[MPlayer-users] mencoder Audio Quality

[D Richard Felker III]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 11:43:34PM -0700, Christopher Mason wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> I'm a relative newbie to mencoder.  I've read quite a bit of the website 
> and have been able to produce (using three pass encoding) AVIs that look 
> quite good.  I'm struggling with audio quality though.  I've tried two 
> different source DVDs and two different sets of LAME compression options. 
> Both sound tinny, and have a definite high pitched noise component.  At 
> first I thought this was because my MP3 bit rate was not high enough.  But 
> the latest rip I did had an average bit rate greater than 150kbps.  I've 
> noticed that both DVDs are recorded at 48khz.  This bit rate is preserved 
> in the MP3 audio track.  I'm wondering if maybe the software sample rate 
> conversion is poor (I'm using MacOS X) and is contributing the tinny sound 
> and noise artifacts.  Should I be applying sample rate conversion in the 
> making of the AVI?  Will this be better than the SRC done at playback time 
> (I've tried both vlc and quicktime)?  If so, what options should I use?

Try -srate 44100 to resample. You should be able to get great audio
quality at ~110 kbit/sec average using vbr audio (in most movies;
obviously you'll need higher for a musical or something).

Rich