Does anybody have CORONA alias WMV9 ???

[sirbender]

If you see wmv9 alias Corona you are quite convinced - and now I heard it will be very wide supported from big software companies to hardware manufatures (like DVD-Player who play files coded with the new codec)
It is a pity that Microsoft will need still a little bit of time to release it - so I wonder if somebody has his hand of an early beta of the new codec ??? I just want to test it...and please no question like why don't you use divx3/VBR or Divx5.02 ???

thx, sirbender


(sorry - I posted this thread also first in the DivX5.02 forum - please if a moderator know how to delete it there plz do it).

[Acaila]

murattttt wrote:
Corona, why?

You can find some beta dll's in some warez sites which url's I will not give you here because they are all evil.
And IMHO Corona is crab because should it be good, it would have already took the place of Divx SBC or 5 in advanced encoders side.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they (M$) correct some things in some stable and bug free releases.
By the way why don't you use divx3/VBR or Divx5.02 ???
I believe divx networks is eventually going to build a standalone divx player which has a FUTURE!... no hypes no myths

Thread in DivX5 deleted.

[sirbender]

has anybody a direct link to download the pre_corona codec ???

sirbender

[Doom9]

this is NOT a request forum!

[BlackSun]

I believe divx networks is eventually going to build a standalone divx player which has a FUTURE!... no hypes no myths

I'm not sure that DXN will ever convince everybody as MS do and did in the past. DivX came from underground and when I discuss with some company, they call them 'pirates'...

[Neo Neko]

Hehe. Yeah. True. There wass good and bad to that move. Mostly bad.

[sirbender]

thanks Neo Neko...it is true I believe. Wmv9 will be the best codec for a very long time if you ask me. Moreover Xvid has a better chance to beat it then Divx5.
Back to Corona - it will be preinstalled with every new OS and comes with every new player or new InternetExplorer - and it is automatically downloaded and installed by the windows media player. Even more important is, that there is already a support of 90% of the chip producers of dvd chips for windows media (audio and video) - leading very fast real standalone players, and that's what I've ever dreamt of - playing Mpeg4-Cds on a dvd player in front of a BigTvScreen.
Actually I also think wmv8 and so even better amv9 have a quite good image quality - if you read the comparision you knw that image quality lies in the eye of the user - and I believe, that it is quite clever how it deals with the image quality, I like it more then divx5.x

So I think it is good to have an "all day" codec (I would prefer Wmv9) and a few other codecs for special stuff.
I don't want all my movies encoded in some weird format which will never run on a standalone player...

So if anybody has the codec or know where to get it...

sirbender

[Neo Neko]

Well don't let me get you down. But whatever corona does I will likely not use it for anything. I might play with it a bit on the Windows side. But all my serious work will be done with other codecs. Microsoft's products have a serious support and portability problem. Isolated systems get tiny bits of support. But all the systems I use that are not Windows get no support. :( Purposefully I am sad to say. I will test it for sure. But I can't ever consider it a workhorse. :(

[Doom9]

hmm.. if you seriously think that wm8 is better than divx5... good for you.. but I guess most of the people here can see how wm8 loses a lot of detail. Plus.. it's locked, editability is virtually nil.

If you followed the computer expo news closely you would know that all you get in hardware for corona is audio playback, not video.. and even then only for a limited number of devices. corona support in gfx cards is nothing but a marketing trick.. today's cpus are more than good enough to handle such formats and you're not going to put a $200+ GFX card into a computer that's so completely updated that it can't handle a regular movie.
Plus.. the content providers do not like Microsoft (or anyone else) being in control.. they want to be the masters of their DRM solution.

Add this all up and I think that the ISO standard MPEG-4 has a much larger chance of succeeding, especially since MPEG-4 is being considered as compression format for a future DVD standard.

[chemmajik]

I just want it for one reason to get the api & sdk, and see how they will implement a supposed DXVA implementation. Then thats when the fun starts, and I don't mean in the uses of Corona. Find its 4cc code will be the first thing to play with. To find out if they follow a mpeg2 or mpeg4 format or neither. But if what Doom says is true then so much for the fun, sounds a waste of hd space if it only improves audio with no video acceleration improvements for high resolutions.

[int 21h]

Corona has hardware support for video.

