MP3 v WAVs - CPU/Real time findings

[rone]

Being lazy recently I've used the odd mp3 for a music track with one or two layers of DVCproHD.

Generally speaking processor utilization without music is about 40%. Fine. I added an mp3 of a track and it shot up to 85-90% with the buffer crapping out very quickly. Exported the mp3 to a wav and re-imported, checked again and back to 40%.

So it appears to be logical that an mp3 can stress the processor massively when pushing hard on real-time HD video. Or there is a bug. Not sure.

Anyone else care to comment?

[STORMDAVE]

MP3's are not that processor intensive, but generally NLE's don't support it correctly, so it's best to convert them to WAV's which is not that hard.

[GrassValley_KH]

Was the MP3:

- using VBR?
- DRM'ed?
- a high bitrate?
- on the same/different hard disk drive?
- on a CD/DVD/Flash drive?

[rone]

Was the MP3:

- using VBR? CBR

- DRM'ed? NO

- a high bitrate? 192kb/s

- on the same/different hard disk drive? SAME (as was the WAV)

- on a CD/DVD/Flash drive? NO

[Rusty]

Another good reason to stay away from .mp3!

They work for preview, but are problematic with edit/playback.

Convert and be done!
Rusty

[mattmatt]

Nice findings by the way :)