicVideos.org

I stumbled onto this little thing called FLAC

I stumbled onto this little thing called FLAC

Re: I stumbled onto this little thing called FLAC