PlayCenter3: variable bit rate: need to know numerical equival

I am using PlayCenter 3 on my desktop computer and always rip MP3s using VBR (the setting: highest quality). In short, I need to know the information that that setting represents; specifically, the guaranteed minimum bit rate. On my notebook I must use other MP3 software because I do not own a Soundblaster for the notebook. Since I am giving my desktop to my parents I need to know the numerical equivalent of the highest quality VBR setting so that I may enter that into the options of whatever ripping software I finally decide to use.
I learned about *guaranteed minimum bit rate* through reading iTunes' options box.
THANKS! :-)

Is the problem inherently answered in your question?
Why use VBR when you bounce? It's a compromise solution, and has it's own problems. What are soundclicks tech specs? Work to those, getting the file as big as you can, it takes moments to bounce multiple files of varying bit depth etc to see how far you can stretch things before you're over-budget on the file size.
best
Steve

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"Variable Bit Rate Audio Not Supported"

Hello -
I have several AC-3 files - sourced from satellite broadcast downloads - surround 5.1, 448kbps/48kHz - that I cannot add to DVD SP. When I attempt to import them into the assests pane, DVD SP reports they are incompatible giving the error message in the subject.
Any ideas?

I too have noticed this today when trying to import a new CD. Every track has a variable bit rate despite not requesting it.
The older version of iTunes did not do this, just this new 7.5. I cannot seem to resolve. I tried to create a custom import without VBR but it ignored this too and did it anyway.
Apple, please help! This must be fixable somehow!

Variable bit rate audio assets cannot be imported

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Hi:
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Variable bit rate on importing bug in iTunes 7.5

I have tried importing a new CD into iTunes 7.5, installed this week as an update to the previous version.
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Apparently it is related to the new QuickTime AAC encoder.
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Variable bit rate is good

hello everyone,
I've been compressing dvd using compressor at 7.8CBR for my pass projects & it looks great. However on my current project I can't pull a good compression due to the large LCD screen in the background so I have to try vairalbe bit rate with min 6.5 & max 8.0 two passes & it looks great.
Does anyone has any similar experience?
I heard that compressor's VBR is not good so I 've never tried but to my understanding, it's better to do 2passes since the software would analyze the movie better.
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It's said the Compressor 2.3 has solved all problems related with VBR in past versions.
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Using Variable Bit Rate Encoding (VBR) and playback issues

I have been using VBR when making mp3 for download to "Soundclick.com" in the past, resently, I started to hear complaints from listeners, that my mp3 were garbled, although it is not consistent so, it is true, and I came to believe it was because of VBR. I re-encoded the files in question, and so far the problem has gone away.
The question is this due to OSX 10.5.6, or might it be something with soundclick, I don't know; but it did seem to become evident after loading the OSX 10.5.6 update. I can't find a way to correspond with Apple Development, so I thought to post here. I am also going to pursue this with "Soundclick.com"; VBR seems to be an efficient way to encode, and I would like to keep using it.
If anyone know about this it would be cool to hear for you!
God Bless,
ron c
http://soundclick.com/rone2him

Is the problem inherently answered in your question?
Why use VBR when you bounce? It's a compromise solution, and has it's own problems. What are soundclicks tech specs? Work to those, getting the file as big as you can, it takes moments to bounce multiple files of varying bit depth etc to see how far you can stretch things before you're over-budget on the file size.
best
Steve

What, exactly, is variable bit rate?

I understand the basic concept of VBR, but how does it actually work? I realize that more bits are devoted to the parts of the movie that have the most action. This means that other parts of the movie are subsampled in some way. Is it spatial subsampling, temporal subsampling, or a combination? Temporal subsampling could be done, for example, by dropping every other frame (although I doubt that this approach would give good results). Spatial subsampling could be done by rendering certain frames with less precision (similar to selecting a lower quality for a jpeg image). I have tried to figure out how this works by looking closely at samples, but I can't tell.

Michael,
I understand the basic concept of VBR, but how does it actually work?
Try this page to understand how VBR works, http://www.creativevideo.co.uk/pages/cvpinfo_mpeg2dvd.htm

Export flash vid with VBR? (variable bit rate)

Does AE CS3 have a choice of VBR when exporting Flash Video (FLV)? I'm going thru the Render Queue, but can't find where to change it from CBR.
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No, I don't think so. After Effects only does one-pass rendering/compression, so you're probably better off with Flash Video Encoder or something similar.
- Jonas Hummelstrand
http://generalspecialist.com/

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Bit rates in Compressor using H264

I have an HD media player that can only handle files up to 4GB (fat32). I need to compress 30 minutes of 1080P HD footage to around 3.6 GB. The problem I keep running into is the complex footage in the finished video.
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Thanks Thomas, I'm working with Jeff on this project. With your settings it does't quite work, The Data Rate is not really a peak constrained VBR, but its more of an average bit-rate. I've tried setting the Data Rate to 16000 kbits/s, but I'm not getting the quality output I need for some scenes.
Some scenes don't need more the 8000 kbits/s but others need more like 25,000 kbits/s. With the Automatic VBR I'm getting a mostly what I need, except one scene want to peak at 80,000 kbits/s. The player is limited to 30,000 kbits/s. Also like Jeff stated before the file size of the video must be less than 4GB so it will fit on CF card formatted at FAT32.
I need to be able to set a Average bit rate at around 15,000 kbits/s, with a Max peak at 28,000 kbits/s. Any one with ideas on how to do that?
To put this simply, we need the best possible quality with these specs.
*Codec: H.264*
*File size: <4GB*
*Average bit rate: 15,000 kbits/s*
*Max bit rate: 28,000 kbits/s*
Thanks

