Windows Media 9 now AVI compatible

[CruNcher]

Amir said it and here they go so now Windods Media 9 is not anymore ASF dependend nice task so far :)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=719DE0E4-57D4-4066-8ED0-81D28E615BC5&displaylang=en

[bond]

The samples demonstrate how to encode and decode WMV streams in AVI using VFW and DirectShowsounds interesting!

@nic
on the same page i found a wm9_codecs_only install package (http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/0/3/a0398036-25b9-410c-b371-c59957c1b0f4/WM9Codecs.exe) (824 KB)! i guess you can replace the package on your page [wmfdist.exe (3.87 MB)] with this one!?

[Selur]

Looks like we need someone to write some WindowsMediastuff to get this running,... as far as I see it's 'just' some sample code how to use wmv&Co in an application, but it's no codec that could be used in Virtual Dub&Co,..

Am I wrong?

Cu Selur

[zulu]

Originally posted by Selur
Looks like we need someone to write some WindowsMediastuff to get this running,... as far as I see it's 'just' some sample code how to use wmv&Co in an application, but it's no codec that could be used in Virtual Dub&Co,..

correct.
Niiiiiiiiic!! :D

[midiguy]

yeah, lets get some binary vfw codec going here, someone!

[Sirber]

If WM9 gets in AVI, it will be bad for RV9...

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Sirber If WM9 gets in AVI, it will be bad for RV9...
Not necessarily .... it all depends if AVI is capable of supporting all of WMV9's advanced features. Would be nice though to know at all what these are ... :D !!

B-frames ? These can be supported in AVI, but only by using some tricks ( dummy frames. etc ) ... will they change their en/decoder to support this ?

Variable framerate ? Not supported in AVI

New frametypes ? See above ...

etc. .....

[Sirber]

I tryed WM9 once, and the result was green lol. I like green but not that much ;)

[bond]

@christianhjw

so what are matroska's plans for supporting wm9?

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by bond so what are matroska's plans for supporting wm9 ?
No specific plans, i am sorry. This is really not matroska's fault, but a VfW version of WMV9 wont allow to use any of the more advanced features listed above, so this is also not AVI's fault but a problem of the interfacing API.

Once M$ released an encoder with a more powerful API, so that all features can be used, we could investigate making an UCI or transor wrapper for it, and i'd be very surprised if we couldnt support WMV9 then pretty nicely.

A much more interesting thing for us, at least for the tim being, is the input from shlezman on the support of the upcoming h.264 streaming features, like marking 'redundant' frames to make low bitrate streaming possible, etc. .....

[ookzDVD]

I can't see the "Microsoft Media 9" from VirtualDub :(

[[Toff]]

It's not a VFW codec.
It's a sample code to show how to use the directshow encoder to store WM* stream in AVI.
So it will not work in VirtualDub*
I have tried this thing last night, it works but it doesn't put the right flag on keyframe so when you seek you see plenty of block until the next keyframe is decoded.
I don't see any advantage to use WM* in AVI if you can't edit it.
Check the attachement if you want to test by yourself.

EDIT : added bold attribute :D
EDIT2 : fixed attachement (I hope)
EDIT3 : :( I can't fix it... use this url AVISampleVFW_vc60.zip (http://christophe.paris.free.fr/temp/AVISampleVFW_vc60.zip)

[zulu]

Originally posted by ookzDVD
I can't see the "Microsoft Media 9" from VirtualDub :(
of course. the link provided above is an example how to use wm9 in an avi container. it's not a vfw codec binary.

EDIT: oops, posted simultaneously with [Toff] :)

[Nic]

I hate the way MS write sample code, such a mess to show something simple most of the time. Sometimes you even find: goto label; type code in there!

Hmm, I dont know how you'd get WMV and WMA in AVI correctly, but maybe you can using this. Im not sure how advantageous that would be (as without a VFW codec I doubt VirtualDub could play/edit it, but maybe theyve added support for that I havent checked)

I assume we've always been able to put WMV into OGM??? Just using graphedit? or is that not the case?

Ill look more into it,

-Nic

[trbarry]

I could care less about getting WMA into vdub anyway since requiring WMA for WMV is already one of my main objections to WME.

But if anyone could create a WMV VFW codec it would be really nifty to start playing with this.

- Tom

edit: @Nic - Technology willing, I'll PM you a 6 pack of beer if you can make one of these! ;) (or at least help test it)

[ChristianHJW]

ok, so here is the deal :

I was forwarding the link to here to the matroska-devel mailing list, and i'd be very astonished if nobody from the guys jumped into making WMV2matroska.exe , as a commmand line tool ( a VfW codec is no good idea IMHO ) to encode movies coming from an AVISynth source into a matroska file, using WMV9 .