This article clearly implicates that Microsoft is attempting to court studios into producing WMV content http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20011211S0054

[Neo Neko]

Yeah MPEG4 for all it's evil pattents and such has a much more widespread push. Hundreds of companies are developing it for all sorts of aplications. Whereas Microsoft has alot of ill gotten money to throw at the situation, but they are the only player and they do not play nice with anyone. :(

[unplugged]

The Empire Stikes Back :mad:

M$ creates standards and patents almost every day, with the first objective to create dependencies by trying to spread his registered technologies to all companies/users.
First of all Windows and Office products.

So when "you" start to use daily their products (good or bad) keep in mind this company tends to LOCK the "rest of world" by his "tentacle policy".

Almost in multimedia rule they have demostrated to have very bad skill... WMV & WMA really lacks by speed and quality.
Despite this, they continue hammering with propaganda.

[trbarry]

I am very interested in this if the format is going to be much like mpeg4 and have DXVA video hardware acceleraton. Microsoft will likely talk the video card vendors into support of this.

It is the hardware acceleration in the video cards that currently gives mpeg2 the needed speed edge over Xvid/mpeg4 for PC HDTV playback.

But Xvid currently can use Divx FourCC codes and be played by Divx players. If Xvid it could also use Corona FourCC codes (format, whatever) and be played back using M$ compatible hardware accelerated filters it would allow playback of 1920x1080 HDTV video on faster machines.

I would really like this. And of course shortly thereafter we could puzzle out how to make ffDshow do the same thing.

- Tom

[NeVeRLiFt]

Guess we need to sit back and wait, see how this turns out.

From what I read Corona will have very good video quality and that Home DVD Unit makers will support it. This should be taken with a grain of salt till we see hard proof that the quality is really there.
I know I'm excited.... and if they hacked it once... they can hack it again. Corona may be the best codec every made! Are it could be crap!

Only time will tell ;)

[NeVeRLiFt]

Originally posted by Doom9


Add this all up and I think that the ISO standard MPEG-4 has a much larger chance of succeeding, especially since MPEG-4 is being considered as compression format for a future DVD standard.

Corona is Mpeg4 to if I understand this right, and I thought Corona (WMV9) was ISO standard MPEG-4 compliant....

[Doom9]

well.. has microsoft ever adhered to standards? they create their own.. did I just miss that or did no press release when they demoed and all the info on their page say nothing about mpeg4? If so is it not reasonable to assume that if it were ISO MPEG-4 compatible that MS would trumped that fact since it's a selling point? Also.. what was demoed really was only audio, not video. Yes, it says hardware devices were forthcoming but have you seen any? I personally think corona as every ms codec is overrated among the people praising it. I know a developer who has attended a private demonstration and was not thrilled about the video quality he saw... so I have my doubts (based on the facts indicated above) about corona.

[Nic]

Ive also heard from someone I trust about the quality of Corona video. He states it was impressive....

But its easy to make things look good for a demo....Best bet is for all of us to sit tight & wait and see :)

-Nic

[NeVeRLiFt]

Thanks Doom9 and Nic.

Right after I made that post... me and a friend was talking about Mpeg4 Iso standard and Corona and how this fits together.
We both knew it before you even posted :( that Micro$oft would not follow the Mpeg4 Iso standard and force DVD Unit makers to use there standard! And that would leave DivX5 and XviD to hangout and dry!

Damn you to hell Micro$oft!!!!!

[Doom9]

hanging in the dry? I don't think so.. if you should know something about the content industry it's that they don't trust Microsoft... they know how powerful Microsoft is and rather create their own standards or use an industry standard (or propose a legislation where the federal government would be responsable for creating these standards).. The content industry would like to restore their absolute monopoly they had before they had to sell cinema chains and lost control over the whole distribution chain. DRM and digital distribution would allow them to restore that distribution chain, but only if they are in control of the DRM schemes involved, and if no other company is in control of these mechanisms that effectively still guarantees their monopoly (as the government can step in at any time as we've seen in the Microsoft case which still has not been properly resolved).

In any case.. I think this discussion is pretty pointless at this point because we don't have any working code in our hands so I propose that we stop right here and wait till we get some binaries.

