Changing Bitrates

Hello all,
Does anyone know if it's possible to convert an mp3 file to a lower bitrate and overwrite the original file?
I know that you can convert from within iTunes, but this makes a copy of the file.
My problem is that I need to save some disc space and I have a lot of stuff at 320kbps and I would like to reduce them all to 192kbps without having to redo all of my playlists with the new copies.
Thanks in advance.
Trevreav
dual 2gb G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

When converting files select the files to be converted, and keep them selected. Once they are converted the new files should appear unselected. You can then delete the old files.
You could also use the 'date modified' column to keep track of which files are the older and newer files.
This info may not be on time but can hopefully help the next time.

Similar Messages

Change bitrate for downloading podcasts

How can I change the file size or bit rate for downloaded podcasts? A 30 minute podcast takes up a third of my ipod shuffle. Since these podcasts are spoken word, I don't need a high-quality recording. Options under "podcast" don't seem to have this available.

How can I change the file size or bit rate for downloaded podcasts?
You cannot change the bitrate they are downloaded at.
Once they are downloaded, you can convert the bitrate.
iTunes prefs -> Advanced - Importing.
Set it to what you want.
Then select the file in iTunes and menu Advanced -> *Convert selection to*...

Changing bitrates while transfer

i was woundering if there was a way to change the bitrate of audio files while transfering them to the device, is there a way to do this in mediasource?

As mentioned by dingus, you can use MediaSource's audio converter to convert the bit rate of the files in your PC. After the conversion, you can transfer the tracks to your M P3 player. You may then delete the converted tracks from your PC if you want.
MediaSource's audio converter allows you to convert file format as well. In the latest MedaSource v3.30.2 which has been made available for download recently, you can even convert wma to mp3.

Anyone use MediaMonkey for file transfers with their Zen (Xtra)? For changing bitrat

I'm looking for some software that will reduce the bitrates of my songs as they are transferred from my Vista computer to my Zen Xtra, i.e., I store my music files on my computer in WMA lossless format, and I want them copied onto my device at 28kb
ps.
MediaMonkey looks like it will do this. Does Windows Media Player?
Are there other MP3 File Management programs that do this?

Hiya all,
Just to let you know, that this has happened again, 2nd time within 4 months of owning it, I cannot add or remove data from the data partition, I can listen to the MP3's fine, but can't do jack with the data partition, does anyone know of anything that can resolve this since the last time I reported the problem? I've double checked that I've got the most up todate firmware and software. It's a bit pants if you can't use the Zen Xtra for what it's designed for!
Flegg

Changing Bitrates and stuff

Hi there,
Im about to burn a new DVD this weekend which consists of 1 hour of main feature and approx 45 extras yet Encore left on automatic is giving me quite low bit-rates like 2.2 for all the extras whilst the main features are on 7.5 - I have used a bitrate calculator and it recommends a bitrate of 7 yet I can only pick 7.5 within Encore.
Is a bitrate of 2.2 going to be of really poor quality if I leave it in this state? I thought you could fit nearly 2 hours of very high quality on a DVD 5?
Not sure if this matters but when exporting the movie from Premier Pro does the file size increase if you are using more video tracks, i.e. my co-editor is a messy editor and has up to 9 or 10 video tracks layering video etc - does this affect the file size compared to have it on one or two video tracks??

You should be able to set the required bitrates with no problem.
However, as long as you remembered to leave in the overhead in your bitrate calculations, there is no good reason why you shouldn't run the MPEG-2 exports directly out from Premiere Pro.
Set the Audio to Dolby Digital (if the SurCode plugin is activated/purchased) or else set to PCM 16/48 & let Encore handle the audio.
A bitrate of 2.2 is going to be unacceptable, and does not sound right to me. In all honesty, anything below 4.4 is going to be bad, 4.5 is borderline.
I would also definitely consider the option of going to a Dual Layer disc as well. Run one set of encoding for a single layer, and see how it all looks. Using Dual Layer will mean you can encode all video files to 7Mb/sec if going to written media, or 9Mb/sec if going to replication with stereo audio.
Multiple Video layers in Premiere will not add to the file size at all - premiere will render these down into one file. The uppermost layers are the ones that will be output in stacked clips.

