Editing a wmv file, help.

Julius_ wrote on 3/18/2010, 2:39 PM

Hi,

A client came and see me and she has this wmv file that is on her webpage and she wants to insert a few more video clips. This is the only file she has.

I took the file, popped it in vegas and rendered it out to a wmv (320 x 240), but wow, the image was just horrible..too blury and pixelated.

Is there anything else I can do before I refuse this contract? The original wmv file is pretty good when viewed on the web or in the windows player.

Thanks for any suggestions

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 3/18/2010, 3:57 PM

The quality of .wmv is mostly related to the bitrate, and partially by the frame size and frame rate.

What rendering template did you use? What custom changes did you make? What bitrate did you use? How does the size of the rendered file compare to the size of the original? Did you use two-pass encoding?

All that aside, WMV is a *very* lossy format. Rendering from WMV to WMV is only going to get worse. You won't be able to retain the original quality no matter what.

Perhaps Microsoft has some tools for chopping and recombining WMV files losslessly?

Julius_ wrote on 3/18/2010, 4:32 PM

I was afraid you'd say that...

I was the Multimedia 320X240 29.9fps template.

When i rendered, the template in the Render as box is 3mbps
Mode was Quality VBR
Quality at 100%
Bit rate tab was set to Internet Lan at 3M

Soniclight wrote on 3/19/2010, 7:59 AM

What are the detailed properties of the original WMV?

My guess is that one would have to match the project + render-out properties to it in order to retain whatever quality the file seems to have when currently viewed online. A small file such as this one will always look as you described if the project resolution doesn't match it (i.e. is something larger, such as SD, HD, etc).

Julius_ wrote on 3/19/2010, 9:01 AM

The original file is 320 X 240
bit rate of 271 kps

I found that using Media Encoder to export the file to another file with higher settings, then bring that to vegas and render it out, the quality was passable..not as clear, but a lot better than working from the original file.

John_Cline wrote on 3/19/2010, 9:17 AM

You could use a piece of freeware called "Asfbin", it does lossless splitting and joining of WMV files. Use it to split the original clip, then generate the additional new footage in Vegas and save as a WMV with the same encoding parameters of the original file, then use Asfbin to assemble the clips into the finished product. This way the original video wouldn't be recompressed at any point. It's not the easiest or most elegant solution, but it does maintain the quality of the original video.

The command line version of Asfbin is up to v1.7.14, the GUI version is at v1.5.

http://www.radioactivepages.com/index.php?docid=asfbin&lang=en&section=software

If it works for you, shoot the author a few bucks.