Hi All,

I was just wondering if there is supposed to be some sort of quality issues affecting premiere cs3 when using MP3 audio files.

I am recently applying for a part time job and have been asked " what advice would i give to someone who gives me a MP3 audio file to use in a video?" Is this a trick question as i do not see any issues in using such a file unless there are obvious copyright issues. I have used MP3 audio files when editing video's in the past with no issues unless there is some sort of hidden compression issue which i have not noticed which hinders the quality?

any help with this would be really appreciated.

Thank You in advance.

I think:
a) Not all MP3s can be natively played by all PCs or Macs.
b) MP3s are compressed audio files which will be required decompressed whilst the video is edited; and then be re-compressed when rendering the final output. Other that the reduced quality; it could put additional strain on the CPU.
c) If the MP3 was not generated very well, it may not keep time accurately.
d) MP3s may require a small amount of time shifting of the start time, in the editor, due to the compression algorithm.

My advice to the User would be 'give me an uncompressed WAV file before its quality has been degraded by conversion to MP3'.

I suspect the question is simply to find out if you understand compression, bit-rate and the other problems with the format. Oddly, I don't have any issues at all with non-variable bit rate mp3 in premiere as long as it's at least 192kbs.

Thank You,

Tim and Paul for this information i personally have never had any issues with mp3, but i think what they want me to say is too always avoid using mp3 and instead use uncompressed wav files which are normal audio cd's because of potential quality issues with mp3.