[linux-audio-user] How do you make an ogg?

[Ross Vandegrift]

On Sat, Oct 12, 2002 at 04:58:00PM +0200, Frank Barknecht wrote:
> > [lconrad at tuba renfaire]$ oggenc -v
> > OggEnc v0.8 (libvorbis rc2)
> 
> oggenc 1.0 is out. You maybe should upgrade. 

No maybes about it - Definately upgrade your libvorbis, libogg,
libao, and vorbis-tools packaes.

0.8 is so old, I don't think it supports the final bitstream standard.
Not to mention *huge* improvements in the quality of the encoder.

> > So my question is, is there a way to get the ogg file down closer to
> > the size of the mp3 file?
> 
> You can encode ogg files in various ways: 
> 
> 1) Quality 0-10 (--quality)
> 
> gives you a file with a variable bitrate. The actual filesize is a bit
> difficult to predict, but if you experiment, this is the preferred way
> of ogg-encoding.

The scale actually goes from -1 to 10.  The reason for this is pretty
funny - people were complaining that -q 0 was too good!!  And it's true!
Just for kicks try it at -q 0 and then look at the file size - it's
amazing.

The scale on the quality rating is really misleading.  If you have
"golden ears" you'll want to use -q 6 because of some tricks the encoder
does at less than 6.  If you have average to musician's ears, you'll
probably throughly enjoy -q 3.

I've got slightly above average hearing, from years of music.  I encode
at -q 3, and actually seriously considered encoding my stuff at -q 1 for
the disk space savings.

> 3) Bitrate (--bitrate)
[snip]

Not only does this produce lower quality files, it tends to produce
*bigger* files, in my experience.  It looks like Vorbis really needs to
go out of its way to honor your request for some fixed bitrate.

-- 
Ross Vandegrift
ross at willow.seitz.com

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