[Stabmaster-Arson]

We gotta just vote with our wallets, thats all we can do. I for one, will not buy a unit because it suports coprona, I will buy one that supperts mpeg 4. If it suports both, thats fine too, but mpeg 4 is required for my $$$.

[sirbender]

I don't look at a codec and think - shit it is from M$, therefore forget it.
I saw WMV8 - and it was the best solution(codec) for some month if you ask me. Then there was divx3+vbr - I think they are compareable. But: I also look at speed - every resolution of movies I encode runs smoothly (PIII450) if encoded in wmv8 - playback with the lowest quality filter setting. And to be honest with now quality filter it even looks better then divx3+4 with filter on step 2 or 3. And if you put on a filter on step 2,3,4 the performance goes very fast down.
I didn't say something about divx5.02 - badbadbad performance - sorry that's my experience - I believe they somehow make fools of us. In my opinion this cost of cpu speed is due to alredy quality filters working in the background, even if you set the quality filter to zero (which would be a trick) --- so you should compare divx5 with wmv8 with different filter settings...and also the filter of wmv8 works very good for me.
I also have to say wmv8 is old - there are now technically more mature codecs - but I don't see that they are really better then wmv8. Also wmv8 is one of few coddecs which supports real VBR - really very good, ok costs much cpu time.

So I am very happy about wmv9 - even if it comes from M$ - if it is the best I will take it, and actually I think everybody should do it --- the video-community (if something like this exists) and there members are very "mature" and not compareable to normal computer users which know nothing about codecs...and honestly don't care - so there is no danger to get something like a monopol or an addiction. Back to the community - at least I take the best codec, product etc. even if it comes from M$...and it is no addiction - I change my codec if something better crosses my way...

By the way the divx5.02 performance and also other codecs are really impossible - hello !!! I have a PIII 450 256 MB ram WinNT4 (same with w2000, 98, XP). And it should be possible to get a codec which allows playback at resolutions of above 384x288 with 30fps - especially if I only run my media player 6.4.
If this is impossible the codec is bad programmed or some quality filters are already used, which is a trick in my opinion.

Moreover I don't see a M$ dominance - if you know the market, especially the computer market, you know that something which is just a little bit better wins very fast - there have been many examples - like 3dfx - the power in the graphic market --- I thought nobody could ever beat them - then Nvidia appeared - 3Dfx was dead very very fast. Same with M$ - really divx5 looks very bad if it comes to performance and also how it makes the playback of divx3 formatted movies. Xvid is quite good - and perhaps wins if it continues in the end...

I hope at least some of you agree...

sirbender

[sirbender]

If you want good test if you ask me about it - e.g. the test of IE 6.0, Mozilla, Opera 6.0 from Paul Thurrott.
They are saying that Mozilla and IE6.0 are almost compareable in quality...so I also trust many other test, e.g. tests about Corona

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/corona.asp

http://www.winsupersite.com/

please post some good testing sites for codes and other stuff...

sirbender

[Neo Neko]

I will not simply write the codec off because it is Microsoft. But the fact that it is Microsoft is inherantly bad. It rases major issues with portability because Microsoft has none. And on the monopoly front they have not taken over the video market as of yet. But they are on their way to such. Give em an inch and they will take a thousand miles. When Microsoft is involved I find it hard to keep a positive attitude. To many people ignored them and it has brought us to where we are today. Better more worthy products get ignored or pushed aside in favor of clinging to Microsoft. Mozilla is a refreshing change. As is Open Office. But I wonder how long they will last. Or has Microsoft spread themselves to thin and heading for a major slip up.

[Doom9]

sirbender: slowly but surely I get the impression that there's some hidden motivation behind your posts.. that site you linked to.. it doesn't say anything but marketing blablah about corona.. how many times have we seen 20% improvement figures from various codec manufacturers and how many times were these figures unrealistic (unless you take a really special case). Until about a year ago I had a p3-550, by now an extremely outdated machine, and wmv8 performed significantly worse than sbc while sbc looks so much better... the wmv8 screenshots were devastating from the very first wmv8 tests I ever did...

but now again.. I asked to stop this until we have some hard facts (= binaries that allows us to make our own tests) but since some people seem not to hear this call I have my close button. You can bring it up again once we can do our own tests.