Export to .m2t constant bit rate

I need to export out of FCP a film as an mpeg transport stream, file prefix .m2t i'm currently using compressor 3.0.5 but it will only give me variable bit rate for out put which is no good. Can anyone tell me if compressor 3.5 corrects this problem or if there is a third party piece of software that I could use ? I looked at lumiere hd but i'm not sure if they are still in business.
export setting are as follows.
1920 x 1080 progressive, at a constant bit rate of 15 or 20 mbps per sec.
Thanks in advance.

Thanks Wally, it may come to that. Today I bought the up grade hoping that this would solve the problem but no just the same if I want to compress a HD file, into a .m2t file it still greys out the CBR option. A friend who has a similar system and was working in FCP 6.0.3 was able to produce them but said it was a bit involved, gave me a copy of one of his saved settings. I opened it in compressor and in the inspector summary it read as you would hope. However when I clicked on the inspector tabs, it defaulted to VBR. ***! Don't really know what to think. What could be effecting the changing of settings in compressor in such a way. I checked the preferences but there was nothing there that stood out as being relevant .... I thought about doing a total clean install but it seems rather extreme and without guarantee of sorting it.

ITunes & Constant Bit Rate

Hi. Okay this is my first time posting here. Up till now I've been decently satisfied with my iPhone. However right now I'm trying to import some songs from a CD that I own onto my computer and into my iTunes Library.
Okay so I watched the tutorial video. I did a little research online and I found the way to change the import settings.
I want a HIGH QUALITY music file in the .aac format at a CONSTANT BIT RATE.
Following me so far? With that in mind when it came to the 1st screen I selected "Custom" and I choose
Stereo Bit Rate: 320
Sample Rate: 44.100 kHz
Channels: Auto
Within this window the option "Use Variable Bit Rate" was SELECTED.
I unchecked/deselected it because I want a CBR (Constant Bit Rate).
And then I hit "Okay" thinking that I had done everything correct and perfectly.
Then I was back at the Main Pain. I hit Import CD hoping it would use the custom settings. However when I went to the folder to my shock and surprise it was giving me music files with a varying bit rate.
Some files were 325. Others were 321 and a few 319. This is NOT what I wanted and not what I expected from iTunes. I tell it to not use VBR it should be doing CBR right?
So that's why I'm hear. What do I need to do to get this to WORK the way I want it to? Or should I just give up and use another program like Windows Media Player to rip my songs into .mp3? I'd rather use .aac since I hear it's better quality and it's the evolution of mp3.
Any help would be greatly appreciated....
Message was edited by: TheLionOfAzzalle

It's still NOT working.
I've done exactly the way you suggested. I've also tried it with "use error correction" and it still doesn't give me what I want.
The only thing that sorta produces what I want is when I put it to mono and start the importing process the files all come out at the same bitrate.
However the highest bitrate I can get with that is 160. And that's not what I want.
I'm about to just give up. On top of iTunes being ridiculous slow on all Windows computers I now find that importing songs is a complete hassle.

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

Bit rate standards for Compressing video for Captivate

I have been trying to decide whether rto use constant bit rate or a variable bit rate when compressing my video to embed in Captivate.
I have been told by Connect support that a constant bit rate is better for deploying video in Presenter but I am wondering if anyone has information as whether that is also true for Captivate. We are using captive as a means to offer a series of video question and answer sequence for a client of ours, and I am interested in getting the best quality with the smoothest performance in a progressive download flv format
For a simple talking head I am tempted to use a variable bit rate but, I cannot find anything in the seaces I have made that talk about the spec or any pros an cons to that quetsion for Captivate.
Doee anyone have any expereince with that?

I have always used constant bitrate for videos imported into Captivate and that has worked fine. However, I never tried using variable bit rate so I don't know if it will work better or worse.
My guess is that it would be better to go with constant bitrate though because Captivate do have some funny issues with FLV's sometimes and it's probably better not to "stress" captivate ;o)
/Michael
Visit my Captivate blog with tips & tricks, tutorials and Widgets.

Custom bit rate of 192kbps coming out as all sorts

Started importing some more CDs today and the bit rates for the imported files are showing anything between 187 and 195 kbps ?????
The rest of my library shows as 192 kbps all 4000+ tracks.
Anyone explain, as I have not got variable bit rate selected in preferences ( that was my first thought ).
It also happens on converting too.
Message was edited by: Airsculpture

As far as I know, Apple's implementation of AAC never had a true "constant bit rate" (CBR) mode. AAC files encoded by iTunes have always varied slightly, even dropping the bit rate close to 0 kbps on portions of "digital silence." You can verify this by opening an old AAC file in Quicktime and selecting "get info" to view its actual average bit rate. Previously, iTunes simply displayed your target bit rate. I don't think there has been any actual change in how iTunes/Quicktime encode CBR, it is simply that it is being displayed differently.

PlayCenter3: variable bit rate: need to know numerical equival

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