Why so long to render from WMV to another format?

smhontz wrote on 2/24/2004, 7:27 PM

I had a teacher ask me to convert a student's video from Windows Media 9 format to a QuickTime format because the school runs Mac and they don't have a Mac version of a player that plays WM9 format (Is there such a thing?), nor are they allowed to install new software. So, I figured I could just whip the wmv file into Vegas, render it to a QT and be done with it. Then they could play it in the QT player on the Mac and show it on their video projector.

The original movie is just over 2 minutes long. The properties say 720 x 480 x 24, frame rate 30 fps, progressive scan, pixel aspect ratio 1.0 (square). I started to render to a QT format, but it crawled, so I decided to try an AVI NTSC DV format first. It's taking over an HOUR to render this 2 minute piece. Why is it taking so long? Is it because it has to convert to interlaced 29.97? Am I going about this the wrong way?

Comments

Cheno wrote on 2/24/2004, 8:02 PM

I'll let someone else handle the conversion. Never done a wmv to quicktime. I've got Windows Media Player 9 on my powerbook so yes it exists, however the school not being allowed to download or install software is pretty common. WMP for mac works pretty well though. I personally haven't had a problem with it. I just ran a test with a 2 Mb WMV file that is 35 seconds long. Render came in at just under 8 1/2 min at quicktime default settings. Haven't tried going to .avi. I'm sure someone will chime in with better reasoning.

Mike

TVCmike wrote on 2/24/2004, 8:56 PM

I think you're doing everything the right way. Transcoding is never fast or clean, particularly when you go from one compressed format to another. I'm wondering if dumping the WMV to an uncompressed AVI and then compressing with QT natively on the Mac would be faster somehow, but I'm not sure it would really help.