[vorbis-dev] New version vorb_enc.dll

[Mark Taylor]

> 
> Holger Dors wrote:
> > 
> > Hello everyone,
> > 
> > > It will still work as a drop-in replacement for bladeenc.dll
> > while I like the idea of one interface for all those great audio
> > encoders, am I the only one who thinks that the BladeEnc interface is
> > pushed beyond its limits? Just look at lame_enc, and compare that with
> > all the options lame offers - there are a lot of them missing.
> > 
> > Wouldn't it be a good time to come up with something like a "Common
> > Encoder Interface", where BladeEnc, Lame, Vorbis and perhaps FAAC
> > would fit in better?
> 
> Sounds good. If you talk to all of the above people, and get their input as
> well, so that (hopefully) we can 'get it right' and not need another
> interface update (at least for the near (3+ year) future), that would,
> IMHO, be A Good Thing(tm).
> 
> Not just 'common' but 'open'. Get others to contribute (or at least offer
> suggestions) to the design, and they'll probably be more likely to
> implement it.
> 

lame_enc.dll actually uses this appraoch already: you can
call it with the usual BladeEnc data structure, or with 
a larger structure with LAME specific options.  The interface
was written by Albert Faber, the CDex author.  But even this
interface quickly become dated since we seem to add new options
on a weekly basis :-)

Some front ends call the command line encoder directly, and they have
buttons and menus for the main options but allow users to also specify
a list of command line options.  This seems flexible, but requires the
DLL to know about the conventions used by the command line front end.

I dont know what the best approach is, but as a start, here's my list
of the minimum option set which should be supported for MP3 encoding:

CBR/VBR (and types of VBR modes)
stereo mode (regular, joint, etc)
encoder quality setting (use the slow, best algoriths or faster sub-optimal code)
bitrate  (or target bitrate for VBR modes)
VBR quality setting
VBR minimum bitrate
VBR maximum bitrate

input samplerate
output samplerate   
input channels
output channels
lowpass filter settings

copyright bit
original bit
CRC

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