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All reviews for OpusTools
| 4 reviews, Showing 1 to 4 reviews |
I'm thankful VidoHelp offers the Windows binaries for Opus using libopus version v1.4+9 (2023-12-11). The official site for opus (https://opus-codec.org/downloads/) shows a newer version of libopus (1.5.2 from April 12, 2024) available only as source code in .tar.gz format. The only downloadable binaries for Windows offered on the official site use libopus 1.3 from 2018.
I've started using Opus whenever I can to compress audio CDs, both music and audiobooks. BTW, the library has many audiobooks available in audio CD format, which is superior to the quality offered on Libby/Overdrive. The only thing wrong with compressing audio in mp3 format is when people do it sub-optimally, and you can hear the artifacts. Libby/Overdrive now standardizes on mp3s using 64 kB constant bit rate (CBR) 44 kHz joint stereo, which is decent for audiobooks with a single narrator and no music, but some audiobooks are dramatized with sound effects, and you can hear artifacts in those parts unfortunately. Older Libby/Overdrive books can be much worse with more aggressive compression settings, and sometimes they sound like they have been compressed more than once. Libby could easily solve this problem by using the default -V6 settings which uses VBR, scales up the required bandwidth when needed, and uses less bandwidth during the silence, which would produce a superior compression at a similar and usually smaller file size. MP3 has been around for decades, and when storage was expensive, people sacrificed sound quality and compressed music at 128 kB, which was audibly noticeable. Some blamed MP3 as a poor encoder. There have been several mp3 encoders over the years, and some were much worse than others, but LAME as an MP3 encoder has been very good for a very long time, since the 3.91 days. Today, LAME v 3.100 is the best it has ever been, and when using the default VBR settings -V2 for music and -V6 for audiobooks, most people can't tell the difference between the LAME compressed files and raw WAV files. I can't, and that's what matters to me. Today, all the compression formats, FLAC, OGG, MP3, Opus, etc., are great when configured properly.
So why would I use Opus if MP3 is so great? Read directly from the opus-codec.org website about the benefits of Opus. In summary, it's a newer technology with a better approach covering a wider range of input sources with a major focus on streaming. Media players on Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS also play .opus files natively without fuss. All new YouTube content uses Opus for the highest and lower-quality audio streams. Opus also supports chaptering, which is really nice if you want to create a single file for audiobooks. Comparing the file size of MP3 -V6 with Opus 64 kB, they are about the same, which is amazing at 18-20x compression. Overall, Opus is probably just better. But you probably already know that if you are here and reading this review.
Why not use Opus all the time? Editing is the main advantage that MP3 has over Opus. Of course, you can edit the raw wave files first and then compress, but when ripping CDs, it's convenient to go ahead and compress at rip time, and it's more convenient dealing with much smaller file sizes. FFmpeg is great at combining either MP3 files or Opus files, however, I haven't found a simple GUI editor that will losslessy cut .opus files. In contrast, there are a lot of great tools out there for tagging MP3s and a few GUI tools that losslessly edit/split MP3s (mp3splt for Linux and Windows being the best one I've found). I use Opus when audiobooks are clean and don't have garbage like: "This is the beginning of disc X" and "This is the end of the disc, please insert the next disc" at the beginning and end of each disc and not on their own tracks. Or discs from Brilliant Audio that put 99 tracks per disc and don't put the chapter breaks at the beginning of the track. When editing is required, I use MP3.
Using Opus is the same level of difficulty as MP3. Most people who rip CDs know about EAC (Exact Audio Copy). EAC uses a simple configuration tool where you point to the encoder .exe file and pass the encoding parameters. For MP3, you point EAC to lame.exe and then pass in the encoding parameters if you want to add metadata to the files. In EAC, I use -V2 for near CD quality music and -V6 for audiobooks with the following parameters:
-V6 --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ignore-tag-errors --ta "%artist%" --tt "%title%" --tl "%albumtitle%" --ty "%year%" --tn "%tracknr3%" %source%
To use Opus, you point EAC to the Opus encoder (I use opusenc.x64.avx.exe on my Intel CPU machines that support AVX) with the following parameters where bitrate is defined in the drop-down box in EAC. I use 64 kBit/s for Audiobooks and 192 kBit/s for music CDs.
