Whats the problem with WM9?

[Dark_Paladin]

Hello, I have been encoding in divx for about 3 years now and I love this site. It was where I learned nandub and how to do good divx rips. Lately I have been extremely pleased with wm9 and have been getting the best results I have ever seen. Not to advertise anything but to see how my encodes of wm9 compare to my divx 3.11 nandub encodes my webpage is http://www.fna-studios.com where my brother and I create and encode anime music videos. The last two videos we have done I used wm9 and still keep the file size down. Naturally my divx encodes would have been better if I knew about huffyuv which encode in to edit videos in adobe premiere then after the final vid is done I encode with my compression (wm9 or divx) but I have only been using wm9 now. So I imagine if I did the same procedure with huffyuv to edit the vid then compress the final vid in divx I would have a better video than my past divx videos. Just was curious why wm9 is said to be inferior to divx in most reguards. Thanks for listening.

[Tommy Carrot]

Well, all i can say: wmv9 is definetaly not superior to xvid. Of course, at very low bitrates it's better, but for common use, i could not see the superiority, not to mention, xvid/divx is easier to use.

[Shinobu]

I've tried also wmv9 (I encode a lot of animes) and Xvid very better than wmv9 ; with low bitrate (<400) xvid is better just need to use a more optimised preprocessing ^^

++

[Neo Neko]

I don't know where you are getting the idea it is crap. Because it is not. WM9 is not half bad. But it is not really better than many of the alternatives out there. Having said that the main reasons people choose not to use WM9 are thus. The programs you can encode to WM9 with are rather limited. Your editing options are rather limited. Microsoft provides you with all sorts of software to perform spiffy fades but can't provide simple video clean up filters to treat older video or do quality resizing. WM9 is a closed standard. Microsoft will not make an effort to port it to other OS unlike companies like Real. It simply put is another monopoly maker tool that Microsoft is trying to push to rest the high and low end video markets from their many respective holders and bring them under the Microsoft monopoly umbrella.

You probably think I am paranoid. But that is far from the truth.

The reason MPEG4 is so popular are many. It is the sucessor to the insanely popular and useful MPEG 1 and 2 codecs. The standard is open meaning that anyone can impliment their own version of the encoder which brings competition for better codec tuning. Something which Microsoft simply will not allow. Hardware support with MPEG4 is guaronted long term.

The next thing to watch is h.264. It is part of the MPEG4 specs, but it is so much different from traditional MPEG4 that you are likely to see it as a stand alone codec more than part of a larger MPEG4 codec for a while. I can say with a good bit of certanty that h.264 stands to blow traditional MPEG4, WM9, and RM9 clean out of the running with a bit of spit and polish. I am really anxious to see more people jump on the open source h.264 project. Another great thing about h.264 is that the base profile looks as if it will be possible to impliment with a GPL license which means we should see the possibility for some insane community tweaking and tuning.

[patja]

You can do resize, noise filtering, decomb, etc. in avisynth and feed it to WME.

[ChristianHJW]

Well said Neo !!!

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by patja
You can do resize, noise filtering, decomb, etc. in avisynth and feed it to WME.

But it is not as good, thurrough, or as easy as what is in virtualdub. Yes I could process the file in Virtualdub and save as huffyuv and then process in WMM. But that is just another needless step when I can do less to save it in MPEG4 quicker. Oh yes that reminds me. MPEG4 is quicker to encode in my experience as well.

[Sgt_Strider]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
But it is not as good, thurrough, or as easy as what is in virtualdub. Yes I could process the file in Virtualdub and save as huffyuv and then process in WMM. But that is just another needless step when I can do less to save it in MPEG4 quicker. Oh yes that reminds me. MPEG4 is quicker to encode in my experience as well.

