Windows Media video 8

Avene wrote on 5/5/2001, 6:44 AM

At this address
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/WM8/video.a
sp there are some movies encoded with a new variable
bitrate codec Microsoft have for Windows Media. The movies
look quite stunning. One is near DVD quality at 500kbps.
Well, I wouldn't quite say it was that close to DVD, but
still better than anything I've seen at that size before.
I'm wondering how I would encode movies in this format from
Vegas Video?

There's an encoder at the Microsoft website there, but it
doesn't work. When I open it, it closes instantly. Maybe
because I'm running NT. I'm sure the codec must be on my
machine if I can play them, but don't know what the
settings would be for rendering one of these files. Any
suggestions would be appreciated. I have something to
encode soon for my website, and I think this would be the
best looking format to go for.

Comments

teomorell wrote on 5/5/2001, 10:23 AM

You are right. Those movie clips look great.
I have tried many configurations with media 7 and media 8
(the new codec) but I can not get the same quality at that
bit rate.
Looking for some info, I found that the MiniDV and Digital8
formats are compressed at 5:1 ratio. When you try to render
this videos with a high compresition codec like de WMF 8 at
500kbps, all the compretion artifacts get amplified and the
clip looks bad.
After som tests, I could compress a video 640x480 at 2mbps
with good results. I have also gotten good clips with at
1mbps but the clip has to be well lit so there is little
noise.
You can get videos 320x240 at 500kbps with very good
results.

The encoder 8 is a commad program. It has to be run from
the command prompt. I downloaded and utility with a Windows
UI. It is only and interface to the compretion utility. O
don't remember the URL. If you wish I can email it to you.

After some testing, I have found at 2mbps the same quality
for Media 7 and Media 8. The diference comes on size. If
you choose Variable bit rate, you get files that are 20 to
25% smaller.

Avene wrote on 5/5/2001, 11:43 PM

I don't know if it would make much difference, but was your
footage shot in frames mode (progressive scan), or normal
interlaced mode? If it was the latter, deinterlacing may
have affected the quality also. And would it be the Windows
Media 7 setting that I'd use? I'm curious about the audio
encoding aswell. The 64kbs CD quality type. That would mean
audio files being half the size of mp3s, but still sounding
great.

Avene wrote on 5/6/2001, 3:15 AM

It's alright, I managed to get the Windows Media 8 encoder
to work. Wow, it really is amazing. I tried it on a 17
second DV avi. I encoded it at 500kbps with a size of
560x480. The size of the rendered file is 1.1mb, and it
looks great. The footage was shot in frames mode, so no
deinterlacing was required. I also tried another file which
was a 3d movie I'd done last year. The original file was
interlaced and had smoothing and blur applied to it. So the
results didn't come out as well. So essentially it will
work nicely if the original footage is clean and sharp.

I found the encoder easy enough to use. I wasn't too
familiar with the command prompt, as I'd not really used it
before. Once I'd figured out how to use it, I located the
folder the encoder was in, it was just a matter of typing
wm8eutil -input Clip0.avi -output clip0.wmv -v_mode 3 -
v_bitrate 500000 -v_width 560 -v_height 448
All the parameters should be easy enough to understand. Of
course I'd copied the source clip to the encoder's folder
beforehand aswell. Definitely worth the effort.