Please comment WMV produced by VV4 and MS Encoder...Thank you!

s2001 wrote on 6/18/2003, 10:18 AM
PS: now all files may be downloaded w/o problem, sorry...

Dear All,

Could you comment please small examples created in VV4 and MS Encoder?
You may found small files at http://81.3.150.5/video/

test_by_ms_encoder.zip - created in MS Encoder with DVD-2Mb standard profile
test_by_vegas.zip - created in Vegas with following parameters:

WMV9 type: VBR Peak
FPS: 25
Second per keyframe: 3
Average bps: 3M
Peak bps: 6M
Peak buffer: 20sec

I also added test_MPEG_by_vegas.zip in MPEG2 (DVD PAL template) for comparision.

It seems Vegas Video 4 creates less bright/rich picture vs MS Encoder (in spite of greater bitrate !!)
And MPEG2 file more qualitative...

Thank you very much for advises!
Best wishes,
Sergey

Comments

mikkie wrote on 6/18/2003, 1:10 PM
To my eyes, FWIW and all, have a couple of things happening I think.

Bringing all 3 into VV4c and switching between tracks for the same frame, the color itself seems to be pretty constant. I do see a difference though, that because of the way our eyes work, paying attention to contrast over anything else, makes the one clip look a bit more dull.

What's happening IMO, is that as I've found in prior tests, the winmedia 9 encoder in VV4c is blending the background detail. This can be a good thing, eliminating crawling artifacts in some situations, and is closer to the way RealVideo works. In this case however, the sequence relies on background detail for the darker colors and tones, so when you smooth things out, we perceive less sharpness and contrast.

While the good news may be that no, you're not crazy or seeing things, the bad news is that personally at least I don't know of a way around it. You might want to check out the codec comparisons at doom9.org, but I think all that might do is re-enforce what you've already found. The only suggestion I can think of at the moment is something I haven't tried - in fact just occured to me.

MS offers a VCM download for free http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0c99c648-5800-4aa3-a2fe-3de948689db8&DisplayLang=en

This installs the winmedia 9 codecs etc. in a VFW friendly format for use by programs like VirtualDub. After install, from inside Vegas select render as and choose avi. Then choose the default uncompressed format, go to the custom dialog, and on the video page select windows media 9 as the compression codec. Click the configure button and you have access to most of the winmedia 9 encoder functions, and I believe the same encoding code as the Ms stand alone encoder. You might be able then to get the best of both worlds.

Hope this helps.
s2001 wrote on 6/19/2003, 2:15 AM
Mikkie, thank you very much! Its very useful for me and I'll try MS VCM in VV4...

Best wishes,
Sergey
s2001 wrote on 6/19/2003, 5:43 AM
Just tryed MS VCM - WMV file could not played...:-)
I hope there will any possibilities to change VV4 standard behaivior...
mikkie wrote on 6/19/2003, 10:39 AM
"Just tryed MS VCM - WMV file could not played...:-)"

Hadn't tried it - just thought of it when last posted - so I went through and tried a *short* clip using the VCM in Vegas, which produces an avi file. It seems to play well, as long as the file extension is .avi - change it to .wmv or .asf and windows media player doesn't like it at all.

Good and bad, from what I can tell the avi file is compressed using winmedia 9, but no windows media codecs are available for the audio. The file itself isn't in windows media specs, so none of the related tools work - I was hoping for a work around to change the header for the file.

None the less, if you change the file extension from .wmv to .avi, & if it plays, does it meet your expectation? If so, could you use it with the .avi extestion?