Spyder is the man to do that IMHO, he knows AVISynth good enough and is a real wizzard if it comes to unusual things that require the ability to improvise a bit.

mkvmerger and matroskadub will allow you to edit those files later, like cutting or muxing audio to it, but of course without preview function as there will be no VfW codec allowing to do so.

As for playback, thats a tough one. Does M$ describe anywhere how to call the WMV9 DShow filter ? I guess it was always blocked for playback from non-ASF sources ? Could this be tricked somehow, or was the limitation removed already ?

You may say, guys go get your DShow parser out of the door instead of doing things like this .... well, the problem is that we have 10 active developers right now in the team, and only one has the skills to make the parser filter, and thats myFUN ... he is back from vacation and working hard on the parser already, his skeleton code can read from libmatroska nicely, but somehow his new ( rewritten ) code cant connect to any output pins for the time being ... anyway, if he continues coding in that speed, expect a working alpha parser until end of this week ;) ...

... and i know Nic himself will care about adapting our parser filter code such that it will connect fine to the WMV9 decoder filter .. right Nic ?? :D ...

[Nic]

Well thats an interesting point, I doubt you could get the Windows Media filters to connect to much else, but I guess perhaps the WM9 DMO filters connect ok. Ill look into it.

You know the annoying thing? 3ivx's Media Spliter that can read MP4 cannot be connected to the XviD DShow filter no matter what you do.lol. Short of loading up WDASM I gave up on that.

If MS allow connecting to their filters then its just a case of having the write media major and minor subtypes.

As for a WM9 VFW, well ill have to disect that sample they've released to see how flexible it is. Ill compile it tomorrow and start making some WM9 AVI files.

-Nic

[trbarry]

As for a WM9 VFW, well ill have to disect that sample they've released to see how flexible it is. Ill compile it tomorrow and start making some WM9 AVI files.

Yes! :) :)

This is an extremely good thing.

- Tom

[ChristianHJW]

Toff added a compilation of the example source code from M$ ... the output seems broken, as the DShow encoder doesnt mark keyframes at all, so you dont know what flag to set in the AVIwriter .... its questionary if its possible at all to make a VfW codec from it ? If one can do it, its Nic, for sure ;) ...

[Wilbert]

Sorry for being OT:
Spyder is the man to do that IMHO, he knows AVISynth good enough and is a real wizzard if it comes to unusual things that require the ability to improvise a bit.
It would be very cool if he (or someone else) makes AviSynth plugins for importing video and audio in AviSynth ;) Including an additional option for downmixing the audio to two channels for the audio plugin.

[spyder]

You mean import WM9 Audio and Video into AVISynth? Hmmm, that could be interesting to do. But I can't. Chris has me under the whip. ;)

I am working on an MPEG2Matroska transmuxer at the moment. And nothing else!! lol

Spyder

[ookzDVD]

[Toff]

I think the attachment is broken,
the filesize 0Kb :(

[tiki4]

@spyder:

Right so,

Matroska is important! :D :D :D

tiki4

[[Toff]]

Originally posted by ookzDVD
I think the attachment is broken,
the filesize 0Kb :(
This is fixed, some way or another.

[slavickas]

probably Milan will make it in ffvfw check this
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/ffdshow/ffvfw/src/?sortby=date#dirlist

[Nic]

Well spotted slavickas :)

-Nic

[roman]

What is only interesting for me and a lot of other common people - that's the possibility to mux WMA-track with DivX/XviD videostream into some commonly used container - avi, for ex. And, of course, playbacking it w/o headaches.
Is the MS' announce means something about this? (Bear in mind that should find such hero who writes needed tools for this :)

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by roman
What is only interesting for me and a lot of other common people - that's the possibility to mux WMA-track with DivX/XviD videostream into some commonly used container - avi, for ex.

I duno. With all the pain and suffering it has caused in the past I think I would rather see WMA die a quick painless death. WMAv3 which was part of WM8 was generally pretty sad in terms of performance at the bitrates people want to use it at. And If WMA9 was made to work with VFW and there fore AVI then it would not be able to do VBR which would mean that it is no different than WMA8 and in general terms be the worst codec avalible to encode your audio with. Perhaps VQF would be the acception as it could be worse.

Originally posted by roman
And, of course, playbacking it w/o headaches.