Hey Neo is there any other programs that can process the .avs file and turn it into a avi? I find that going through the process of converting to huffyuv is needless as well and it takes up alot of space! I found a program called Link2 but it requires registration or else there's going to be slowdown thx to the demo version :mad:. So is there any other quick alternative other than using huffyuv? Thx

[Neo Neko]

There are several AFAIK. I hear even premiere has been seen to work with it. But I can't confirm. Virtualdub has been fulfilling all my needs so I have not tested many software for that lately.

[Ramirez]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
But it is not as good, thurrough, or as easy as what is in virtualdub. Yes I could process the file in Virtualdub and save as huffyuv and then process in WMM. But that is just another needless step when I can do less to save it in MPEG4 quicker. Oh yes that reminds me. MPEG4 is quicker to encode in my experience as well.
You seem misunderstand what patja actually means here,NO EXTRA STEPS REQUIRED just feed WME with plain Avisynth Script,and viola you're ready to Rock.

I've tested this codec quite intensively and IMHO it's very good, I don't really know how well this codec looks when compared against XVID since I've never compared them, but I am definitely gonna do that..

[trbarry]

You seem misunderstand what patja actually means here,NO EXTRA STEPS REQUIRED just feed WME with plain Avisynth Script,and viola you're ready to Rock.

It's true you can just feed it an avi (edit: avs) script, even under Win/Me using Nic's encoder. I've tried that a couple months ago. The results weren't bad though I didn't think they were any better than Xvid at the time on my short tests.

But the "no extra steps" isn't strictly true.

I re-encode HDTV captures that already have ac3 audio (some 5.1) and with Xvid and Virtualdubmod I can just mux that in unchanged, cutting commercials in VdubM. And it will then play with hardware decoding in my AV receiver.

There is no easy way to do this yet with WME. A number of steps must be taken to convert the audio, and if you have to adjust the sync later I have no idea what you would have to do.

A functional VFW codec would maybe correct all this.

- Tom

[Ramirez]

The question posed was "will M$ Media Encoder accept plain Avisynth scripts?"
The answer is very short > YES >. Just feed it to WME. Only in that sense no extra steps required.

[Sgt_Strider]

Originally posted by Ramirez
The question posed was "will M$ Media Encoder accept plain Avisynth scripts?"
The answer is very short > YES >. Just feed it to WME. Only in that sense no extra steps required.

how though w/o nic's encoder?

[Ramirez]

Dunno how many times I'll have to repeat this guys..:D
MICROSOFT MEDIA ENCODER 9 WILL ACCEPT PLAIN AVISYNTH SCRIPT... PERIOD
It was there since the first early beta version of MS WME Encoder 9; it's not something that Nic coded as some sort of backdoor hack to make WME9 to accept Avisynth scripts.

[Sgt_Strider]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
There are several AFAIK. I hear even premiere has been seen to work with it. But I can't confirm. Virtualdub has been fulfilling all my needs so I have not tested many software for that lately.

What are the other ones that you know? Premiere doesn't even accept .vob files and I need a simple but fast way to convert it to .avi.

[Sirber]

A little question... will I be able to play WMV on Linux?

[Edit]

The encoder GUI timeout with encoding. lol

[31 Flavas]

Originally posted by Sirber

A little question... will I be able to play WMV on Linux? As far as getting a linux player/decoder from Microsoft; Hell no.

Read amirm's post (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=233540#post233540). The relevant quote being "As to decoders for other boxes, I can tell you that as Microsoft, we won't be putting out a Linux decoder. It would be like Sony making an Xbox game :)."

But, if some company were to pay the $10k source code fee a player/decoder could be developed.

[slavickas]

Originally posted by Sirber
A little question... will I be able to play WMV on Linux?



on x86 mplayer can play although it's not very legal :rolleyes:

[BlueCup]

I don't know what I am doing wrong, but AVS is not working with WME.

[Sgt_Strider]

Originally posted by BlueCup
I don't know what I am doing wrong, but AVS is not working with WME.

I think its Nic's WM9 encoder that will accept avs files.

[BlueCup]

That it is. I did a search for it.

