Glenn Gould Records JS Bach's Goldberg Variations (1981) [AC-3, Dolby] 720p

This is a modification from another torrent containing the same work, but preceded by some extraneous conversation and discussion which I instantly (as in within the period of a day or two) removed so that one can just go directly to the performance.

Removing the discussion from the original file, also in AVI format, involved quite a struggle (most of which I have documented on YouTube believe it or not). However, in the end the struggle was worth it because after constructing an MP3 version of the original without the lead-in, I was left with a video of just the right length and with ONE PRECIOUS KEY FRAME that allowed me to multiplex back-in the original AC-3 Dolby audio stream (which is the audio stream for this AVI).

The original Avi's extremely high bitrate of 1800 Kbps betrayed the terrible fact of its lousy quality. In all honesty, it hardly qualified for playback on a home computer (apparently the proud result of some DivX Home Theater utility). The close in shots were quite good though and fascinating to watch, overall it couldn't justify a 1 Gig download. So I re-encoded it and dimmed the lighting slightly to hide most of its image defects and wound up with a 500Meg XviD/MP3 downloadable with 50% of that being audio.

The rest happened mostly by accident. I wanted to upload the thing to YouTube and, video quality or no, I didn't want to take an essentially perfect 448 Kbps Dolby AC-3 stream and have it come back to me at 126 Kbps constant AAC. So I letter-boxed it to 720p and surprise surprise, it came back to me at 126 Kbps. A 73% loss overall.

I thought maybe letter-boxing wasn't enough so I expanded my modified version to about 960x720 and replaced the MP3 audio I'd used last time with the original AC-3 audio. Well, YouTube responded in kind, tossing out 73% of the audio quality again and most of the video...

I say "video" because that 2nd re-encoding really improved the quality of the visuals as well which surprised me. And assuming I've uploaded the right torrent, then you'll have a chance to see AND HEAR IT at the highest possible quality as well.

Video details:
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General
Complete name : JS Bach's Goldberg Variations [Glenn Gould, 1981].XviD.AC3 (2ch. Dolby).hd.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
File size : 807 MiB
Duration : 52mn 23s
Overall bit rate : 2 155 Kbps
Writing application : VirtualDubMod 1.5.10.1 (build 2439/release)
Writing library : VirtualDub build 32842/release

Video
ID : 0
Format : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile : Advanced Simple@L5
Format settings, BVOP : 2
Format settings, QPel : No
Format settings, GMC : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix : Default (H.263)
Muxing mode : Packed bitstream
Codec ID : XVID
Codec ID/Hint : XviD
Duration : 52mn 23s
Bit rate : 1 697 Kbps
Width : 958 pixels
Height : 722 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.098
Stream size : 636 MiB (79%)
Writing library : XviD 64

Audio
ID : 1
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : 2000
Duration : 52mn 23s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 448 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : 531ms
Stream size : 168 MiB (21%)
Alignment : Split accross interleaves
Interleave, duration : 40 ms (1.00 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 500 ms