Additional options for encoding ogg vorbis files.

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
1

I’ve been banging my head against the wall for the last 15 minutes :smiley:

I love the ogg vorbis (last time I’m typing vorbis) file format for outputting my music to consumers. I am a DJ and I like to record my music at a really high sample and bit rate. One of the things I love about the ogg format is that it can encode these huge wav files down to practically nothing (~20 - 30 mb) while still retaining decent quality. You see, I use audacity not only to record my mixes but also to import from vinyl. The tracks I import from vinyl sound a LOT better 24 bit @ 192 kHz. Best of all, my HTC EVO can play ogg files natively. Unfortunately, there is only one option when encoding ogg vorbis (there, I used it again) files and that is the quality setting (not fully implemented, fractional numbers aren’t allowed). That leads to a problem with my EVO and most Android phones as far as I can tell. My EVO can only play back files that were encoded at 48 kHz max! I know that the command line utility oggenc can adjust the sample rate down while encoding, however; there is no such option in the audacity encoder. So, what I would like is an upgrade to the ogg vorbis (I know I said I wouldn’t use it, but I want to be clear) encoder that will allow the following options. From oggenc (taken from oggenc --help):

-q, --quality Specify quality, between -1 (very low) and 10 (very
high), instead of specifying a particular bitrate.
This is the normal mode of operation.
Fractional qualities (e.g. 2.75) are permitted
The default quality level is 3.

–resample n Resample input data to sampling rate n (Hz)

Thank you for looking into this!
Jason (Xanthë)
http://xanthe.rarely.org/

2

No problem. Set the “Project Rate” (bottom left corner of the main Audacity window) to 48000 directly before you Export.

I don’t think there will be a lot of call for this as the preferred values (integers) give a good range of settings and more than enough control for most users. However, if you want to be able to harness the full power of the Ogg encoder, you can configure it as an external program.

3

Wow, awesome! I love this software. I wrote a good review for this project on my website too. Thanks for the quick and concise response. I don’t really need the decimal encodings, just a WIBNI.

Jason (Xanthë)
http://xanthe.rarely.org/

4

I couldn’t find any documentation for using an external ogg encoder with Audacity, so here’s an example:

oggenc2 -q2.5 -  -o "%f"

oggenc2 is the name of the ogg encoder (from here: http://www.rarewares.org/ogg-oggenc.php )
Unzip the .exe into the Audacity program folder and restart Audacity.


-q2.5 is an example of an option (switch) that can be used - in this case it sets the “quality” to 2.50
" - " (space, hyphen, space) is used to specify the input (from stdin)
-o “%f” sets the output file name from the name entered in the Export window.