--bitrate %bitrate% --artist "%artist%" --title "%title%" --tracknumber %tracknr3% --album "%albumtitle%" --date "%year%" %source% %dest%
So, the level of complexity is the same when using Opus vs MP3 with EAC. I believe FFmpeg has both MP3 and Opus libraries as part of the default install and can be used to combine either type of file. For example, in Linux, to combine all the MP3 files in a directory together and write them to the /FFmpeg subdirectory of the present working directory (PWD) you are working in, use this command:
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i
I've started using Opus whenever I can to compress audio CDs, both music and audiobooks. BTW, the library has many audiobooks available in audio CD format, which is superior to the quality offered on Libby/Overdrive. The only thing wrong with compressing audio in mp3 format is when people do it sub-optimally, and you can hear the artifacts. Libby/Overdrive now standardizes on mp3s using 64 kB constant bit rate (CBR) 44 kHz joint stereo, which is decent for audiobooks with a single narrator and no music, but some audiobooks are dramatized with sound effects, and you can hear artifacts in those parts unfortunately. Older Libby/Overdrive books can be much worse with more aggressive compression settings, and sometimes they sound like they have been compressed more than once. Libby could easily solve this problem by using the default -V6 settings which uses VBR, scales up the required bandwidth when needed, and uses less bandwidth during the silence, which would produce a superior compression at a similar and usually smaller file size. MP3 has been around for decades, and when storage was expensive, people sacrificed sound quality and compressed music at 128 kB, which was audibly noticeable. Some blamed MP3 as a poor encoder. There have been several mp3 encoders over the years, and some were much worse than others, but LAME as an MP3 encoder has been very good for a very long time, since the 3.91 days. Today, LAME v 3.100 is the best it has ever been, and when using the default VBR settings -V2 for music and -V6 for audiobooks, most people can't tell the difference between the LAME compressed files and raw WAV files. I can't, and that's what matters to me. Today, all the compression formats, FLAC, OGG, MP3, Opus, etc., are great when configured properly.
So why would I use Opus if MP3 is so great? Read directly from the opus-codec.org website about the benefits of Opus. In summary, it's a newer technology with a better approach covering a wider range of input sources with a major focus on streaming. Media players on Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS also play .opus files natively without fuss. All new YouTube content uses Opus for the highest and lower-quality audio streams. Opus also supports chaptering, which is really nice if you want to create a single file for audiobooks. Comparing the file size of MP3 -V6 with Opus 64 kB, they are about the same, which is amazing at 18-20x compression. Overall, Opus is probably just better. But you probably already know that if you are here and reading this review.
Why not use Opus all the time? Editing is the main advantage that MP3 has over Opus. Of course, you can edit the raw wave files first and then compress, but when ripping CDs, it's convenient to go ahead and compress at rip time, and it's more convenient dealing with much smaller file sizes. FFmpeg is great at combining either MP3 files or Opus files, however, I haven't found a simple GUI editor that will losslessy cut .opus files. In contrast, there are a lot of great tools out there for tagging MP3s and a few GUI tools that losslessly edit/split MP3s (mp3splt for Linux and Windows being the best one I've found). I use Opus when audiobooks are clean and don't have garbage like: "This is the beginning of disc X" and "This is the end of the disc, please insert the next disc" at the beginning and end of each disc and not on their own tracks. Or discs from Brilliant Audio that put 99 tracks per disc and don't put the chapter breaks at the beginning of the track. When editing is required, I use MP3.
Using Opus is the same level of difficulty as MP3. Most people who rip CDs know about EAC (Exact Audio Copy). EAC uses a simple configuration tool where you point to the encoder .exe file and pass the encoding parameters. For MP3, you point EAC to lame.exe and then pass in the encoding parameters if you want to add metadata to the files. In EAC, I use -V2 for near CD quality music and -V6 for audiobooks with the following parameters:
-V6 --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ignore-tag-errors --ta "%artist%" --tt "%title%" --tl "%albumtitle%" --ty "%year%" --tn "%tracknr3%" %source%
To use Opus, you point EAC to the Opus encoder (I use opusenc.x64.avx.exe on my Intel CPU machines that support AVX) with the following parameters where bitrate is defined in the drop-down box in EAC. I use 64 kBit/s for Audiobooks and 192 kBit/s for music CDs.
--bitrate %bitrate% --artist "%artist%" --title "%title%" --tracknumber %tracknr3% --album "%albumtitle%" --date "%year%" %source% %dest%
So, the level of complexity is the same when using Opus vs MP3 with EAC. I believe FFmpeg has both MP3 and Opus libraries as part of the default install and can be used to combine either type of file. For example, in Linux, to combine all the MP3 files in a directory together and write them to the /FFmpeg subdirectory of the present working directory (PWD) you are working in, use this command:
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i
Review by rsadix on
Aug 4, 2024 Version: libopus v1.4+9
OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10
Functionality: 10/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 10/10
Honestly, I've tested dozens of encoders and Opus is the best one, no doubt. I don't agree that it's "too complicated", the commands can easily be found and they are much more simples than other encoders, not only that, there are a few frontend GUI if you don't want the trouble to type commands... The only thing I'll say, though, is that for an "open source" software, it doesn't have much updates. It's been "forgotten" for years.
Review by Raphael on
Feb 5, 2024 Version: OpusTools 0.2
OS: Windows 11 64-bit Ease of use: 10/10
Functionality: 10/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 10/10
Great at what it does, but too complicated to use for most users. I much prefer he-aacV1 48kbps as the sweet spot. Any lower e.g using V2 makes the sound very tinny. Any higher is better sounding e.g 64kbps but recreates higher frequencies which most cannot hear anyways. Opus is better at these low bitrates, but why damage audio to even tinirr bitrates when lots of radio stations are using aacPlus these days to better use?
Review by John on
Jan 7, 2021 Version: 0.2.1
OS: Windows 8 64-bit Ease of use: 1/10
Functionality: 9/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 8/10
Rating by fluidinmo on
May 30, 2017 Version: 1.2 beta
OS: Windows 10 64-bit Ease of use: 8/10
Functionality: 10/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 10/10
| 4 reviews, Showing 1 to 4 reviews |