I am all for reducing hedaches. Which ditching WMA will definatly do. But even with a new official ACM WMA codec it will still not fix all the dammage and lack of playback caused by those missguided soles who tried to use it in the past.

Originally posted by roman
Is the MS' announce means something about this? (Bear in mind that should find such hero who writes needed tools for this :)

No that is not what it means. WMA9 is not the real intrest here as it over all provides inferior quality most of the time. And using it in a VFW ACM environment that will only get worse. WMV9 is the only part of the equation that shows some potential.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>WMV9 is the only part of the equation that shows some potential.

i think there can't be "wm10" (or it shouldn't be)
did a few ultralow bitrate tests,and it looks like
tweaked ms mpeg4.......
first tweaked in wm8 then here...
and you can't tweak it to infinity...
wm9 has blocks and mosquitos as mpeg4....
nothing new here......

wm9 in avi?
only if ffdshow support comes.......
[i can't think of mpeg4 without ffdshow no more...]

[bond]

how can someone use ffvfw to put wmv9 into .avi or .ogm?

[deXtoRious]

Is something going on with the VFW codec?? This was a great idea, I hate to see it sinking down like this...:(

[TCmullet]

Directly or indirectly, I desperately need to import a Windows Media 9 WMV file into Virtualdub. Does anyone know how to do this?? (I have searched here but not found an answer to this problem.)

[aaar9800]

open the file in graphedit, connect the video and audio streams to matroska muxer and then file writer, press play. The resultant Matroska file can be opened in virtualdubmod

[damrod]

use directshowsource mode in avs file (need avisynth 2.54 to work good)

i use it also for rmvb and mov files

[iwod]

Originally posted by Sirber
I tryed WM9 once, and the result was green lol. I like green but not that much ;)

Yep yep. That is why sirber you need to push harder for Real to do the same thing. CodecPack only so many other app such as Winamp etc could bundle with it ^_^

May be Real in all should just drop the name Real And release the codec as Helix Video. Then real concentrate on selling services such as sever....... etc.............

The way i see it is that this time round M$ is more open to public then before .WMV is slowly gainning support in Hardware market.

If there is only Xvid ( Mpeg 4 ) or WMV9 in the hardware market to choose from ( Since Real suppoort is non exsistance excluding Pocket gadet ). Then i hope Xvid wins.

P.S - Bond will be glad to hear that :D

[aaar9800]

Originally posted by damrod
use directshowsource mode in avs file (need avisynth 2.54 to work good)

i use it also for rmvb and mov files

Don't use directshowsource!!! You will lose 1 frame at the end of the video.

With muxing something in matroska and then letting the vfw codecs to decode the stream you will not lose anything and it should be somewhat faster, i think.

[RadicalEd]

Well you could just skip Matroska and mux it straight to avi, that'd be less roundabout :\
Plus you won't be decompressing, as you would with directshowsource.

[aaar9800]

Originally posted by RadicalEd
Well you could just skip Matroska and mux it straight to avi

AVI sucks :angry:

[RadicalEd]

May be so, but he said VirtualDub, so I assume he's going for vfw ;)

[TCmullet]

@RadicalEd: Thanks. Could you please tell me just which tools I need to search and download? (& thanks to the others too for their ideas as well).

[aaar9800]

Originally posted by RadicalEd
May be so, but he said VirtualDub, so I assume he's going for vfw ;)

It's not that troublesome to use VirtualDubMod instead of VirtualDub.

VirtualDubMod uses vfw for wmv to, it has nothing else to do that, so there will be no difference and i just like matroska, cause i dont have to worry about codecs at all.

[RadicalEd]

Yeh, it'd still be using vfw to decode, but he needs to convert formats, presumably to get the file working in some other program. Specifically, one that doesn't support directshow (and thus mkv). Or he may just want to filter/recompress with vdub, in which case it wouldn't really matter.
Whatever.

@TCmullet, you just need graphedit (http://www.3ivx.com/download/windows.html). With that, render your wmv file, delete the WMV Decoder and Video Renderer boxes, and add an AVI Mux and Filewriter filter. Connect the video out to the AVI Mux in, avi mux to the filewriter, and hit the play button.

[TCmullet]

@RadicalEd:

Thanks for your help so far. Can you help me over a hump that's still knocking me down? First let me tell you what I've done:

I downloaded a version 8 of Graphedit from somewhere (Digital Digest I think). That file was "graphedit011008.zip". Then I downloaded from the link you kindly included; the file was "graphedt9.zip". The former zip file had contents that were older but included more files such as *.ax, *.bat, and "readme". The latter had only one file, the .exe, but it was much newer in datestamp. So I "registered" the older one, then copied the new .exe over the old .exe.

