Slashdot interview re: vorbis

[Geoff Shang]

Hi Brent:

hahaha.  No, no debian packages for vorbis yet, it's way way too new
yet.  However, some tools like oggenc can be downloaded as precompiled
binaries.

You  know, you could solve your recording problem pretty easily by using
arecord (if you run alsa which I think you do).  Arecord is neat because it
can record to standard output.  This is cool because you can then pass it
to something else that can use standard input, such as an MP3 or vorbis
encoder.  A command example for lame to encode MP3 for example might be:

arecord |lame - recording.mp3

Another example using the oggenc program now available for vorbis:

arecord |oggenc - -o output.ogg

Note that I've seen instances of arecord dropping out when there's other HD
activity.  Whether piping to standard output would suffer similarly, I do
not know.  I would be interested if there are other wav recorders that will
record to standard output.

I really dig this ability to pipe audio.  I like to encode stuff in formats
like MP3, but I'm impatient.  I want to encode at the lowest bitrate I can
get away with that still sounds good.  I don't want to encode the entire
file before I decide I don't like that particular rate, so I pipe it to
mpg123 and listen to some of it to see what I think.  Note that this breaks
up over a certain bitrate, depending on your processor power.  Here's an
example:

lame -hb 160 input.wav - |mpg123 -

One other comment on piping.  The ultimate application for saving space as
Brent alluded to is ripping tracks from CD.  Cdparanoia will, you guessed
it, rip to standard output.  So you can use a command like this:

cdparanoia -qz 1 - |lame -hb 160 - track1.mp3

This will encode track 1 on the CD to track1.mp3 using high quality mode
and a bitrate of 160kbps.

Geoff.


-- 
Geoff Shang <gshang10 at scu.edu.au>
ICQ number 43634701