How to change bitrate tiff

I'm trying to scan all my old photo's into a digital archive using my HP Photosmart 5520 e and my MacBook Pro OSX 10.9.4
I want to scan them to TIFF, but unfortunately all my pictures end up as TIFF with 8 bit RGB.
The specifications state that it can scan 24 bits, yet I have no ability in the scanning software to choose between bitrates.
How do fix this, or is there 3rd party software compatible with my scanner that would allow for this?
Kind regards,

I thought of this too, but haven't found a way to confirm this. All info I've been able to extract tells me it's a 8bit rgb.
I got confused partly because my old scanner gave me the option of using different bitrates and this one seems to be unchangeble.
Since I want the best quality and don't want to rescan everything later I thought I'd figure this out first.

Length of AIFF changing?!

This is quite complicated so before you read on, let me thank you for taking the time to help me.
I'm currently recording in 2 places.
ONE - a high end studio using PRO TOOLS.
TWO - my home studio using a combination of gear.
Due to latency issues, I've decided to record at my home studio using a VS-1824 Roland HD recorder. It's got great pre-amps and is very comfortable to record with.
Once I've got the tracks done on my Roland, I want to be able to send AIFF files to my engineer over the net. I've tried the obvious - digital interface (FAST TRACK PRO) into GARAGEBAND and Save To Disk. Both studios are set to 48k and 24bit.
I did this and sent in one AIFF file. It sounded fine to me but when he imported it into PRO TOOLS, the file that I sent him was a different length than the other tracks already in the mix. It syncs in the beginning but is off by 0.5ms by 2 minutes into the song!
Later in the high-end studio, we tried a direct digital link (OPTICAL) from the VS to PRO TOOLS and it works fine. That means that there is no problem with the VS, right? I even tried some other aps like AUDACITY but we had the same issue. It's got to be the sync clock in the MacBook that is off.
Anyway to work around this? All I need are clean AIFF files.
Any help would be appreciated!

The time problem is probably due to the A/D back to D/A conversion.
Your workflow is not the best way to make quality audio. Not only are you doing Analog/Digital your changing bitrates all before it's getting to pro tools.
You could just send a disk from the VS to the studio. Or record on the Mac, monitoring externally (through interface) will eliminate any latency. Or write track to cd in the vs and rip track to mac and send.

Where to change encoding setting?

Here are my custom encoding settings for video: 03.06.2015-17.27.37 - HOLLY_HOUSE's library
I wish to change bitrate encoding from VBR1 to VBR2. I'm sure it's possible but I can't find where to do that. Can you direct me there?
thanks in advance!

BillyDBrown
This is a duplicate question which has already been answered in your other thread.
how to access editing of a publishing preset
What you were seeking was the Bitrate Settings/VBR, 2 pass in Premiere Elements 12/12.1 for
Publish+Share/Computer/AVCHD with what appears to be Presets = MP4 - H.264 1920 x 1080p30.
That setting was found under the Advanced Button/Video Tab of the preset.
In Premiere Elements 13/13.1, Bitrate Settings/VBR, 2 pass is not offered.
ATR

Bitrate set-up has gone from iTunes preferences

While browsing iTunes features on my Mac being provoked by my aroused interest in the formats that iTunes can play I noticed that in the Playback Tab of iTunes Preferences I don't see the options of setting bitrates for playing imported tracks (that is, not bought in iTunes Store) anymore. All that's remained are the quality options for video playback, but not those for audio. Why is it so and is it possible to change bitrate preferences?
Thanks for your support and knowledge.

