Published on by

Every now and then I have to edit an AVI file in which some prick has used variable bitrate mp3 for audio track.

I can't tell you how much that pisses me off. There is no benefit in using variable bitrate mp3 for video clips — file won't be any smaller, quality won't be any better, and you are just creating synchronization nightmare for those who would like to edit it.

If you still don't understand how VBR works, here is a brief reminder. If you assign 128kbps CBR to audio track, it will have the same bitrate during the whole clip. If you assign 128kbps VBR (and that is what most of those pricks are doing), then some parts of the audio will be encoded with 112kbps, some with 144kbps, but on average you will still have 128kbps so the file size will stay the same and you have just made editing harder. High quality audio cannot fit in less than 256kbps anyway so why bother assigning more bits to explosions and less to dialogs? Beats me.