Media formats

[hoffm11]

I have PocketMusic and want to put many of my mp3 and wma files on my pocket PCs 256 Compact Flash and 256 SD card. What media format will be the smallest in size. What is OGG and will that be a smaller format? How do I convert my exisiting files to OGG?

[Jason Dunn]

This is a common misconception - media formats are all the same size at the same bit rate. ie: a 64 kbps WMA is roughly the same size as a 64 kbps MP3. The REAL question is "Which audio format sounds best at 64 kbps?" - the answer is usually WMA, but I haven't done many low bit rate comparisons of WMA vs OGG.

This is also a multimedia question, so thread moved...

[Janak Parekh]

This is a common misconception - media formats are all the same size at the same bit rate. ie: a 64 kbps WMA is roughly the same size as a 64 kbps MP3. The REAL question is "Which audio format sounds best at 64 kbps?" - the answer is usually WMA, but I haven't done many low bit rate comparisons of WMA vs OGG.
From what I've heard, WMA and Ogg are comparable at 64kbps bitrates. Some people prefer one over the other, but in general both are miles ahead of MP3.

--janak

[Mitchybums]

if you are gonna reencode anyway, you might want to consider the importance of the size compared to the amount.
If you play the songs over the speaker, it's mono, so you might want to encode them on mono/joint stereo or something to save space.

[Tom W.M.]

To encode files to OGG I use Winamp 2 (http://www.winamp.com/) with the File Writer Output plugin (http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=96985) and Vorbis-Tools (http://www.vorbis.com/files/1.0.1/windows/vorbis-tools-1.0.1-win32.zip) (direct download link) from Vorbis.com (http://www.vorbis.com/).

Stick the contents of the Vorbis-Tools zip file into the Winamp plugin directory once you have installed the File Writer Output plugin. Create a Winamp playlist containing the files you want to encode to OGG, then press [Ctrl]-[P] to bring up the Preferences window. Navigate to the Output Plug-in section. Double-click on "File Writer output plugin v1.17(c) (x86) [out_filewrite.dll]". Set the directory you want the encoded file to go, and in the "Format:" dropdown select "Ogg Vorbis (OGG) - from dll" Press on [Config format] to set the quality level. I usually encode my files at a 0.25 quality level, but since you're being size conscious you should probably experiment some to see what sounds good to you.