Go to preferences- general preferences- "when a cd is inserted" import settings

ITunes 11.0.2.26 hesitates every 10 secs of playback

I have just discovered while listening to iTunes that just about every 10 seconds there is a annoying hesitation in the playback. I do not see anybody else compaining about this. Can someone give me an idea what to do to resolve this?
Thanks in advance>
Rob

Some feedback I hope helps. Sometime in past 3 weeks playback from itunes via wifi bose soundlink speaker began cutting out 1-2 seconds every 30 seconds. This drove me crazy and it did not help that my wife started to make fun of my fancy IT / AV setup. Certainly sounds like a similar problem. I read through this postings and appreciate the tips so want to summarize how I was able to solve my problem.
In short I finally broke down and called apple support and per suggestion of apple support completely uninstalling, rebooting and reinstalling solved the problem. No need to read further unless you interested in the voyage.
First I host my mainline itunes on a PC W7 pro 64, 8 GB ram, 8 cores and all media stored on network attached storage device, all network switches gigabit. Even when heavy use on this PC it runs cpu <20% and network traffic <10%
When I decided to tackle this problem the troubleshooting pointed towards my watchguard XTM router and access point (AP200). I opened a case and began a deep dive into that configuration. Through many steps of troubleshooting some of which I have summarized below I just happened to play the music directly on my PC that hosts my main itunes library (I rarely playback on the PC) and heard the skipping. That told me all my efforts looking at the networking and Watchguard AP etc were off base as the problem was directly on the PC. I googled up and down looking for a itunes expert for hire but for some reason none to be found (business opportunity for contractor paid by hour with remote support / teamview / gotomeeting / etc). So I called apple and although the conversation took a good while to explain they did suggest the uninstall. Normally I am skeptical of this type of suggestion but the apple guy was confident and convincing (helps he was US based ).
Now I was very nervous about the process to uninstall and reinstall. I have a HUGE itunes database with 500+ albums and 100s of movies etc. I have spent lots of time cleaning up and customizing the metadata on my music and movies so it presents in the remote and ATV in an organized manner. I did not want to lose all this work as this data is contained in the library file. Also I store all my media on a NAS which is a completely separate device from the PC hosting my mainline itunes and the library file also contains all the pointers to the NAS location. It is worth noting that if you had to rebuild the library file you can unknowingly create a big duplicate problem with your music (learned this when I discovered 5-10 copies of each song and had to clean that up long time back) So bottom line it was not an option to just rebuild a new library file. I needed to salvage my existing library file if possible. My first step was to see if I could verify if the fix was going to work before I touched my mainline itunes. Fortunately I have a second PC and here are the steps
-completely removed all previous traces of any apple software including apple mobile device components, quicktime, bonjour etc (all in programs and features). Reboot PC.
-Did a clean install directly of the website taking all default suggestions from the itunes setup.
-started itunes and did basic itunes settings to match my mainline ..itunes ..
-closed itunes
-copied the library files ..from mainline PC there are 4 files under user/my music/iTunes/ .. (iTunes Library Extras.itdb, iTunes Library Genius.itdb, iTunes Library.itl, iTunes Music Library.xml) . copied and replaced the files on the new pc in same location ..
-started itunes .. all my music was there and with all my metadata / organization
-key test .. playback directly on the new PC via attached speaker (ie attached to sound port on that PC) .. no skips
-then turned on sharing and streamed to the wife bose sound link speakers .. several hours no skips
-repeated the steps for my mainline PC .. problem solved .. with no loss of data .. has been running perfectly for days with no skips or loss of metadata
Other troubleshooting steps I tried before doing uninstall / reinstall (nothing below helped)
-change sound settings on itunes .. direct sound v windows audio session, changed sampling, changed bitrate playback, all other check boxes on playback tab
-previously had quicktime installed .. changed setting there to correspond to same changes on itunes in case there was some interaction or dependency .. many permutations .. nothing had any affect
-turned off outlook and other network devices .. I use exchange so there is some constant checking in
-Watched network traffic via resource monitor .. this breads down network and CPU activity by process etc
-added separate AP and retested

How Can I Make Encore Create a Bluray Image that uses a Bit Rate that Really Fills The Disc?

