>
> I've got another question, and I thought it'd be better to start a new
> thread with it. There are some controversy with the quality and bugs
> of LAME VBR mode. Would this affect the ABR mode, too? Which is safer
> to use (though ABR is called the "safe VBR mode!): 192 CBR or 192 ABR?
> Can I _always_ be sure that I'll get better quality files with ABR?
>
No, the problems with the new VBR mode dont affect ABR.
I did some more tuning of ABR, so that it gives filesizes
much closer to the target bitrate. For technical reasons
discussed before, you cant say that ABR will be better
than CBR for every single frame, but you can say this:
difficult to encode frames: ABR >= CBR
average easy to encode frames: ABR and CBR are the same
worst case for an easy
to encode frame: CBR uses 90% of the bitrate
ABR uses 95% of the bitrate
So ABR is better in the best case scenario, better in the worst case
scenario, and is at least as good on average. But it is possible (but
unlikely) to have a frame where ABR uses 95% of the bitrate and CBR
uses 100% of the bitrate.
I'm very pleased with ABR mode and personally think
it should be the default VBR mode! (but I was outvoted on
this issue in the past :-)
Mark
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