M$ new Media Encoder 9 rocks!

[jotte_ct]

Hi all,

So, M$ released WM Player & Encoder rel. 9.0 (Beta), check out here (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/)
Last night I had a short time to give a shot for this new M$ encoder, and I gotta say it rocks! at least for my purposes.
I had a DV type2 test file (720x480 ntsc, 1 min., aprox. 230Mb), previously captured with Ulead Media Studio. It has mostly full motion sequences. I used this forum's DV 2 DivX guide, and i got pretty good results.
Last night I tried the same with M$ Encoder. So, i just opened the file, set the encoding parameters (deinterlace, resize @ 540x360, 2-pass VBR, video set to 1200Kb/sec, audio VBR set to 128Kb/sec, and after about 11' of encoding (on my lazy Athlon 900MHz) i was able to watch the output (aprox. 10Mb) - very good quality, when watching in full-screen mode!
I'd say that comparing with the result I got with DivX (about same 10Mb output), M$ encoder did a better job. And also faster, since in Virtual Dub I used about 5 filters that slowed down the conversion process. Or maybe I'm not too professional, and I haven't made the right choices (settings) in VD, but mostly I folowed the sticky guide from this forum.

My only complains about this M$ encoder:
- not accessible from Virtual Dub, or any external app;
- i haven't seen yet a way of programming batches for encoding (eg. i wish to let the encoder to do several jobs durring the night);

If any of you have any interesting experiences, please let me know.
Thank you.

[EDIT]:
I checked out the documentation and yes, you can control the codec via Windows Scripting Host or C++
So, with a bit of work I can create batches!

[theReal]

What Divx were you using? Divx 3.11, 4.x, 5.x standard or 5.x pro ??
And what settings for Divx 5.x (especially if you were using Divx 5 pro)?

But it's hard to compare quality anyways - I think I'll give WM9 a try soon :)

[jotte_ct]

I am using DivX 5.02 Pro. I'm not @ home to check the settings, but most of them are as suggested in the sticky guide from this forum. Of course I'm doing the deinterlacing, resize, and other filters using mostly VD filters from TomMoComp & co. and DivX only for compression.

I agree it's hard to compare the quality and i can be subjective. I used same players (WMP 9 and ZoomPlayer), in full screen mode and i tried to pay much attention @ details in high motion scenes.
But, having in mind that i wish to make some personal CD's and send them to somebody onto another continent for view, than it will be easier for me to ask him to install the WMP 9 than a free codec bundled with Gator or some other sh**, rite?

[theReal]

To only watch Divx, you can install the standard version without Gator. It plays back all Divx 5 content.
And MS isn't exactly better regarding spyware, right? ;)

But probably, yes, people will probably think WMP is good and Divx is evil (because they read about it in some article) :D