I have searched and browsed but have not seen this specific issue.
I realize that if you leave the bit rate alone, Encore will use the best bitrate. In my experience, it doesnt. I have also found that the Disc Info on the Build tab is never correct. The final transcoded size of the ISO is always very different from what is shown.
With the current disc I am making, I am encoding 4 HD m2t video files that total 20 GB on disk. The total running time is about 1hr 50m. Leaving everything set to defaults, the final size of the ISO file is 12 GB. I would like the final size to be around 20GB. I would expect that Encore would do this automatically. Changing bitrate in the project settings and re-transcoding does not change the final size. If I manually set the encoding, the size does change but since the Disc Info is unusable, it is excruciating trial and error. You have to pick settings that you think will work, wait hours for it to transcode, then it is way to big or way to small. I cant figure out how to get it to my target size.
Also, when I transcode the files, Encore never lists the bit rates of the transcoded files. The field is always blank.
It may also be note worthy that I have to first transcode the files, then build the disc. If I dont do that, the transcoding will hang. Even when I do separate the steps, sometimes when I build the disc from the transcoded files, the build of the disc still hangs.
I am running a 3 GHz Quad CPU with 4 GB of Ram in 32 bit XP Pro. I have 5 physical drives of 500 GB each. I also use separate physical drives for the source files vs the target ISO. Disk space is not an issue.
Also, is there any timeframe for when Adobe is going to release a new update? I have also run into other problems on this forum like the wonderful error 6 and the hanging transcoding, although my solutions to both problems were different than what was posted. It is all hit or miss.
Does anyone know if Adobe going to add a feature like on other disc authoring programs where you click a Fit to disc button and it then calculates the best bit rate for the specified disc size? That would make me very happy.
I would appreciate any help here.

Encore does have a fit-to-disc feature, called "automatic transcoding", which chooses the bit rate based upon how much media there is to encode, how much room is currently on the disc, and applying format-legal restrictions (minimum and maximum bit rates allowable by the format).
So for instance, 30 minutes of video will never fill a disc because the required bit rate to do so would be higher than allowable by the format.

PE 9 - RenderFrameRequest Error

Hey all,
Been using PE since 4 and upgraded to 7, 8, and now 9.
After running 9 for the first time everything was going nicely untill I tried to "share" video.
When using share function to export to FLV file I changed a few of the default settings on the FLV medium quality setting.
For instance changed bitrate to appox. 700kbs and then also unchecked "resize video" because I wanted to keep original 720x480 instead of resizing to 360x240.
When I was happy with my settings I went to save and before it could start rendering I got a "renderframerequest-.cpp-309" error and PE9 quit.
Tried a couple more times with the same results.
However when I select FLV high quality default the video renders as expected. At least it appears to be going ok. I have about 25 minutes left.
Anyone else seeing this or have any hunches as to what the issue is? I'm attaching a screenshot.
Thank you,
Jeremy

Jeremy,
One possibility with a "Failed to Return Frame," or similar error, is a gap in the Timeline, in the Video Track. If that is the cause here, this ARTICLE should be helpful.
You do not mention still images, but overly large still images can lead to a Transcode failing, and some of the error messages are very similar to those with gaps. If you do have large still images, this ARTICLE will give you tips on how to handle those.
Good luck, and hope that this helps,
Hunt

What are the Bit Rates of the Music Store and Podcasts?

What is the bit rate quality and format of a song downloaded in the Music Store? And podcasts? Are they perfect, Apple Lossless quality or what...?

