[MPlayer-users] Newbie DVD audio confirmation

[Nico Sabbi]

Francois Visagie wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>I'm planning my first DVD-compliant mencoder session. The DVD will have one
>audio track only, which I understand needs to be one of PCM, MPEG-1 Layer 2
>(MP2) or AC-3. The source audio is PCM stereo (inside a DV AVI file). PCM is
>uncompressed so that won't be the final format. I understand that MP2 can be
>either VBR or CBR - if I picked that, I'd probably go for CBR to avoid any
>synchronisation issues.
>
>However, I can't find much information about AC-3 characteristics in the
>MPlayer documentation.
>

because lavc's ac3 encoder encodes only in CBR mode
and doesn't produce great results

> Which of VBR or CBR can it do, and most crucially,
>how does its quality and compressability compare to that of MP2 (in the case
>of a stereo track in case that makes any difference)?
>  
>

to my ears twolame and toolame produce much better results
than lavc's ac3 already at 128 kb/s