Running it: When I try to open my .wmv file by picking "Render media file", I get an error message, "Could not construct a graph from this file." There were a couple of notes then a return code of "0xc00d00c8". This happened both before and after I ran the "register.bat" file.

Something else you should know: I'm running Win98.1stEd. WMP9 won't install here, so I could not play the file in WMP. I was able to install it on a Win2k system, and had success in playing the .wmv thru WMP9. On Win2k, I did the whole "register", execute .exe, and "render media file" process, but got the same error screen. (Not sure if return code was the same.)

One of the notes in the error panel said, "Have you installed all necessary filters?" I figured at first that that meant I have to register those .ax files, or that WMP9 has to be installed. Well, I've done both and still can't get past this error. I don't know what filters they're talking about. I've used the built-in filtering of Tmpgenc, many of the filters for Virtualdub, but I know nothing about Graphedit or its filters.

Can you please help??? :(

[RadicalEd]

If you can view it in Windows Media Player 6.4 (run>mplayer2), you should be able to open it in graphedit. The only filters you need to render are the wmv splitters and decoders, which you should have (but may need updating).
The file I linked should be all you need, as well.

[TCmullet]

Forgive me for being dumb, but how do I get "the wmv splitters and decoders" and how do I install them (or update them)???

[TCmullet]

It turns out that I DO have mplayer2.exe on my Win98.1stEd system. But when I "file-open" my wmv, it goes to windowsmedia.com and says, "In order to play this file, you need to upgrade your media player to a version compatible with Windows Media Rights Manager V7. Select View Compatible Players below to see a list of compatible media players." and "If your current media player does not have a Windows Media Rights Manager V7 compatible version, you should select a different player with the Windows Media Rights Manager V7 identifier."

At this point WMP6.4 is no longer in memory. When I click to see the "list" of players, it was really no help--just gave me some lists of commercial vendors of various products.

I'm willing to limit my usage of wmv to Win2k (if that will help), even though I still use Win98 as my workhorse.

[RadicalEd]

Umm, are you sure this file isn't DRMed or something? :|

[TCmullet]

Please excuse me again... What is DRM?? I'm an ex-programmer... I need explicit instruction.. Thank you very kindly. :)

[RadicalEd]

Digital Rights Management. Copy protection stuff preventing you from opening it in anything other than wmp9.

[TCmullet]

Oh... well, what if it is DRMed? Then is there absolutely no way to open it up and reencode it to something else, whether graphedit or avisynth?

[bond]

well even if you are an ex-programmer and need explicit instruction you should not forget our rules:
:search:

[TCmullet]

@Bond: Sorry, I slipped up this time. Yes, I searched now on "drm"; found a bunch of threads; looked at several (am very short on net-time for this month); and it does look like I can't open this dang file. So....

@Bond & @RadicalEd: There's a semi-daily show I record. On a day with critical plot twist, I was out of town and my timer-capture screwed up. I found out I could download the whole 38min. show for $1.99, but it's this dang .wmv file. I've got to get it readable so I can edit portions to save in my collection which is all mpeg2. Looks like I'll have to fallback on the terrible kludge of playing the stupid thing in wmp9 and point a camcorder to the screen and re-capture it! This is my first exposure to wmp9 and .wmv, and I'm NOT pleased. I don't want to output to ANY format that I can't read back in and edit, which includes ALL other files of the same format. Heck, the show aired on CBS, i.e., anybody can tape it. (Just not from their d___ .wmv file!)

:angry:

I'll appreciate any further comments from you guys. And thank you all for helping me to see the bad news! :)

[bond]

well as you already found out there is no way to play/edit or whatever a drm'ed .wmv file if you dont have the rights to do so

so the best you can do is to write a nice mail to the guys where you bought this file and tell them "what you think about it" ;)

[momentum]

I had thought WMV9 codec is the best one as far as its picture quality. The result I tested on WMVencoder was really great. This time I test on VDM with band of Brothers by using 2 pass encoding as I dont like wmv format.

This time, the result is rather disappointing. I get only poor and blured image much worse than divx5 or xvid.

Again I tested the same movie with 1 pass encoding method, the result is nearly the same as what I get through WMVencoder.

I am totally confused with this resultas my understanding is that 2 pass method always gives us the best result. but its not true.

Could you explain what is the difference between 2 pass and 1 pass in terms of picture quality? I just dont get the whole process and behind technical principles.

Thanks in advance