This might be true, but you won't experience any improvement in sound quality. Here's some info on bit rates:
This was originally posted by the incredible Sparky the wUnderdog
"As a general principle, you can fit more CDs on your iPod if you encode at lower bitrates (making smaller files), but at the cost of audio quality. Lossless promises to capture all the data on the original CD (thus preserving quality) but coded so the file takes half the space. MP3 and AAC (an implementation of variable bit rate MP4) both eliminate some of the information on the CD in order to compress the digital recording into ever smaller files--the lower the bitrate, the smaller the file, but smaller files mean more information lost and consequent poorer sound quality.
iTunes's MP3 encoder is so-so; the LAME encoder is better at preserving sound fidelity to the original. AAC files ripped in iTunes certainly sound better than its MP3s, with audio quality close to the best LAME MP3s at higher bitrates. With the type of music I listen to most often, sound quality declines substantially as bitrates fall below 256kbps, but LAME or AAC @ 256kbps sounds pretty darned good, and at 320kbps LAME alt-preset-insane is amazingly faithful to the original. However many users claim that with the music they listen to they can't hear the difference between 192 or even 128 kbps files and the original CD source, so they naturally choose higher compression rates to fit more "songs" on their iPods.
CDs take approximately 10MB per minute of music; Apple lossless takes 5MB/minute; LAME insane takes 2.5MB/min; AAC or MP3 at 256kbps take 2MB/min; and iTunes Store files (AAC@128kbps) take 1MB/min. At these rates, a 20GB iPod (really 18.6GB) can hold anywhere from 30 hours to over 300 hours of music. (iPod marketers express this potential playback capacity as "songs," figuring 4 minutes per song--thus 300 hours at 128kbps = 4500 "songs.") You will need to listen to samples ripped with different bitrates and codecs to determine the optimum tradeoff point for you between quality & quantity. It's worth taking some time to do this at the start as it sure beats reripping everything in your collection 2 or 3 times to get it right later.
So far as convenience goes, nothing beats iTunes's one-step process. To change bitrate as you import from CD, go to the iTunes menu > Edit > Preferences, select the Importing tab, choose AAC or MP3 encoder in the "import using" selection box, then choose "Custom" in the "setting" box, and the window permitting bitrate selection will pop up. If you choose iTunes MP3 encoder, at least use VBR (variable bit rate) to maximize the sound quality. (VBR increases sample size as data complexity increases.)
If you would prefer LAME MP3s, fear not, for the easy-to-use CDex ripping software is a free download and requires only one simple extra step to get the files into iTunes for transfer to your iPod. Now if AAC sound quality is comparable to LAME MP3, you might wonder why you should even consider LAME: Because of portability to other devices. At present, hardly anything but iPods can read AACs or Apple Lossless, but almost everything reads MP3s. So if you plan to burn CDs of your compressed files for playback on your home or car CD player (for instance), it would be wise to choose MP3.
One other consideration specific to the iPod: It has a 32MB cache. If you choose a compression rate that results in large files (i.e. lossless), then the cache won't hold very much 'music' and the hard drive will have to spin up frequently to fill it, and that will shorten your battery life somewhat."
JC

[svn:fx-trunk] 12025: Switching out the old video component for the new video component that uses OSMF .

