[FFmpeg-user] Choosing between experimental libavcodec aac or faac encoders

[Liran Zvibel]

Hello,

I use ffmpeg as part of automated and batch jobs processes converting video
files to mp4 with H.264 and AAC.
Quality and processing times are important to me, though I currently do not
wish to use AAC+.

My random tests show that the libavcodec aac encoder that comes with ffmpeg
is more time efficient, and has about the same quality.

Around the 0.7-0.8 releases of ffmpeg (up until 0.8.4, I think) I had
several occasions that on my random tests ffmpeg with libavcodec would get
stuck (which for my automated and batch jobs is even worse than a crash).

I chose to use libfaac back then, and did not get back to it until now I'm
upgrading to ffmpeg 0.10.

I redid these random checks now, and was not able to have it get stuck on
the files, and again it was consistently quicker than libfaac.

I noted that I still must pass "-strict experimental" to use that coded.

I would like to know which codec most of you are using, and whether you
feel that the libavcodec one is stable enough to be usable in production
environments.

Thank you very much!

Liran Zvibel