Backup Portable Device settings and show specific bitrates

[psychoadept]

Would be really helpful to be able to save portable device settings, for cases where you want to test different settings, change devices, or change connection methods.

Also, could the Portable Device conversion settings show specific bitrate options rather than "High Quality", "Portable Device", etc?  I assume that "Archiving" is 320 but beyond that I'm guessing.  If I want all files on my device to be 192k or less I can tell it to convert all files over 192k, but I don't know for sure what it's converting them TO.

(One other thing related to device syncing, which I realize is probably more complicated: it would be awfully nice if the syncing was somehow made lower priority/background so that MB can continue to do things like rescan and delete files without long delays.)

[Zak]

Also, could the Portable Device conversion settings show specific bitrate options rather than "High Quality", "Portable Device", etc?  I assume that "Archiving" is 320 but beyond that I'm guessing.  If I want all files on my device to be 192k or less I can tell it to convert all files over 192k, but I don't know for sure what it's converting them TO.

The encoding commands for each profile (small file size, portable device, high quality, file archiving) are all configured in Preferences > File Converters.

There's a lot of options there, so probably easier to ask specific questions if you want to know more.

[psychoadept]

The encoding commands for each profile (small file size, portable device, high quality, file archiving) are all configured in Preferences > File Converters.

There's a lot of options there, so probably easier to ask specific questions if you want to know more.

O_O

The more I learn about MB, the more I wonder what else I'm missing.

If I'm interpreting correctly, to make one of the settings convert to 192k I would set it to this:

--cbr -b 192 --noreplaygain - [outputfile]

(Also, I noticed the encoding thread priority setting.  Will fiddle with that and see if it helps the third issue.)

[beeing good]

I don't think the third issue is priority related, it seems that musicbee can only do one action at a time, I'm sure that people have asked for it to work in a multi threaded way before but I can't remember what the outcome was (I would imagine it is a large undertaking).

[Zak]

If I'm interpreting correctly, to make one of the settings convert to 192k I would set it to this:

--cbr -b 192 --noreplaygain - [outputfile]

For encoding an MP3 with LAME, that is correct.

But... at the not insignificant risk of sparking a flamey thing...
*deep breath*
CBR is now considered old-school thinking and using VBR quality settings is recommended instead.
i.e

-V 2 --noreplaygain - [outputfile]

will give you an MP3 at ~192kbps, but at higher quality/smaller size than CBR 192.

Also of note:
* "--vbr-new" which is included in some of the default MusicBee LAME commands is only required for versions of LAME prior to 3.98, which is probably older than what you have. It won't hurt to include it, but it will be ignored by the encoder.
* by default LAME will perform its own replay gain analysis which is recognised by a combined total of approximately zero programs and devices. As such, it's always a good idea to include "--noreplaygain", if only for the few seconds it saves in encoding time.

You can spend hours reading/pondering/fretting about all this (I know because I just did and I don't even use LAME!), but this page is one of the best LAME references:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME

[psychoadept]

CBR is now considered old-school thinking and using VBR quality settings is recommended instead.
i.e

-V 2 --noreplaygain - [outputfile]

will give you an MP3 at ~192kbps, but at higher quality/smaller size than CBR 192.

You know, I get that in theory.  I guess I'm just twitchy about VBR because it's a little harder to wrap my head around.  I'll give it a shot.

[greenday1987]

Kinda unrelated but encoding should always be done with lame presets of V0 or V2- with  V0 being preferred as it gives best quality with filesize still in mind

[Zak]

CBR is now considered old-school thinking and using VBR quality settings is recommended instead.
i.e

-V 2 --noreplaygain - [outputfile]

will give you an MP3 at ~192kbps, but at higher quality/smaller size than CBR 192.

You know, I get that in theory.  I guess I'm just twitchy about VBR because it's a little harder to wrap my head around.  I'll give it a shot.

I used to be the same, mostly because in the early days VBR implementations were pretty crappy and not universally supported. The fact that I'm prone to over analysis didn't help either - in my mind I was always worried that 192kbps wasn't "enough" and that 320 was "too much".

Looking into it again recently, more than anything it was this passage that convinced me to change my approach:

From: http://vorbis.com/faq/#quality
Vorbis' audio quality is not best measured in kilobits per second, but on a scale from -1 to 10 called "quality". This change in terminology was brought about by a tuning of the variable-bitrate algorithm that produces better sound quality for a given average bitrate, but which does not adhere as strictly to that average as a target.

This new scale of measurement is not tied to a quantifiable characteristic of the stream, like bitrate, so it's a fairly subjective metric, but provides a more stable basis of comparison to other codecs and is relatively future-proof. As Segher Boessenkool explained, “if you upgrade to a new vorbis encoder, and you keep the same quality setting, you will get smaller files which sound the same. If you keep the same nominal bitrate, you get about the same size files, which sound somewhat better.” The former behavior is the aim of the quality metric, so encoding to a target bitrate is now officially deprecated for all uses except streaming over bandwidth-critical connections.
Pondering the quote I've put in bold was my light-bulb moment - when I decided it doesn't make sense to use a modern encoder with the same settings I was using ten years ago. To do so is ignoring the improvements that have been made in acoustic modeling and encoder implementation in that period. 192kbps stores a lot more useful information than it used to.

This is all off topic and you're free to use whatever you like. I just thought I'd share my experience after spending hours poring over this stuff in the last week. I've found it quite liberating to stop wondering if I'm using enough bits and just asking myself "does this sound good enough?".

[psychoadept]

This is all off topic and you're free to use whatever you like. I just thought I'd share my experience after spending hours poring over this stuff in the last week. I've found it quite liberating to stop wondering if I'm using enough bits and just asking myself "does this sound good enough?".

Actually, this is really helpful.  Doesn't solve the problem of "how do I set max file size," but it does help me understand VBR a lot better.