Appartently Ramirez is misinformed and is misinforming others.

[patja]

Ramirez and I are not "misinformed". In fact I actually feed avs scripts directly into WME (the MS one, not Nic's) on a regular basis, coverting HDTV to WMV. I wrote a guide to doing it at http://www.patjames.com/hdtvtowmv.htm if you are interested in the exact steps I use for this process.

[Ramirez]

Thank you patja,you have just saved me the trouble to post a very unpleasant replay...

[BlueCup]

Well instead of stating that you can just load it in (which does not work) Ramirez could have said their are steps to do so.

[Ramirez]

You've got me now...
Originally posted by BlueCup
That it is. I did a search for it.
Imagine that!,May I ask you which one of the thousands search engines available on the net have you used? Was it moronscrawler.org? Not recommended, usually returns loads of crap, try this one instead next time http://forum.doom9.org/search.php?s= way more reliable source of information.
Originally posted by BlueCup
Apparently Ramirez is misinformed and is misinforming others.
You aren't so bright person Mr. BlueCrap aren't you?
You've probably assumed that I've picked this info somewhere on the net and then I've posted it here without even test it... Sheesh
you are too good to be true, consider changing your nic into "HELPMEIMSTUPID" or something, suit you better IMHO.
Originally posted by BlueCup
Well instead of stating that you can just load it in (which does not work) Ramirez could have said their are steps to do so.
Well instead of weeping about thing you can't get to work, you could write a nice little message "guys plz help me out,how do I get it working?" everybody around here including me,would happily assist you to solve this problem. And let me assure you that everything does works as it should;I have around 10 top quality WM9 rips laying On my hard-drive.

[BlueCup]

How old are you?

You did not state the steps, you simply said it just loads. Simple as that, try not blowing things out of proportion.

I did a search for Nic's, not anything else.

Ramirez if you simply stated the steps instead of saying just load it into WME there wouldn't be any mix up. I thank patja for clearing the matter up.

Thanks for the "unpleasant" mature reply.

P.S. I don't remember weeping, but if you think just asking a question is weeping, so be it.

[Sgt_Strider]

Originally posted by BlueCup
How old are you?

You did not state the steps, you simply said it just loads. Simple as that, try not blowing things out of proportion.

I did a search for Nic's, not anything else.

Ramirez if you simply stated the steps instead of saying just load it into WME there wouldn't be any mix up. I thank patja for clearing the matter up.

Thanks for the "unpleasant" mature reply.

P.S. I don't remember weeping, but if you think just asking a question is weeping, so be it.

I agree, maybe you can help us out by giving us steps instead of just saying that you just insert the script into the encoder.

[Nic]

If you guys don't start being nice, ill start striking you. Please discuss things in a mature and constructive manner.

& By the way:
.avs files can probably be loaded into Windows Media Encoder as long as you have an appropriate huffyuv codec installed.

Cheers,
-Nic

[Atamido]

Originally posted by Ramirez
May I ask you which one of the thousands search engines available on the net have you used? Was it moronscrawler.org? Not recommended, usually returns loads of crap, try this one instead next time http://forum.doom9.org/search.php?s= way more reliable source of information. If the information doesn't need to be perfectly current, you can also use Google (http://www.google.com), go to advanced search, and limit the results to forum.doom9.org.

[Ramirez]

Originally posted by Sgt_Strider
I agree, maybe you can help us out by giving us steps instead of just saying that you just insert the script into the encoder.
No problem, I'll do that, it's just pisses me off the way some people jumps into conclusions..

BlueCup, do me a favor, Please next time address me directly and avoid that "Ramirez is misinformed" crap,that kinda stuff really drives me crazy. Believe me, I'm really not such as bad guy as you might think while reviewing my previous post, In fact I'll do my best to help you,or any other member of this amazing forum.

Peace

.P.S
Check Out my next Post... I think you're gonna like it.

