Problem with audio quality

[xtexan86]

Hi, I'm glad I'm not experiencing the really bad problems that some on this board are, but I do have an issue that's proving very frustrating. When I go to render a video that is composed of video clips and an .mp3 music file, I'd like to get the finished file into as big of a file as I can. In order to do that, I select the MPEG-4 option. The good news is it typically will result in an approx file size of 250MB for a 2 1/2 minute video, versus 170MB for any other file extension. The bad news is the audio is full of pops and noise. The audio remains fine with any other option other than MPEG-4. I've tried numerous ways to 'reconstruct' the file...using different audio file extensions (it seems to prefer .wma files but there is a noticeable drop in clarity), rendering the video only then adding the audio file and rendering again...nothing helps. I've also tried to modify the rendering options in each video selection that Corel offers (this is in the window that pops up asking for the file name just before you render it), but the audio never gets better. Any suggestions would be appreciated,

[canuck]

Why do want to "to get the finished file into as big of a file as you can"? Do you think you will get better quality? If that is your assumption then you are wrong. In many cases you will decrease the quality if you start from a lower quality video/audio and try to render it to higher quality video/audio. All you are doing is "amplifying" the poor quality in the source. Also file extensions are really irrelevant., they are just "text". For example, there are hundreds of "avi" versions but not all are accepted by VS or other video programs.

You have given no specifics on your source video/audio: what are their properties, where did you get them? Also just saying you selected mpeg4 as output does not tell us very much. There are various "settings", which have you selected?

[xtexan86]

Thanks for the response. Actually, I would disagree that a bigger video file doesn't have more quality, especially if the video is being viewed on a slideshow screen. Other than that, my video clips are all .mpg and the audio is .mp3. I did discover a rendering option in Corel that assigns a file extension of .m3t (AVCHD), and has a higher audio bit rate than MPEG4. This produced a larger file and good quality sound, which is what I needed.