Revision: 12025
Revision: 12025
Author:   [email protected]
Date:     2009-11-19 17:48:04 -0800 (Thu, 19 Nov 2009)
Log Message:
Switching out the old video component for the new video component that uses OSMF. Also fixing RSL issue with OSMF because a change in flex-config.xml accidentally got overwritten. Also fixing a bug caught during the last code review where you would set the volume on the VideoPlayer, but the volumeBar wouldn't be made aware of that change.
Switching out the video component results in many API changes. The changes are highlighted below:
Class name changes:
- spark.primitives.VideoElement is being renamed to spark.components.VideoDisplay
- spark.components.mediaClasses.StreamingVideoSource is renamed to park.components.mediaClasses.DynamicStreamingVideoSource
- spark.components.mediaClasses.StreamItem is renamed to park.components.mediaClasses.DynamicStreamingVideoItem
VideoDisplay/VideoPlayer event changes:
The new video component's events are:
- bytesLoadedChange : org.osmf.events.LoadEvent
- currentTimeChange : org.osmf.events.TimeEvent
- durationChange : org.osmf.events.TimeEvent
- mediaPlayerStateChange : org.osmf.events.MediaPlayerStateChangeEvent
The old video component's events were:
- close : spark.events.VideoEvent (removed)
- complete : spark.events.VideoEvent (replaced with mediaPlayerStateChange)
- metaDataReceived : spark.events.VideoEvent (replaced with mediaPlayerStateChange)
- playheadUpdate : spark.events.VideoEvent (replaced with currentTimeChange)
- progress : flash.events.ProgressEvent (replaced with bytesLoadedChange)
- ready : spark.events.VideoEvent (replaced with mediaPlayerStateChange)
VideoDisplay/VideoPlayer property changes:
Renames:
- maintainAspectRatio:Boolean has been renamed to scaleMode:String and rather than true/false, it now access 4 values: none, zoom, letterbox, and stretch. See the enum class org.osmf.display.ScaleMode.
- playheadTime:Number has been renamed to currentTime:Number
- playWhenHidden has been renamed to pauseWhenHidden, and it's "tense" has been reversed. So playWhenHidden = true correlates to pauseWhenHidden = false. Also, before we would only pause when the video component was explcitly set to visible=false, but now we detect if the video components or any of it's ancestors have been hidden.
- totalTime:Number has been renamed to duration:Number
New properties:
- bytesLoaded:Number This is a new property not available on the old video component
- bytesTotal:Number This is a new property not available on the old video component
- loop: Boolean this was a property added a while ago on the old video component but not in the original video player spec
- mediaPlayerState: this is a new property that details the state of the video component. See org.osmf.media.MediaPlayerState for all the possible values.
- seekToFirstFrame:Boolean (pending PARB approval) - This is a new property available on VideoDisplay/VideoPlayer. When autoPlay = false, if seekToFirstFrame is set to true, then we will connect to the server to start downloading the video, figure out the size of the video and resize appropriately, and show the first frame of the video. If seekToFirstFrame is false, then no connection to the server is made, there's no implicit size for this video, and the first frame will not be show automatically. By default the value of this property is true. In the old video component, when autoPlay = false, we always has the same behavior as seekToFirstFrame = true. Now it is controllable through this property. Eventually, (not for Flex 4.0), we will most-likely have support for a thumbnail source or a splash screen so the video's preview will show up without making an unneeded connection to the server. The property name may change depending on PARB.
Other changes:
- autoRewind: The default of autoRewind is now true instead of false
- enabled: before we paused the video when the video component was explicitly set to enabled = false. Now we pause the video when the video component or any of it's ancestors have been disabled.
VideoPlayer-only changes:
- videoObject:flash.media.Video property is now a new property on VideoPlayer. It was previously only on VideoDisplay.
- The skin states for the old VideoPlayer were: connectionError, disabled, disconnected, loading, playing, stopped, connectionErrorAndFullScreen, disabledAndFullScreen, disconnectedAndFullScreen, loadingAndFullScreen, playingAndFullScreen, stoppedAndFullScreen. The new skin states are: uninitialized, loading, ready, playing, paused, buffering, playbackError, disabled, uninitializedAndFullScreen, loadingAndFullScreen, readyAndFullScreen, playingAndFullScreen, pausedAndFullScreen, bufferingAndFullScreen, playbackErrorAndFullScreen, disabledAndFullScreen
DynamicStreamingVideoItem property changes:
- bitRate:Number renamed to bitrate:Number
DynamicStreamingVideoSource property changes:
- initialIndex has been added to DynamicSteramingVideoSource
- live:Boolean has changed to streamType:String which accepts values: live, recorded, any. See the enum class org.osmf.net.StreamType for more info.
- serverURI:String renamed to host:Object
- streamItems:Array has changed types to streamItems:Vector.
ScrubBar property changes (THESE CHANGES ARE NOT DONE YET, BUT SHOULD BE DONE SOON)
- bufferedStart will be removed
- bufferedEnd will be renamed to loadedRangeEnd. This property name still may change depending on PARB.
- bufferedArea skin part needs to be renamed. Probably will be renamed to loadedArea. PARB still deciding.
QE notes: -
Doc notes: -
Bugs: -
Reviewer: Kevin
Tests run: checkintests
Is noteworthy for integration: Yes
Modified Paths:
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/flex-config.xml
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/defaults.css
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/SparkClasses.as
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/wireframe/build.xml
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/wireframe/src/spark/skins/wireframe/VideoPlayerSkin.mx ml
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/spark-manifest.xml
Added Paths:
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/spark/components/VideoPlayer.as
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/spark/skins/spark/VideoPlayerSkin.mxml
Removed Paths:
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/spark/components/VideoPlayer.as
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/spark/components/VideoPlayer2.as
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/spark/components/mediaClasses/StreamItem.as
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/spark/components/mediaClasses/StreamingVideo Source.as
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/spark/primitives/VideoElement.as
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/spark/primitives/VideoElement.png
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/spark/skins/spark/VideoPlayerSkin.mxml
    flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/projects/spark/src/spark/skins/spark/VideoPlayerSkin2.mxml

I've got that same problem: iPod Touch 2nd Gen, Apple Component Cables, and an HD TV.
The funny thing is, the cable works fine with an iPod Classic (160 GB) but not for the iPod Touch. Can anyone explain why that is?

