VC-1 codec released

blink3times wrote on 1/12/2008, 5:46 AM
Don't know if anybody is aware, but Microsoft said they would release the VC-1 codec (same codec that HD DVD and BD uses) and they have.
The new X64 version of Windows Media Encoder has the codec included. (The 32bit version apparently has NOT been updated with the codec). I'm still trying to figure out how to use it.... but it's here for free if you want to play with it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx

http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/20613/Default.aspx

Comments

4eyes wrote on 1/12/2008, 7:41 AM
Under Vista I've been using MovieMaker 6 to create HD-WMV videos.
It already has a custom template for 1080i HDV, encodes at approx 7.8MBS.
When I use it to create HD-WMV videos during encoding it uses all 4 cpu's at about 90%.
Least to say it's very fast for conversions compared to the other programs that access the codec externally.

When I play these videos back on the PS3 they are displayed as VC-1.
The videos it makes are nice and complaint, I have no problems playing them back in any of the players, software players and hardware players that playback the hd-wmv format.

In MM6 I had to go under one of the options and select what codecs not to use so it would read my HD files correctly. I do insert TS.m2t videos exported from Vegas into the program.

Thought I'd mention this because MM6 renders pretty much utilizing the full power of whatever cpu is in the computer. It's the fastest program I've used so far for renders.
Does a nice job of de-interlacing & blending/smoothing the fields.
If you shot the footage using a tripod you may be impressed with the de-interlacing/blending.

Below is a quote about interlacing with this new codec that you provided the links to, interesting.SSE4 support for interlaced compression:
There is one performance improvement in the Ent SDK that's not in Pro SDK: SSE4 support for interlaced encoding. The new Intel "Penryn" processors will offer about another 15% improvement from our use of SSE4 instructions when encoding to the Advanced Profile's interlaced mode.