[Ramirez]

Download and install Avisynth 2.5 (http://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2)

Start Windows Media Encoder
As Soon as the New Session Wizard Window appears Choose "Custom Session",click OK
Screenshot (http://www.redzone.co.il/vad/wmv9/1.jpg)

Main Session Properties Window
1.Click On the "Processing" Tab, Locate "Pixel Format" Combo,Click on it,and Choose YV12 as Input Pixel Format.
Screenshot (http://www.redzone.co.il/vad/wmv9/2.jpg)
Warning: Extremely Important Do Not Skip This Stage.

Go to the First "Sources" Tab, click on the "Both device and file" radio buttons.
Check both "Video" and "Audio" Checkboxes at the left side of the Window.
Click on the Video Source Combo, choose "Browse for file", and set the Dialog Window
Filter to "All files", locate yourname.AVS Script and press "Open"
Repeat the above mentioned steps with the audio file, WME9 supports MP3/WMA and
Also 6 separate Wav files as valid audio input (for AC3 Encoding) Click Apply.
Screenshot (http://www.redzone.co.il/vad/wmv9/3.jpg)

2.Go to the "Output" Tab
Uncheck "Pull from Encoder" checkbox, and check "Archive to file", Press the "Browse Button
And save yourname.wmv file where ever you like (in my Case it's simply c:\leon.wmv)
Screenshot (http://www.redzone.co.il/vad/wmv9/5.jpg)

3.Go to the "Compression" Tab
Click on the "Destination" combo and choose "File Archive", and then click "Edit".
Screenshot (http://www.redzone.co.il/vad/wmv9/6.jpg)

4.Custom Encoding Settings Window
Click on the "New" profile button Name it "my profile" if you want to reuse this custom profile later then export it.
For both Audio and video Mode choose "Bitrate VBR Peak",choose audio and video codecs of your choice(in my case it's WMA9 pro and WMV9) Go to the bottom of the window "target bit rates" press "Add" button; enter whatever value you like (I'm using Gknot for That) press OK.
Screenshot (http://www.redzone.co.il/vad/wmv9/7.jpg)

Navigate to the second tab (only visible if you've entered the target bitrate prior)
Choose an appropriate audio bitrate in the "Audio Format" combobox change other parameters if you feel like it's necessarily.
Very Important: CHECK the "Same as the Video Input" checkbox;Avisynth is the one who will Do the resizing for us.
Screenshot (http://www.redzone.co.il/vad/wmv9/8.jpg)

Press OK, and then at the bottom of the main "Session Properties" window press "Apply"
Viola,you're ready to rock, Press the "Start encoding" and wait for encoding job to complete.

Enjoy.

[BlueCup]

Well now you stepped over the bounds of being nice and highly informative. Sorry to come off like a jerk and jump to a conclusion, but your previous post did not make things clear and sometimes people make mistakes (in this case I did, but at first I thought you).

Very good post and of course, these things happen (stay safe in Israel).

[patja]

The filters you have registered (and even the specific versions of those filters) make a huge difference in whether WME will abend with a cryptic error vs. work smoothly. I have the specific file versions I use on my web page for HDTV encoding.

It is awkward to manage this, as the filters I use for encoding are different from those I prefer for DVD playback on the same HTPC. So I have to go through some filter unregistering/re-registering when I want to switch modes between encoding vs. DVD playback.

[Sgt_Strider]

@ramirez

Hey ramirez, what resolution did you use to encode your dvds? Also do you happen to have a 16x9 TV? I'm just wondering do you watch your dvd encodes on your TV...

[Ramirez]

Hey there, really nothing special, just following the Gknot instructions, usually it's just low res stuff like 608x256 for PC watching only, and no I am not watching my encodes on 16:9 TV(mine is just regular 4:3 box) anyway you're basically talking about this (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49186&highlight=DVD+FULL+RESOLUTION) tread right? Sorry I can't help you much here,it's like terra incognita for me either.:)