AAC File Format

I am in the process of deciding whether or not to buy an 4GB Mini Ipod. Could someone please tell me the sort of file sizes the AAC format takes up at different bit rates.
I currently have a Sony ATRAC CD player. I have the music on it in sonys own format ATRAC at 64Kbs and I think the quality of it is okay and I can get around 300 tracks on one CD.
What quality would you recomend I encoded tracks at for an Ipod and realistically how many tracks could I hope to get on an 4GB Ipod Mini.

This was originally posted by the incredible Sparky the wUnderdog with help from MacMuse:
As a general principle, you can fit more CD's on your iPod if you encode at lower bitrates (making smaller files), but at the cost of audio quality. Apple Lossless promises to capture all the data on the original CD (thus preserving quality) but coded so the file takes half the space. MP3 and AAC (an implementation of variable bit rate MP4) both eliminate some of the information on the CD in order to compress the digital recording into ever smaller files--the lower the bitrate, the smaller the file, but smaller files mean more information lost and consequent poorer sound quality.
AAC files ripped in iTunes certainly sound better than its MP3's, with audio quality close to the best LAME MP3's at higher bitrates. With the type of music I listen to most often, sound quality declines substantially as bitrates fall below 256kbps, but LAME or AAC @ 256kbps sounds pretty darned good, and at 320kbps LAME alt-preset-insane is amazingly faithful to the original. However, many users claim that with the music they listen to they can't hear the difference between 192 or even 128 kbps files and the original CD source, so they naturally choose lower bitrates to fit more "songs" on their iPods.
CDs take approximately 10MB per minute of music; Apple Lossless takes 5MB/minute; LAME insane takes 2.5MB/min; AAC or MP3 at 256kbps take 2MB/min; and iTunes Store files (AAC@128kbps) take 1MB/min. At these rates, a 20GB iPod (really 18.6GB) can hold anywhere from 30 hours to over 300 hours of music. (iPod marketers express this potential playback capacity as "songs," figuring 4 minutes per song--thus 300 hours at 128kbps = 4500 "songs.") You will need to listen to samples ripped with different bitrates and codecs to determine the optimum tradeoff point for you between quality and quantity. It's worth taking some time to do this at the start as it sure beats reripping everything in your collection 2 or 3 times to get it right later.
So far as convenience goes, nothing beats iTunes's one-step process. To change bitrate as you import from CD, go to the iTunes menu>Preferences, select the Importing tab, choose AAC or MP3 encoder in the "import using" selection box, then choose "Custom" in the "setting" box, and the window permitting bitrate selection will pop up. If you choose iTunes MP3 encoder, at least use VBR (variable bit rate) to maximize the sound quality. (VBR increases sample size as data complexity increases.)
If you would prefer LAME MP3's, fear not, for the easy-to-use CDex ripping software is a free download and requires only one simple extra step to get the files into iTunes for transfer to your iPod. Now if AAC sound quality is comparable to LAME MP3, you might wonder why you should even consider LAME: Because of portability to other devices. At present, hardly anything but iPods can read AAC's or Apple Lossless, but almost everything reads MP3's. So if you plan to burn CD's of your compressed files for playback on your home or car CD player (for instance), it would be wise to choose MP3.
One other consideration specific to the iPod- It has a 32MB cache (If you don't know what a cache is, read the last paragraph of this page: iPod + iPod Mini- Batteries). Keep individual file sizes below 25 MB as the rest of the 32 MB memory holds the iPod's Opperating System. If you choose a compression rate that results in large files (i.e. Lossless), then the cache won't hold very much 'music' and the hard drive will have to spin up frequently to fill it, and that will shorten your battery life somewha

Changing Bitrates

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