GStreamer does NOT properly encode MP3's (Also affects Sound Juicer and Rhythmbox)

Binary package hint: gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse

gstreamer is not properly encoding MP3's with the right VBR bit rates (corresponding to the options specified).
This ALSO affects Rhythmbox and Sound Juicer since they BOTH use gstreamer!!
You don't get MP3's with the VBR Bit rate you expect.

For example, if you run gstreamer in Terminal with the following options, you get an MP3 with VERY low bitrate:

"gst-launch-0.10 filesrc location=foo.wav ! audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame name=enc vbr-quality=6 ! id3v2mux ! filesink location=foo.mp3"

(This also corresponds to the following default options specified in Sound Juicer and Rhythmbox and you get the same UNEXPECTED results:
audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame name=enc mode=0 vbr-quality=0 ! id3v2mux)

Running LAME with the same options in the terminal gives you a much higher VBR bitrate AS EXPECTED.

e.g. lame -V 2 foo.wav foo.mp3

Another example, is running gstreamer with the following options that should give you much higher bit rates:

"gst-launch-0.10 filesrc location=foo.wav ! audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame name=enc vbr=4 vbr-quality=2 ! xingmux ! id3v2mux ! filesink location=foo.mp3"
It gives me MP3's with a low VBR of 48 bits/sec. Very bad. Defintely not 192 bits/sec VBR!

The culprit is version 0.10.6 of the gstreamer library file libgstlame.so. To downgrade to a working version (0.10.5) simply downgrade the gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse package from version 0.10.6-0ubuntu1 to version 0.10.5-2. Once you downgrade, gstreamer works properly and produces MP3's with the right bit rate.

You can download the 0.10.5-2 libraries here: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/poo...ultiverse0.10/

See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=608034&page=3

Also note that this bug has been reported upstream. See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=498004
But the bug still has not been fixed!! Maybe someone at Ubuntu will need to propose a patch to the Gnome folks.

This bug may be related to bug 235062 -- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gst-plugins-bad-multiverse0.10/+bug/235062

Rob