[mythtv-users] transcoding perfect dvd rips to xvid

[Scott Alfter]

Mike Schiller top-posted (grr):
> On 2/20/07, K Barter <kbarter at gmail.com> wrote:
>> From some of the reading that I have done on various forums, and personal
>> experience, there seems to be some issues with audio sync when using MP3 as
>> the audio format.  The reasons are too technical for my little brain, but I
>> have seen examples where an mp3 audio stream is far enough out of sync that
>> it looked like I was watching a foreign film with English dubbed in poorly.
>
> Thanks, I think I'll stay away from the mp3 audio for now.

If you're creating an AVI, the main thing to avoid with MP3 audio is VBR
(variable bitrate).  AVI only allows CBR (constant bitrate).

There are other container formats (such as Matroska) that allow VBR, but you'll
most likely need to use a separate app to mux the video & audio together.

These days, I transcode video to H.264 and either keep the AC3 audio (if it's
multichannel) or transcode the audio to AAC (if it's mono or stereo).  H.264
and AAC can be muxed into an MPEG-4 container; H.264 and AC3 get muxed into a
Matroska container.  H.264 can be stored in an AVI container, but only if you
don't use B-frames...a fairly major restriction.

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