On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 4:52 PM, Christopher Woods <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
> > Christopher Woods wrote: > > > Tech question - what encoder(s) are you using? If it's software in > > > realtime or close-to-realtime, please (please please) say it's Lame > > > 3.97. If the backend is using the Fraunhofer FhG codec, I think I > > > might contemplate going and banging my head against a wall > > for a little while. > Currently we're using old servers held together by string and sealing wax, run on our behalf by Siemens, and being waited on hand and foot by trained engineers to eke the very last amount of life out of their tired motherboards. They use software from Digital Rapids: http://www.digital-rapids.com/ Coyopa goes live shortly (actually, shhh, it's live now, we're just not publishing the files yet) and it will be using software from twofour: http://www.twofourgroup.com/ - I don't know the actual codec we're using; it's a choice for our contractor. MP3 is not our longterm codec choice. I think many are of the opinion that Lame is a higher quality and more > efficient software codec than the FhG codec. It certainly excels at VBR > encoding and quality at lower bitrates (circa 128kbps, which is where the > BBC is initially encoding their stuff). In fact, it's (from memory) 80k for 5live and 5livese, 128k for everything else, except 192k for Radio 3. Again, this is not our longterm bitrate choice neither. I refuse to be drawn! ;) A question / request to BBC techies who have sorted this out: VBR is widely > supported across PC, portable and handheld devices. Is VBR encoding on the > cards for the future / could it be? No, it's not; VBR is not a good solution for streaming files, which requires CBR to work effectively as I recall. While Coyopa will be creating files to download, given those same files will be used for streaming, we'll be using CBR for those. We're currently prohibited from using, say, progressive download techniques for our streams, due to rights reasons. The BBC Embedded Media Player buffers approx five seconds of audio as a result (which also enables us to offer full navigation throughout audio and video files). Hope all that's interesting to people.
